Hi team! I keep making posts to this forum that I love so dearly, and every time my questions seem to get a little more involved, though they are sort of about the same problem.

So I've slowly been working on a "rolling restoration" for my 85 wagon, just like many of you have been doing for probably decades, but my transmission has finally said goodbye. Combine this with excessive oil leaks being that the car has over 500000km, and notably oil leaks from the head gasket, I decided just to pull the whole engine and trans and reseal everything, do the head gasket, replace the transmission, etc etc etc.

My last post was asking for help with the model and specifics of my transmission, and since making that post my plans have changed quite a lot. I found a 79 240D with a 4spd at a local pick n pull, and ended up grabbing the whole engine, transmission, propshaft, pedal cluster, shift linkage and shifter, and rear X support. So you guessed it, my wagon is getting a 4spd! Understandably it would have been nice to keep it original, but I personally just can't handle slush boxes and am quite happy to finally see it go.

Now my original plan was to have the engine and trans back in within a month to stick with the whole "rolling resto" timeline, but since taking the head off I decided, well, maybe I should just rebuild this engine while its out. Because re-sealing the whole engine includes the rope seal, which requires taking the crank out, and seen as I already have the head off, it seems kind of like a no brainer to me to just rebuild the whole thing, especially seen as the cylinder walls have certainly seen better days. (i will attach pictures in a few days if anyone wants to see 550000km cylinder walls)

Now (after all that reading) here is my "dilemma". I can't believe how absurdly expensive it is going to be to rebuild this engine. Pistons are going to be $3000 CAD alone! This isn't including cylinder liners, bearings, oil pump, and a few other things I will need. So what does everyone think, should I rebuild? What have you done in the past? My engine had decent compression and ran quite well, but the cylinder walls really don't look super great.

At this point I seem to be taking a bit of a break from the rolling resto to replace a bunch of stuff including, valve guide seals, oil filter housing seal, head gasket, manifold gasket, front and rear crank seals, belly pan seal, oil pan gasket, all cooling system gaskets and thermostat, (not the water pump) upper, lower, and short rad hose, 150Amp alternator (to power my teenager stereo system) engine and trans mounts, engine shocks and shock mounts, timing chain tensioner and gasket, transmission input and output shaft seals, valve cover gasket of course, all new fuel line, rack damper and O-ring, all new fuel line and copper washers, rebuilding lift pump, all filters, all fluids, brake master cylinder, front and rear calipers, clutch slave cylinder, clutch disc, release bearing, I will need a custom pilot bearing, I will need to sort out my flywheel balance as well, turbo oil feed and drain gaskets and seals, I will rebuild my SLS pump, rebuild SLS valve, new accumulators, rebuilt hydraulic struts, rebuilt steering box, (my front end is good actually I have already done all of that).

I think that's about it for all the parts I have waiting to go on my car. I'm sure I am forgetting a few. So really aside from just wanting to talk about my car, I am asking, is there anything else you would do while the engine is out, and should I go for the full rebuild considering all this other stuff I am doing?

And my timing chain looks brand new by the way so I will save a couple bucks there, not like that even matters at this point.

Cheers, looking forward to hearing from everyone!

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85 300TD - 550000km
81 Jetta 4Dr, JH - 250000km
98 Tacoma - 300000km
02 Jetta Wagon, ALH - 270000km

I have an 84 300D and the main timing chain tensioner rail was starting to fall apart. I posted a thread somewhere in that. My advice is take a look and that I could not see the damage till I got the rail out because it was on the bottom of the rail.

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84 300D, 82 Volvo 244Gl Diesel

My vote would be for rebuilding the engine now.The reason is that myself and two other 300 series owners found that our high milage engines had bottom end issues that were going to require machining to prevent catastrophic failure. Your engine may not die quietly, it could easily go out with a bang and not be rebuildable. Further reasoning for doing it now is that engine machine shops are going out of business at an alarming rate. Five years from now your only option might be to get on a two year wait list for machine shop services.

I would put another lower mileage engine in and drive. Fix yours as you have time. Good running engines are still plentiful and that might mean another 10 years without a rebuild.

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85SD 240K & stopped counting painted, putting bac together. 84SD 180,000. sold to a neighbor and member here but I forget his handle. The 84 is much improved from when I had it. 85TD beginning to repair to DD status. Lots of stuff to do.

Thanks for the tips!

I will definitely take the timing chain guide rails out completely and inspect them, along with all the timing gears.

I Have also decided to replace all the bearings as they are cheap and I will have the crank out anyways.

As far as top end goes, I am going to check all my clearances and hopefully re-use my original pistons, maybe re-use my original cylinder liners, and put some new rings in.

Cylinder liners are cheap but I find it hard to believe they will ever stay put as well as they did from the factory.

If the pistons are shot, or on their way out I will just splurge on new ones, because as mentioned an engine rebuild may be expensive now, but it's not getting any cheaper.

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85 300TD - 550000km
81 Jetta 4Dr, JH - 250000km
98 Tacoma - 300000km
02 Jetta Wagon, ALH - 270000km

https://www.woodsandbarclay.com/videos

John did a fantastic job doing a full series teaching how to rebuild the om617. His site has all the manuals, parts lists etc...