I did the front struts on my sister's 95 850 about 6 months ago. A good set of spring compressors is essential. I think we got ours from IPD. We also bought the new struts from IPD.

If you have an air or electric impact wrench it is useful in tightening the spring compressors because power makes it go faster. It is also important to have an impact or air wrench to tighten a nut on the top of the strut. Do NOT take the strut apart without spring comrpessors.

I did not replace the strut mount or the rubber spring seat since they were in good shape. Sway bar end links also were fine. Nuts and bolts are fairly cheap from a Volvo dealer and I remember replacing some of them as they were rusting.

The IPD struts did not have much in the way of instructions and there was one part that I had questions about. When you reassemble the new strut with the old spring and mount, there is a regular shaped nut that needs to be tightened. The Chilton manual said to torque the nut, but there is no way to hold the round strut without a special tool, so I used the impact wrench to zip the nut down. There is no way to tighten this nut using hand wrenches. I zipped the nut down while the spring compressors were still holding the spring compressed. After the spring is released it puts pressure on the top mount and this nut is on the outside of the top mount and it hasn't gone anywhere in 6 months so I think it is good.

There is also another odd shaped nut with four tabs on top and I didn't have the special wrench for that either so I used some pliers to tighten it without marring it too badly.

I was able to do both sides in a day taking my time. If you are doing the axles as well it may take a day and a half or two days to get it done.