Hi,

I'm thinking about buying a 960 -- this would be my first Volvo with a 6 cylinder -- and the car has 144K miles and an unknown timing belt history. Obviously if I buy it I will drive it straight home (slowly) and redo the belt and rollers and water pump.

Is a camshaft lock a requirement, or is it optional if you are careful? I watched a vid and the job doesn't really look much worse than doing a 240 or 740, and I've done about 5 of those. The dual cams are giving my pause though.

thanks in advance.

Thaddeus

It is actually pretty straight forward. You do not need to remove any pulley nor do you need to lock the camshafts in place. First remove the fan which is held on by two small torque screws and pull it up and move it to your left. It does not need to have the wiring unplugged as it will move far enough out of the way. Take off the front timing cover which is held on by one bolt on the front. There is also a small cover at the bottom right of the pulley that needs to be removed. It is accessed from the bottom and is held in place with one small bolt. The cover that is on top of the camshaft pulleys will need to be removed, BUT First line up the timing marks. The cover over the top of the pulleys has two small notches that are at about 11 o'clock near the left pulley and 1:00 on the right pulley. These are points to line up with a small grove between the teeth on each pulley.They are small and hard to see, so look closely. Once these are lined up the bottom pulley should also be lined up. The bottom pulley has a very small grove that lines up with a small raised tab on the metal cover behind the pulley. This point is just to the left of 12 o'clock. Then once it is lined up, remove the top cover over the cam gears and then remove the tensioner. The belt can then be removed. Buy a timing belt kit with the belt and the two new bearings. Also buy a new tensioner and a water pump. Replace the bearings and the pump and the belt starting with the bottom pulley and route it like it was originally and have the slack on the left and pull up on the adjusting bearing to let you install the new tensioner under the bearing. It may help to have an extra set of hands at this point to pull up on the tensioner so you can install the new tensioner. The new tensioner will have a small pin to pull out at this point which will tighten the belt. There is a small plastic clip that can then be put on top of the tensioner. It just pushes on. Put the top plastic cover back on over the camshaft gears and make sure the camshaft marks and the bottom pully marks are lined up. If everything is aligned properly, just put the covers etc. back on and it should be good to go.

if you can tow it home,,On my 940 & 740s I used nylon rope threaed into the spark plug hole,just before top dead center& its then compressed & stop the piston

The requirement is aligning your cams and crank. At least on the 5-cylinder of the exact same architecture, this is completely possible but keep in mind, your alignment indicators for the cams are on the rear of the cam so make your own marks on the sprockets before removing the old belt. Also, make sure you can see the cranks timing mark or again, make you own.

FYI, it is much worse (fiddly, annoying, catastrophic results if you fail) to do that SOHC b-series if you do not use some sort of tool to hold the cams. That said, I have now done it twice with no issues.