[Tommy Two Stroke]

Originally Posted by v8volvo

This information is wrong.

The purpose of this forum is to provide correct info so that people are able to keep their Volvo Diesels on the road and running well. Telling someone to do it this way will have the opposite effect. I would guess that half of the Volvo Diesels in the US ended up in the junkyard because of sloppy, incorrect timing belt installations. If you use the method described above, your car will run like crap, if it runs at all, and will not live long. The "mark and pray" method is the technique many careless mechanics have used over the years on VW and Volvo diesels and at best, it results in an engine that runs bad and at worst, it can wreck the motor completely.

Changing the timing belt on a Volvo diesel is not rocket science, but you do have to be aware of the correct method, and of the stakes involved if you do it wrong. It takes several special tools that you *cannot* do without. Timing (cam and injection pump) is absolutely crucial on these motors -- if you get it wrong, the engine will go from a good runner to a hard-starting, smoking, rattling, low-power mess, and may also sustain major internal damage.

I believe that the way diesels got their bad reputation in the US is not because the engines were crappy, but because the mechanics who worked on them didn't know what they were doing and turned them into the smoky, noisy, slow engines that they have the reputation for being. Those of us on here know that when a D24/T is in good condition and tuned properly, it is smooth, quiet, peppy and smoke free... but that all changes if you screw up the timing belt. Take the time to learn the proper method and do it right, and you will be very, very glad that you did. Do some reading on this forum and you will find all the information you need to get the job done properly. If you have any questions, just ask.

Good information about these engines and how to work on them is hard to find, and I am not trying to dump on anyone here. However, I do suggest that you only provide an answer to a question if you know it is the right answer, especially if it is about something critical like a timing belt. Giving the wrong information is much worse than giving no information at all. It hurts more than it helps, and it defeats the purpose of a board like this. We all want to see as many Volvo diesels stay happily on the road as possible, and the key to that is good information and no misinformation... so let's try to keep the quality of our guidance as high as possible. Hope that makes sense.

Good point about doing what we can to keep these engines out of the junkyards by giving them proper care and maintenance. It's indeed a sad sight seeing a diesel Volvo in a junkyard.

Re: timing setting procedures, I've actually had quite good results with simply transferring the timing marks from the old belt to the new belt, prior to installing the new belt. I have the injection pump depth gauge, and each time I've done the job by transferring the timing marks and installing the new belt, I check the injection timing and it has not been off by much at all. As with anything, I think there are limits and extremes. If the engine is mechanically sound and running well prior to the timing belt change, and you put hte everything back EXACTLY the way you found it, the engines generally run quite well with performance similar or identical to that which the engine had prior to the timing belt changed. I've owned D24's and D24T's for 17 years now, and am fortunate enough to have quite a bit of time under my belt working on them.