I just completed a timing belt job on my 2004 XC90 T6. I replaced everything because the plastic fitting was showing signs of leaking and when I removed the upper cover to look at the belt I noticed it had signs of cracking after only 35k miles. The dealer had changed the belt for the nice price of $900 a few years ago, but failed to replace anything else. Just the belt.
Well to the modification. I knew about the plastic nipple breakage problem before I took anything off. I knew that the URO replacement was too small to work correctly. I thank those that posted before me. But this information and the leak I had got me thinking. Why not just bypass the connector all together? Straight hose to the coolant over flow bottle. By the way, I took off the timing cover without breaking the plastic nipple.
With all this in mind I ordered the URO fitting. I removed the complete thermostat housing as I wanted to replace the thermostat proactively - it has 135k on it. I teflon taped the fitting and screwed it in. To confirm that in three years the brilliant engineers at URO have done nothing to solve their poorly spec'd solution I tried the fitting and it was too small. Board users have been stating this for sometime. I find this disturbing. Some of the Site sponsors should look into this as they sell the part. I hope I don't get in trouble but I want to warn others again - nothing has changed since the first people attempted the URO solution. The part still does not fit. I suppose they could supply another internal O-ring, but they don't do this either. To be clear - the URO fitting which I received last week will not work with the Volvo quick connect - just like it didn't work a few years ago.
Back to business. I trimmed off part of the plastic on the timing cover to make sure I would not have any fitment issues. It also made it easier for me to pass the hose through with my modifications.
- Timing cover modification.jpg (104.51 KiB) Viewed 2948 times
From here I removed the hose from the coolant over flow bottle and took off the Volvo quick connect fitting. I then put everything together starting with the water pump, tensioner, pulley, and timing belt. Then I put the thermostat assembly on. This works best as I noted when I was dry fitting, while waiting for the timing belt kit, that the protruding nipple always got in the way. Therefore I saved it for last. Once installed I fitted the old hose, still in fine condition on to the URO nipple. Push it all the way back over the ridge. The ridge is going to be used to prevent the hose from backing out. I then used single use clamps and installed after the ridge. Here is the handy work.
- Thermostat Coolant Nipple modification.jpg (89.86 KiB) Viewed 2948 times