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I too have an amusing timing belt story...that actually has a moral for 960 owners (it was not amusing at the time however). When I replaced the timing belt on my 960 at the 120K mile interval, I figured I would do some preventative maintenance and replace the water pump at the same time (it was the original one). The OEM Volvo pump was REALLY expensive, so I went down to my local Pep Boys and ordered a GMB replacement pump from them. I ran GMB pumps on my B230 without any problem...so I figured the 960 wouldn't be any different. Ha! Less than a thousand miles later, I was on my way to St. Louis in late December, -30 with the wind chill with a HEAVY snow falling. Low and behold, my "low coolant" light comes on...shut the engine off and coast down a hill to the next off-ramp. A quick look under the car reveals a downpour of coolant, eminating from under the timing belt cover. Go back inside the car, put on every jacket, sweater, scarf, hat, etc. I can find and pull off the timing belt cover and find the water pump shaft cocked at a 45 degree angle. The timing belt had almost completely come off, so I was VERY lucky that I shut off the engine when I did.
To make a long story short, the snow never let up and I ended up replacing the water pump and timing belt (with OEM Volvo ones this time!) in a driving snow (which eventually turned into an ice storm) on the side of the road. I can't even imagine having to do that on the B230...I probably would have had it towed the 60 miles up to St. Louis in that case.
Now, here's the moral. When I got back home to New Orleans, I went back to Pep Boys (a VERY pissed off customer) and made a nice little scene with a bunch of customers in the store and actually got reimbursed for most of my expenses (thought that was very generous of them). But...the guy behind the parts counter made the comment that he's seen a "startling" number of those GMB pumps for the Volvo inline 5 and 6s fail in the exact same way mine did. Now...keep in mind this is New Orleans, where Volvos are few and far between (let alone 850s and 960s), so these pumps must have had a high failure rate for the guy to even notice. So...my advice to those of you with the modular engines...stick with OEM water pumps b/c their quality seems to be pretty high compared with the alternatives. And, since the consequences of water pump failure (possible timing belt breakage) is so high, the extra cost of the OEM pumps is worth it. I don't know about other aftermarket brands, but I'm not prepared to take my chances again...hell, the OEM one was still fine after 120K miles! The GMB one lasted less than a thousand...which apparently wasn't a fluke!
Just an observation,
Lance
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