Timing belt tensioner stopped working.

[stevelous]

My, sadly, late but loved 850 saloon (sedan? ) had an interesting problem in that the tensioner plunger failed to extend enough to fully tension the timing belt.

The story was that I was cranking the engine which started for about 1/2 second then stopped, no noise of valves becoming intimate with pistons. But when I tried to start the engine again in cranked so fast as though there was no compression. The RAC breakdown mechanic used a compression tester and found only 50 psi on eash cylinder and diagnosed a slipped timing belt, oh dear, I thought, or words to that effect.

As my son has decided to become a car mechanic we decided to have a go at repairing the old girl, my thoughts were that he would learn a lot doing the work and either confirm or refute his decision.

After setting the cams to TDC my son and I removed the Head to find number 1 piston about 2 inches from the top of its bore. Fearing the worst we turned the head over and found no damage. There was however a lot of bore wear so a decision was made to part out the car and use/ sell the parts on our other cars.

So we have a dead 1994 2 litre 20v saloon domating its parts to our 1993 2 litre 20v Estate (Wagon? ) and the replacement 1998 2.5 Litre 20v V70 estate. Volvo, it seems, do not change parts for the sake of it and use proven parts until somthing better is developed. Nice policy and good for me.

The jobs we have done has not dulled my lads desire to work with cars so he will be able to attend collage to get his City and Guilds then onto a main dealer with luck a Volvo one!

[VolvoTurbo850]

Your right about many of the parts being the same, but keep in mind that if you swap the engines around that you will have to also swap out the computers and some other parts that monitor engine performance.

Either way it is a great way to spend time with your boy and let him learn a thing or two about automobiles. Seems like it is a lost art these days with the young ones

Yes saloon is sedan and estate is wagon!

[Ozark Lee]

+++ VolvoTurbo 850.

I have gone out of my way to teach my son - and daughter for that matter - to wrench their own cars.

They are both actually quite good mechanics even though they are both in college (lucky me).

At this point my son feels it is a curse since his entire fraternity house relies on him to keep their cars running but he will thank me later.

Stevelous,

I'm sorry to hear of your loss.

...Lee

[jblackburn]

You'll wind up with a kid like me!

Growing up with one car from the 80's, one from the 70's, and for the first years of my life, another from the 60's, dad taught me how to work on them unless he couldn't figure out what was wrong with it (that one was usually the Saab).

[VolvoTurbo850]

Yup Ozark, I actually in my professional life , is as far from auto mechanics as can be, but i find working with my hands relaxing compared to doing conceptual work. I also find people who are too conceptual have a really hard time understanding cars... just turn the key and go.

Ozark just tell your son to make sure he charges them the BAR bill for his services!

With today's technology kids are thought to use APS and hardware which just point and click. Teaching them why it works is even better... well not unless you own the Sony Network thanks to hackers..lol

I think it is wonderful that people can use cars to bring their family together... actually if you think of it , Matt's site already is an extended family..including the kids like JB