Hi Phil,

The Volvo green manuals and TSBs are full of special tools. Many are Kent-Moore and were only available through dealer service. All were much more expensive than you'd want to pay. I've always wondered how many of these special tools the dealer techs had access to or bothered to use in their shops. Once you get past a crank and camshaft pulley hold tool, home made or otherwise, I can't think of many Volvo special tools I've ever really needed where I couldn't figure a decent alternative. Only special tool I wanted that I couldn't justify was a Volvo-only belt tensioning gauge for the DOHC 16-valve B234F timing and balance shaft belts with the early manually adjusted belt tensioner. A timing belt failure was bye-bye valves (interference engine), so something you wanted to get right. A balance shaft belt failure would often take out the timing belt. The gauge and the spec were in unspecified mystery units that didn't correlate with any units I could derive off a standard belt tensioning gauge. I made do with other methods for setting the tension as in my FAQ writeup, probably much like any indie would do.

Re. my pulsating newish front rotors, my latest post was about the very odd coincidence of the pad sized thin areas being at the rotor balance edge milling on both rotors. Weird. A Bosch manufacturing problem?? As I mentioned there, I'll make one attempt to dress the rotors back to full health, but I rather expect it won't last long unless I change to different pads better matched to my driving conditions and rotors better matched to those new pads, basically stepping up a whole level in pad and rotor quality. All those years on my earlier Volvos and no such problem as this with good, basic quality rotors, leastwise so early in rotor life, but then I've got double the miles on these cars than before. Got two 940s going with the exact same front Bosch pads & rotors and same drivers. I rather suspect the second one is starting to suffer from the same uneven friction surfaces in the rotors, so now on my inspection list. I've already got better rotors and pads standing by for when my experiment fails. Failing that, I'll start packing a ship's anchor on a rope to throw out the window when coming to a stop on the highway, or else reverse thrusters buried in the grill. There's always a way around it, just like special tools.
--
Dave -still with 940's, prev 740/240/140/120 You'd think I'd have learned by now