Spent the last two days in solid tinkering- new, retractable seatbelts from Skandix (nice, pretty easy, but I wish the retractor spool had some sort of cover), added headrests and replaced all the webbing in the seats, removed and glycerin-treated the pop-out seals, added a flex-a-lite electric pusher fan in front of the radiator and wore myself out trying to get the rear drum of the left side. It's the last two that bring me to questions... PB Blaster, heat and a lot of pounding, swearing, dancing around to the Volvo gods, but no release with the drum. So what's the next thing to try? The puller was on there for about 24 hours- kept hoping to hear a loud bang, but nothing. The puller is a JCWhitney 'heavy-duty' one, which IS heavy, but only goes onto three studs... maybe it doesn't pull straight enough? Luckily my brakes seem pretty good, but the adjusters are stuck and I haven't been into the rear drums and want to see what things are looking like there. So now what...

Then there is the fan. Tight fit, as Tom O. described on the board a while back (and thanks Tom for the additional emailed information), but easy enough installation. Drained and pulled the radiator for the installation- radiator looks really good. I removed the mechanical fan, thinking it would be largely redundant. Prior to the fan installation the car would normally run with the temps a little over the middle point on the temp gauge, but in traffic it would creep up pretty high- revving the engine would bring it down some. So now the same thing happens (and overall it's running hotter). Before the electric fan installation I thought the revving was speeding up the mechanical fan and that was bringing the temps down, but now with the electric fan on, fan speed is independant of engine speed- so I suppose it's making the water pump go faster which is bringing the temp down. But of course I don't want to get stuck in traffic and have to keep the engine revving at 2500+ to keep it cool. So... is my water pump going and is only efficient at higher RPMs now? There are no signs of leaking, etc. Doesn't seem like a thermostat issue (though I'm going to replace it just in case) as the car warms up OK, and the radiator gets hot after a while. How big is the water pump job? Pull the old one, pop in a new one, or are there 'complications?'

Thanks all
Tom
NYC