Looking at those bolts on the fcp website, are they stainless? Bad news.prwood wrote: ↑19 Feb 2018, 08:23 Just for reference, when this happened to me, these were the steps I followed:
0. Determined whether I needed to remove the bolt. Answer was yes, because the camshaft position sensor aperture would not screw back into place with the broken off bolt.
1. Drilled pilot hole in bolt using right-angle drill adapter. Broke three drill bits in the process.
2. Drove screw extractor into bolt. It seemed to be getting a good bite on the bolt, but then it stopped rotating, and then the screw extractor itself snapped off.
3. Removed camshaft from engine by removing cam cover. Attempted to do basically anything to get the bolt out on the workbench. No such luck.
4. Since the camshaft was already out at this point, went to the junkyard and pulled a replacement camshaft from another B5244T3 engine. Price was $40.
5. Cleaned camshaft cover/cylinder head, reinstalled camshafts, re-sealed cam cover, reassembled everything.
Hopefully you will have better luck and can remove the screw, but if not... Removing and reinstalling the cam cover to get at the camshafts is not hard, but is incredibly tedious. I've actually done it three times now:
First - to fix an oil leak in the spark plug tube seals which are between the halves of the cylinder head
Second - to remove the camshaft with the broken bolt, after I had reinstalled it in order to re-set the timing after the first attempt
Third - to re-seal the camshaft cover after it developed another oil leak after being improperly sealed the second time around (oil contamination in sealant).
The key (and the reason it's so tedious) is to get both surfaces of the cylinder head and camshaft cover completely clean, smooth, and free of any oil or contamination before applying the chemical gasket to re-seal. You also have to make sure all the screw holes on the cylinder head are cleaned of oil, because it can hide in there and spurt out when screwing the cam cover back on.
Regarding the source of these woes, the camshaft holding tool, mine was a CTA-branded tool that I purchased from FCP Euro:
https://www.fcpeuro.com/products/volvo- ... s-cta-2864
In my case one of the shorter bolts broke. Like you, I had also read the note in the VVT reset guide PDF that said you needed to get the bolts "quite tight", and this was a mistake. I had actually used the tool a couple of times before, but this was the first time I had read this guide and I should have trusted my gut and not made it so tight.
This latest time around, I ended up using the two longer bolts with the spacers, and just tightened them finger tight until there was no more play in the tool, then gave a slight (1/8) turn with a socket. You really don't want to take it any further past the point where the screw flange makes contact with the tool. I actually tried to source some higher quality replacement bolts locally, and couldn't find any. I even went to a specialty metric tool and screw shop that reportedly could get "any" metric screw one would need, and they couldn't locate any that were the right size.
I got my tool from other supplier and the bolts are black. Probably just black oxide.
so maybe the problem is cold welding, it can happen easily with stainless. It was something i ran into on my boat.
Without anti seize stainless threads will gall and cold weld. Here's a demo.
