As i am taking off the old belt and installing the new belt do the intake and exhaust gears rotate freely or do they stay in place? I am wondering how easy they move when installing the new belt? i know stupid question, but rather a stupid question than and expensive stupid mistake. Thanks for the reply's.

there is a small pin protruding from the block directly under the crank pulley at the 6:00 postion,can be seen underneath.if you catch the belt on this pin instead of installing the belt between the pin and the pulley you're in trouble.i dont know the purpose of this pin except in the hopes that you snag it,and have to tow it to mr. volvo for a new engine for this over sight.
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83 242 DL -132k, 92-965-201k, 94-965-208k, 84-242 GLT-Gone, but not forgotten,83-245GLT-1'st brick (the 1'st 3 currently on the road)

Hi, The gears will stay in place. I start the timing belt removal by removing; cover, serp. belt, serp. belt tensioner, align timing marks, Remove idler pulley top right as you look at engine, two bolts on bottom cover, remove belt, remove tensioner, compress tensioner and install pin, don't lose the hat on top of tensioner, install tensioner with hat in place(plastic piece on top of tensioner), install idler pulley, intstall belt, make sure belt is taught on the right side from cam gear to crank gear, make sure all timing marks line up and pull pin, rotate engine clockwise 2 revs and recheck timing marks, if lin up install remaining parts in reverse order. Good luck. Pauli.

There is resistance to turning, just find all of your marks, do a search here, are a couple of picture on file that show the marks on the cam gears and the hard to find one on the crank, find all of those first and then highlight with some white out. Get every thing on their respective marks and then loosen the tensioner. Read the FAQ it is worth its weight in gold.

DanR 94 964 256,000 miles (22,000 on the new engine)
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DanR

Concur. What you can also do is to rotate the engine by hand once you have the fan shroud and the plastic cover off (use a wrench on the crank end) till your marks line up on the cam gears and on the crank. Mark em for visibility (but they wont move anyway). Thats when you remove the old belt and replace whatever needs replacing. When putting the new belt back on, I use a cable tie to secure it to each cam gear and then go straight down to the crank then back around the idler and water pump. That way, nothing should be able to shift on you while you are working on the engine. Once the belt is on and is tensioned, you can move the crank with the wrench again, and can check the alignment of the timimg marks.
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97 S90 with 175K miles still going strong

What a great idea about the cable tie! That would have saved me lots of frustration if I'd known about it. Thanks for the tip!