Fitted the rear bearings discs,shoes and pads, front discs n pads, painted the calipers and fitted mudguards this weekend.... saved over a grand from the dealers list prices and used all genuine volvo parts.
From the experience I'd say that it's worth getting the little one inch springs that locate in the guard as they bend easily and need retensioning.They are also a real sod to resite when they have been damaged. In my case there was so much rust on the inner surface of the disc that the shoes had wedged themselves solid in there. After much persuasion using the trusty lump hammer the disc came off but stretched those little springs in the process. The long retainer springs are fine to reuse but in my case weren't as hard to resite as those little springs.
Interestingly volvo had advised me that the shoes always need replacing when doing the discs because the shoes delaminate or break up. In my case the shoes were like new but i changed them anyway as I had already bought the new ones. In retrospect I'd have been better off buying the tensioner springs and keeping the old shoes as the don't wear a great deal due to the design of the system.
Agree that whoever invented the handbrake mechanism must have been heavily into S&M !!! As for the flat spot on the shoes that is there from new and is part of the design so NOT from driving off with the brake on!
I just used a 7mm hex key and a spanner hooked over the end for leverage to remove the caliper.
Thankfully I didn't need to adjust the cable although I did expose the mechanism just in case. Unfortunately my seat won't go back far enough to get easy access to the mechanism so have most of you removed the seat to get better access to it? I don't see how you can do it otherwise, as you'd have to have mouse hands to get in there!
I will post up some pics of the calipers later if I can get them off my dead phone!
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