During cambelt change
 

Hi All,

My 1996 850R manual is due a cambelt change at 180k. I was wondering if it's worth getting any additional work done whilst the mechanic will be at it (water pump etc)? No specific issues to warrant any major work. Any thoughts?

Thank you:rolleyes:

Such as?
Tensioners and aux belt should all be done whilst you're disturbing the area I'd say. Check engine mounts and replace?

Many will say change the water pump at the same time...
Personally I don't, if it's not leaking leave it alone, genuine Volvo pumps are reliable.
Obviously idler pulley & tensioner, but again if the hydraulic tensioner works...

If the pump is not leaking and spins smoothly leave well alone. I have had original pumps last 370,000mls without any issues. If you do change it only use genuine, not cheapo pattern. Auxiliary belt and tensioner should be done at the same time.

The cambelt tensioner is a very highly engineered device with proper Robust well greased needle roller bearings in the centre where it swivels .Its highly unlikely you will feel any play , but do the usual play and spin to check for roughness.

No the water pump is again a well engineered device and I have not heard of one leaking or failing whatever the mileage since they were launched on the 960 6 cylinder 3 litre engine in 1990 .. I have been working on these on a daily professional basis since well before 1990 . Just spin and check for smoothness and there should be a tiny amount of play which helps the belt find it's centre point . If you don't know the history check for the VOLVO word cast on the pump and if you cant see it assume someone has put a cheap copy on and get a genuine volvo one .

Aux Belt and tensioner should be replaced , however they are not at all troublesome as the 2007 and later ones could be . the USA schedule doesn't change them , they are advised to grease the swivelling faces .

Cambelt interval on these is 80k miles or 10 years (whichever comes first).

Aux belt interval is 60k miles.

My original volvo water pump leaked - conveniently when the 2nd cambelt became due at the 20 years point. Mileage at the time was about 145k from memory. I was planning on having it changed anyway, for the extra £100 part and a bit extra on labour it seems silly not to while you're in there anyway.

I agree with Clan in that if you change it then use a genuine volvo one but I don't agree with the idea that these things never fail, they are very well made but they can fail.

I'd also get the cambelt kit from volvo using the reg plate as I recall there are some variations - I think on the tensioners but could be wrong.

I'm just going by my experience of working daily with these cars for over 40 years and seeing thousands of these cars when they were everywhere ..i have changed many thousands of belts on all the models .. and checking the water pump every time of course :-)

And I'm going off the fact my car left a small puddle of coolant on the road every time I got back from a drive, which was traced to the water pump.
It wasn't difficult to guess it was the water pump either as it was the only original part of the coolant system left on that side of the engine with everything else replaced already.

Amazingly after having the water pump changed and the cambelt kit done it doesn't drip coolant onto the road anymore.

Maybe I was unkucky, which wouldn't be a surprise, but you can't say you haven't heard of one failing now :-)

25 year old waterpump and 180k ... you'd be nuckin futs to not to change it in my opinion.
Couldn't care less if it was original Volvo or even built by Nasa.
It's just not worth the hassle of having to redo the job for the sake of 30 mins of work and less than a £100 for the part..Obviously dont use some elcheapo Ebay special .
Never ever understood the leave it brigade's reasoning.

I'm with the 'every other cambelt change' group re the water pump replacement - and its Volvo only branded for me too. I have had two water pumps weeping from the tell tale hole on whiteblock engines, so while they do last a while, they also do fail.

This pic was taken when I did the cambelt on my '97 S70 T5 a few months ago - you can see the corrosion building up nicely which was causing a small and unnoticed leak.

http://www.duckfieldengineering.com/...dWaterPump.jpg

I change the cambelt tensioner every time. Yes, I've read that these can and do last a long time, but the cambelt, tensioner and idler pulley are all equally critical to the health of your engine - if any one of those fails you're looking at an engine rebuild or replacement, which is enough to send many 850s to the scrappers.

I've had two aux belt tensioners start to fail (ie growl) so I'd be tempted to change that as well - but as thats pretty straightforward to swap out, you could leave it be if its running ok and exhibiting no play.