1998 s70 glt Timing belt not tracking true

[old cigarette]

I pulled the timing belt cover and found the belt tracking forward into the cam cover.The belt has made a 1/8 th inch grove in the cover. I replaced the water pump / tensioner pulley / idler pulley / hydraulic tensioner / and belt. The belt is from Gates. The Tensioner is Beck/Arnley. Both pulleys are INA. The belt still tracks forward by the same amount. The only thing I can think of that would cause this is a bad tensioner pulley or idler pulley. I've used INA pulleys in my 96 850 without problems. Any suggestions as to what else would cause this ?

[Ozark Lee]

There are INA tensioner rollers and then there are counterfeit INA tensioner rollers. The latter will cause the belt to track off of the cam sprockets exactly as you describe. I'm to the point where the only way I trust that I am getting the actual, non counterfeit, part is to buy it straight from a Volvo dealer and take it out of the blue box myself. Even a well known vendor has sold me the counterfeit as an OEM brand part and they have known about it for years. One other problem to look out for with some of the counterfeits is that the shoulder on the mounting bolt doesn't hold the casting off of the face of the block and casting binds and won't pivot once it is torqued down.

Although it is a horrible PITA I have removed the roller and the bearing from the original casting and then replaced it with the roller and bearing off of the "new" tensioner roller casting and used the old casting. Miraculously everything tracks correctly then.

...Lee

[old cigarette]

Thanks Lee. Because of the PITA factor I think I'll go blue box on both the pulleys. I don't have any faith in INA after this even though they are OE manufactures. I hope the blue box parts solves the problem, expensive lesson Thanks again.

[gdog]

... Even a well known vendor has sold me the counterfeit as an OEM brand part and they have known about it for years. One other problem to look out for with some of the counterfeits is that the shoulder on the mounting bolt doesn't hold the casting off of the face of the block and casting binds and won't pivot once it is torqued down.

Although it is a horrible PITA I have removed the roller and the bearing from the original casting and then replaced it with the roller and bearing off of the "new" tensioner roller casting and used the old casting. Miraculously everything tracks correctly then.

...Lee

+1 to what Lee said; exact same thing happened to me on first 850 TB change, and I fixed it the same way too.

[cn90]

The problem is the "Gates" TB. Search forum, someone had the same issues using Gates.

This is why I always use Conti parts.

Believe it or not, the TB kit from the dealer is even cheaper than Conti parts, go figure!