First time diesel owner, Volvo 740

[jbg]

Hi everyone, I'll be picking up a 1986 Volvo 740GLE turbo-diesel in the next week. It's an automatic transmission, and has about 129K miles on the clock. It drives very well, starts easily, and is in generally good shape.

I've been searching and reading these forums on the D24T engine, as well as the some other volvo diesel web sites. I have an initial question however, what oil should I run in it? The current owner is using Rotella - not sure of the weight - which I think would be just fine. Do we agree?

The car comes with a stack of receipts and documentaion on work performed over the years. Once I get the car I'll figure out when the timing belts were last changed, water pump, etc. The belts look to be in good shape, but you can never be too sure.

Thanks for reading.

[Dr. Diesel]

get some sort of pre-lubing device for that engine. They reported fail due to the oil pressure's slow progress to the further cylinders on startup.
You'd probably have enough room under the hood for an electric solenoid-controlled moroso oil pressure accumulator.

[jbg]

Thanks for the reply, Dr. Diesel. I too have heard of the rumored failures due to low oil pressure.

What "raises a brow" now is the 4HP22E 4 speed transmission. Having read the problems of this trans it shocks me that it has been in production for so many years, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZF_4HP22_transmission

Without having done any real research yet, I'm assuming ZF has substantially improved the design through the years, perhaps a newer unit could be fitted to my Volvo; of course this is assuming the trans has not already been rebuilt and will survive arother 100K miles.

[houseofdiesel]

If you do infact have the ZF4HP22 trans be sure you know how to drive it, DO NOT put it in park and let it idle after a long drive, it will burn up! Read up carefully on it, there are many factors that contribute to it burning up and ways to keep it alive, my Peugeot 505 had this trans and it burned up while on a road trip 2000 miles from home...
I think if you shut off and restart your okay to leave in neutral or park, it has been awhile since I read up on it though, some Peugeot specialists are very familiar with the issues...
Be sure to run lots of fuel conditioner to keep the injection pump healthy, even add some synthetic 2 stroke oil if your really fanatical. Consider rebuilding the injectors/compression test/glow plug check/injection pump timing/fueling screw adjustment after timing belt replacements. Look carefully at your wiring harness, common bad grounds/green wires/corrosion issues on these cars.
Consider synthetic oils for all engine/trans/diff, you will have a hard time finding replacements...
Greg