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Reg_Bo11ox' Volvo S80 D5 adventure


Mr_Bo11ox

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I reckon it's probably the cap, only based on what you've told us about your findings though. I had a Mitsubishi V6 once that 'used' coolant, I only discovered where it was going to by accident when I had to remove the gearbox. There was a weeping core plug on the end of the block that would only leak when the engine was hot, the water would then evaporate before it got chance to leave a pool under the car.

I see you have a new tag, 'hot vinegar cup', I feel I should know this but I don't, is it safe to Google?

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Another vote for the cap here, easy and cheap to rule out. I remember you did the timing belt, but wasn't there something weird about the water pump? I had a very slowly leaking water pump on a Mk4 Golf and it took me ages to track it down, slowly leaking away behind the timing belt cover and evaporating before it was visible. It was only after taking the belt cover off and finding the side of the block covered in that crystallized shizzle from evaporated coolant.

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Let's hope the cap fixes it. 

I haven't got as far as doing the head gasket on a D5, but I did do the valve stem oil seals with the head in-situ and that was a lot of work.  The head bolts are underneath the camshafts, and you have to remove all the injector pipework, injectors, high pressure pump, cambelt etc. to get at them.  Removing the head would additionally involve getting the turbo out, which looked a right pain in the ass when I was considering doing it.

ETA: here they are, along with my home made in-situ valve spring compressor:

D5_head.thumb.jpg.070cbd48d452dc056f6016fe98c0c887.jpg

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Volvos with the whiteblock, both petrol and diesel, used the same expansion cap for the whole production run, right back to the start of the 850 and 960 in 91/92, and the expansion tanks and caps have been that bad since day one. I had to do cap and tank on my 850 as well. 

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I had a petrol S80 of the same model, I had a leak on one of the seals on the heater matrix inside the car. Luckily on mine it only leaked until the level on the expansion tank dropped from max to halfway between min and max. 
 

I only found it using a UV dye kit. Apparently this is a common problem as there’s small O rings on the pipes connected to it that start to leak as they age. I never actually saw any water on the matrix as it was such a small leak but the UV dye showed up round the connector. As mine settled on the halfway point I just left it. It sounds like you maybe have the same leak but worse than mine. 
 

some info here:

https://www.volvoforums.org.uk/archive/index.php/t-118323.html

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Quick update on this plus comments invited on what to do next.
IMG_20200804_105120043.jpg
I've driven this Volvo about 1000 miles now, its going great. Pretty much everything is working and its so comfortable that I still look forward to getting in it and going somewhere. BUT its got a persistent problem, which is that it is losing coolant somewhere, not obscene amounts but enough to be an annoyance and disrupt the Karma significantly.
Theres no sign of an external leak, not that I can find anyway. No drips when you park up. No steam in the exhaust and no oil in the water or vice versa. No mayo under the oil cap and it starts on the button and sounds 'normal'. So wheres the coolant going? I chucked a radweld in it, but that didn't fix owt.
The only clue I've got is that the other day when I was pottering about (on a mega hot day) I caught it in the act of pushing some water out of the expansion bottle lid. I've inspected the seal on that and it seems OK. I have also tried to see if any bubbles are coming up in the expansion bottle. I am not certain about this, because its all compartmentalized inside the bottle its difficult to see, so I might do the old trick of taping an upturned pop bottle to the filler hole and raising the water head up so I can see better if there are any bubbles coming up. I have run it for 15 secs from cold and removed the cap to see if any pressure had built up, and I didn't detect any.
Basically I am wondering if there is a very slight head gasket leak. I've studied the Volvo forums and theyre pretty insistent on there that D5 head gaskets 'don't go' but even this HG could not really be considered 'failed'. My feeling is, after 190k and however many hot/cold cycles that entails it seems possible that the best gasket in the world could suffer some wear on one of its sealing beads that could let a bit of combustion pressure through. Looking at replacement gaskets they are all the multi-layer steel type so a 'minor fail' like this seems possible.
I reckon i could probably change it OK (can't see it being any more of a fiddle than a K-series VVC for example) but it looks like an expensive business. £50 for the gasket, £20 for new stretch bolts and another £50 for a kit with all the other gaskets in. Also i havent got a torque wrench believe it or not, so thats a few more quid unless I can borrow one off the neighbour. Plus that's a full days work innit. On the upside, its surprisingly OK to work on this thing I find - everything I've done on it so far has been pretty straightforward and theres plenty of room in the engine bay (unlike that Fiat Croma). Would probably be quite a satisfying job to clear up in a day and if I was sure that would sort the problem I would defo tackle it.
I don't wanna get embroiled in it till I'm a bit more certain that its defo the root cause though. The car is quite usable as long as you keep an eye on the coolant level (drove down to Cambridge on Sunday with no problems at all) Any tips? Has anyone on here got involved in a D5 head gasket job before? How can I pin-point the issue? I know you can buy sniff-test kits off ebay for a tenner or so, I'm thinking of trying one of those next. Any comments gang?
I have EXACTLY this issue with my D5. Same symptoms, although the water loss is not really noticeable, there's lots of dried coolant around the cap / components near by.

I don't think I've got a big issue, she I have a cap on order.

We'll see!

Sent from my SM-G960F using Tapatalk

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If you decide you want some UV dye stuff let me know and I'll send you an amp of it. I ordered one a few years ago and instead of sending me one, they sent me one box of six and I never used it.

You will have to figure out the UV light though, can't remember what I did with it.

IMG_20200806_000341748.thumb.jpg.a6177a564444fa735a630a20eeccff90.jpg

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