TurboedVolvo

It's all pretty easy, compressing the tensioner might be the most awkward thing to do. It's hydraulic, so you need something that can push on both ends of it with a lot of sustained force. The methods I've used in the past: 1) Valve spring compressor, 2) Big bench vise (probably best), and 3) Floor jack pushing up onto the bottom of the car (most readily available and basically what I do these days when not at the shop

The water pump shouldn't be difficult, just a handful of 10mm bolts. The tensioner pulley is easy, I think it's two bolts although I don't really remember.

The most PITA thing I think is going to be physically getting the old belt off around the crank pulley. Always seems to be something you wrangle with for whatever reason. When I do the NA cams, I'll try to at least do a writeup on everything I do.

Thanks much! I guess Ill tackle this one myself!

complete install that is :rolleyes:

for someone that "knows a lot" about these engines that was a pretty interesting question...

What can I say? Ive done plenty but never a timing belt on a 97 volvo 850 t5.

The bottom line is the cams are meaningfully more aggressive, and as long as you can optimize the cam timing for your intended powerband and tune, you will see gains. In my opinion people being wishy-washy about their confidence in doing the swap is why we see sooooo many of these annoying threads and nobody actually doing anything. If anyone wants a hold-the-baby's-hand walkthrough on doing the cam swap with hand tools, I'll write one up. Until then, everyone stop pretending like nobody knows if they're actually better or not. They are.

+10

Eric How hard is it to replace my waterpump and entire timing belt + accessories (Tensioner pulleys etc.) How hard is it to compress the Tensioner?

Engine will be in the car, any info on a write up?

I have a haynes manual and I need to do my belt soon.

If you make one be sure that your tabs are parallel to each other and offset. iirs the exhaust one is slot up and the intake is slot down. It is in Haynes,check to be sure.

Intake

* *

* *

* -------------*

*-------------*

* *

*

Exhaust

* *

*-----------*

* -------------*

* *

* *

*

I'm sorry...but WTF is that? :lol:

That's why I posted it

Print it out & stick on a piece of card. Use a hole punch for the two small bolt holes - just make sure you get those right or the tool reference will be off.

Not easily. You'll have to make a cam locking tool if you don't have access to the Volvo tool. The cam cover tool can be worked around, but I wouldn't do it, it's too many things to juggle, and you can chip the cam seal seats in the head it you don't ease the cam cover off evenly.

Although I agree Somewhat, I dont think it would be out of the range of the average DIYer

When removing the cam cover I usually just give it a whack horizontally with a soft face mallet and then lift it up, who knows...

Ive only done it twice but both times have worked like a charm

GLT meaning LPT? Or N/A GLT?

^^^ This

Please do tell!

Is putting them back in that easy (as long as you have your cams set at TDC before you remove them)?

Well you need to scrape off old gasket and apply a new one but yes, pretty much

Make sure TDC or 4* advance exhaust, and make sure to apply torque specs to the bolts and work in the correct pattern

That's what about 40 people seem to say...even though 0 people have run that setup on a dyno to come up with before/after results...

I'm not gonna spend X number of hours pulling and installing cams if I don't really know for sure what the result is!

Lol grabbing a set of cams from a wrecked volvo 850 will take you about 15-30 minutes TOPS,

1. Remove all securing bolts, you may have to use something to pry it up, or give it a whack on the side

2. Cut the timing belt

3. Remove cams

4. Enjoy in time and 30$ well spent

It is CONFIRMED on the butt dyno to give you slight increases in power

Not to mention the profiles of the cams are more agressive so it makes sense there would be power gains :)

For people who have spent enough money on bolt-ons to reach the "stage" where we're swapping cams, I'm very surprised there's no before/after dyno on this subject.

I would be willing to do another before/after dyno with the N/A cams. However, I'd only be able to either (1) the intake cam alone, or (2) both intake and exhaust. I couldn't compare both. Was there a specific year on the N/A engines which had a more aggressive cam profile than the others?

I know in the VW 1.8/2.0L 16V engines, before a ton of cams were commonly available, a common upgrade was the Euro intake cam. But this was only a gain of 6-7hp at most.

Some VW guys also used the exhaust cam as an intake cam.

The other thing I noticed was that this was a very mild performance upgrade, and if there was going to be any port work at all to the head, then the Euro intake cam would have to again be replaced with something a little more aggressive:

http://pweb.jps.net/~ericb/newmods.html

So...anyway...does anyone have a dyno that shows JUST the difference in power from just a cam swap??? I wish there was a bigger aftermarket for the whiteblock here; VW VR6 cams can be had for $234.95 now for a pair. That would be so nice to get 10-12hp worth of cams for $230 bucks!!!

IIRC 30$ Junkyard N/A Cams net about 10-15hp. Even cheaper ;D

What is the range of the low end power band? Does that mean that you entirely loose your high end power, or it's just turned down a bit?

It seems like there's a lot of unknowns with the NA cams.

No, All it simply does is shift the power band slightly...

It is known to the community that about 15hp is gained from switching to NA Cams (Yet its hard to find exactly what setup, intake only both or exhaust)

Advancing and Retarding Cam timing makes a huge difference in the powerband though! So be careful how much you advance/retard

and considering you can find a set of N/A for about 20$ a set at a local junkyard thats almost 1$ per HP, if only everything was that cheap!

so then i will just put in the intake cam for now and try later with the exhaust i will see the difference....

Worth a shot! Let us know your results!