Been lurking here for a few months and just created an account to give my 2 cents.
I recently went through this, bought a 2007 c30 T5 for $5k with 135k km as my first car. Visual it was a bit beat up and has hail damage but the service history was always 10k - 15k, which was incredibly rare, as I had previously looked at a dozen or so cars and they all had very spotty history, the classic "full service history" and it was done only every 30k km.
That being said, the coolant reservoir had a spider web crack at the top and the coolant was extremely low. Every service history the dog mechanics would top up the coolant instead of replacing the housing. I was gambling that the car didn't have a bad overheating event, as it seemed that it was used for small trips only and it didn't show any tell tale sings of a blown head gasket .
There was no history of the belt being done and I 100% know that the car was on it's original 18 year old belt as it was volvo branded and the car was using the old style INA tensioner. Surprisingly the 18 year old belt looked brand new and I'm not joking when I say that, it had 0 visible cracks BUT the tensioner seems to have started ingesting dirt and dust, and it spun ever so slightly less smooth than the new one I bought. On these cars it usually the tensioner that gives out before the belt. Because the belt looked so fresh the dog mechanics once again seemed to ignore replacing it and probably told the previous owners not to bother. Every single Volvo I enquired about, not a single owner had the belt replaced. Really shocking.
I also ended up replacing the 2 accessory belts and 2 tensioners, once again the belts were in insanely good condition and I'm guessing they were also 18 years of age but the tensioners also spun less smoothly than the new ones.
Even though I didn't have any of the common PCV issues, I ended up also replacing the oil filter housing + tubes, knowing that it would probably give out very soon. I ended up being correct when I took apart the PCV cap and the diaphragm was extremely gunked up, to the point of being black, it was extremely brittle and was starting to form a small crack. Another thing that I noticed was that the oil filter seemed to have not been replaced for years, as it was disgustingly filthy with a lot carbon deposits logged into it. Since its a little harder and annoying to get to than Japanese cars, I'm assuming the dog mechanics must have skipped replacing it for a couple of years.
Moral of the story is that you cant really trust what's in the logbook unless it was sent to a volvo specalist.
Ended up costing me an extra (which I expected before the purchase of the car);
Timing belt kit: $276 USD
Accessory drive belt kit: $127 USD
Coolant tank + cap: $40 USD
PCV Kit: $390 USD
Shipping: $100 USD
Bought everything from FCP Euro and managed to DIY it all without any previous experience but it was hell of a learning experience.
The water pump was a complete bitch with almost 0 room to maneuver it into place between the engine and the side wall but the No 1 hardest thing was removing the cam positioner bolt, had to learn the hard way. Ended up shearing 3 different sets of "impact rated" T30s torx bits trying to get the cam positioner bolt off by hand with a ratchet and I ended up having to drill into the bolt for it to release as I rounded the head. Now my intake cam has a few nicks in it 🙂 but everything works fine thank god. For the exhaust side I bought Diablo T30 Torx Drive Bits from Bunnings and sent it with an impact on the exhaust side, worked like a dream in comparison to the intake. Those bolts are not torqued to 20Nm from the factory like Volvo suggests, no way.
Hope this long essay will help someone in the future.
