Apparently there are certain repairs when the added expense of purchasing a part at the Volvo dealership (Genuine Volvo) is worth it. In other cases, it's not necessary to spend extra $$ and it's more prudent to use OEM parts (<---anyone know what the O E M stands for?). Still other repairs have only one option: genuine volvo part is the only one made.

As far as myself, I'm thinking that any type of electrical relay has to be Genuine Volvo; whereas, water pumps, kickdown cables, motor mounts, tranny mounts, blower motors all can be OEM, right?

Fuel pumps, on the other hand, would be wise to use genuine volvo.

Has anyone done any research on this? Curious as to what the common consensus is for the common maintenance repair items. Also...wondering if the Mann oil filters are the same as the Volvo oil filters. I've always used Fram...but I've heard that there's some sort of check valve thingy in the Volvo filters.

Hope I haven't thrown too much chum in the waters. Thanks for your advice.
Cabbie2169