what's worse is it's not my car so i'm not familiar with it
not sure if it even ran good when it was running.

it's my buddies. he drove it down to texas from portland.
overheated once in california and they stopped and let it cool, he said it overheated because he was running the ac.
kept driving, didn't run ac.
made it almost all the way to austin and had trouble again. said it was acting like it was losing power so he stopped. i think it wouldn't start after that.
towed to a small town.
went to get it a few days later. it started up and ran, he drove it into austin.
next day, drove it to wash it and it died. after that it won't start and has stayed that way.

his fuel pumps are working, seems to be getting good fuel pressure to the rail.
he's getting spark to all the plugs.

one thing i noticed is the distributor is turned all the way clockwise...wondering if the timing belt could be off a tooth...
he has a haynes manual, it's not that great.
what are the timing marks i need to check?

i'll probably do a compression test when i go look at it some more...

is there anything unique about these cars i should be looking for?
i'm used to working on mid 80's watercooled volkswagens...

 

If you're in Austin, go to turbobricks.com and pm crazychopstick. I think he's still in Austin and he's pretty sharp. If Chris can't help, ask him what Kerry's screen name is and pm him. Kerry definitely knows his stuff. I'll tell you upfront, it doesn't sound promising. Try turning the distributor by hand and see if it will move. It's possible the pinch bolt was loose...you never know. It's not unusual for less than stellar maintained Volvos to run hot w/ the a/c on...all a question of how hot and for how long. Those aluminum heads don't like to be run hot...

 

the bolt for the dist. clamp was tight.
i turned the dist a little bit ccw and it then sounded like it wasn't even trying to start.
i turned it back all the way cw and it was atleast trying to start a little.

i'll try sending a pm to who you mentioned.
thanks.