What price a cambelt?
 

Been quoted £400 for a belt and water pump. £290 for the belt only. Car is the 97 S90 3 litre auto.

Seems a bit pricey to me, especially as the garage says that it’s a 1.5 hour job, 1.7 hours including the pump.

Thoughts gentlemen please?

Ta

Cheers

Jack

All belts and tensioner etc. (not water pump ) on daughter’s 2011 XC70 done by main dealer Feb.’18. £340.00 after goodwill loyalty discount.

After checking on Google for 5s I found a cam belt is about £25 for an S90. Fairly typical for cam belt, they arn't alot of money.

£250/hr is good money for a mechanics business. You are paying for convience and manufacturers name/main dealer.

Shop around other garages and tell them its 1.5hr job.

You'll need a timing belt kit Jack :

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Timing-Be...7/251175608064

Comes with new tensioners (which have been known to fail on 100k+ engines) and you'll almost certainly need a water pump as well. Also ensure your garage replaces the antifreeze with the same type as you currently have which i seem to recall is ethylene glycol (blue or green) and tell them under no circumstances to use OAT (the red stuff usually) if that is the case.

Some water pumps on ebay :

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Waterpump...E/223557126275

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/FIRSTLINE...v/291838733384

First one is NOS clearance by Sutton Auto Factors (buypartsby.com) so is cheaper, second is a Firstline water pump for about £35 so between the timing belt kit and pump, it's £150 plus the antifreeze and labour.

What's the issue with OAT?

Most, if not all our Volvos (in this section of the forum at least) would have left the factory with ethylene glycol. They do not mix. The acid in the Organic Acid Technology causes the silicates to precipitate out of the EG and form a gel commonly known as silicone sealant. It blocks all the waterways, radiators, heater matrices, cylinder heads, blocks and so on.

Also most, if not all, engines made before 2000 didn't have gaskets that will resist the acid in it.

Then there's the corrosion. Not so applicable to the white blocks but it will attack the cast iron blocks in things like the B200, B230 etc. It was actually developed by the Japanese in the late 90s for use in their all-aluminium engines because EG antifreeze was also corrosive to aluminium but nowhere near as much as OAT is to cast iron.
Granted the white block engines are all-aluminium but if they were supplied from new with EG, unless you strip that engine to its bones and renew every single gasket after cleaning every single waterway (including the heater matrix and radiator, any other ancillaries that use coolant (eg the turbo on later 940s etc) meticulously, there will be traces of EG left behind which can form the gel with OAT.

There's plenty more i could put but my paws won't let me type anymore at the moment, those are enough good reasons not to use it anyway!

Hi Jack,

I had a big (£800) bill last year on my '97, 940 LPT for:

Timing belt & tensioner
Auxiliary belts
Cam, crank and balance shaft oil seals
Water pump
Lower hose
Antifreeze
Replacement gaskets / seals on the oil filter heat exchanger

This was a local independent garage, all genuine Volvo parts and included the timing belt re-tension after 500 miles.

Labour was 5 hours.

I'm in the south-east where labour charges (and beer) are probably higher than where you are.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
LeeP

Top man

Thanks for all that info. Very helpful once again.

Cheers

Is EG ever red?

I think the coolant in my bottle red? 😳 I don't think the car has ever had any over heating issues though.

Cheers

Not that i've ever known, no. It's possible someone has stripped and cleaned everything on yours but are we talking about your 740 or V90?
If it's the latter then there is a possibility it had OAT from new but mostly Volvos were EG coolant up to about 2000