I've worked for the best part of five hours on this, three of which were with a mate. The conclusion is that on this particular engine at least, it's impossible to remove the water pump (with the engine in situ) without taking off the rear timing cover. To remove this cover, the cam pulley must be removed. My concern was losing the timing, as a) the cam might turn when undoing the bolts and b) the holes in the pulley are slotted and the timing depends on it going back in place perfectly. I could possibly have dremelled accurate marks, but I didn't trust myself working on an unlocked cam. On this 205 PS engine, and maybe others, there are fuel supply and return lines that are right in the way of getting the pump out. One other option would have been to cut a piece out of the inner cover, but that would have left a permanent gap. I have to say that the thoughtless engineering that renders this job so difficult is very annoying. Other vehicles have two-piece inner covers, and this arrangement would have allowed the pump to come out. So I have ended up having to put the original pump back, but with an inferior gasket as the original broke up. So I am left worse off than when I started. There's one more problem - part of the inner case has to go behind the pump, so it had to be released to let the pump mate up properly. An example of shoddy engineering from Volvo, in my opinion. They probably couldn't care less - most of the cars will have left the dealer network well before this job might need doing.
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