740 Turbo - does the timing belt cause damages.

Only the 16 Valves or 8 valves with aftermarket high-lift (SAM, Unitek, Enem) cams are in danger of damage. The NA and Turbo 8 Valve B21/23/230 are all non-interference engines meaning that the valves cannot hit the pistons. No harm, no foul. If the timing belt is all that caused it to stop running then in fact there is no damage.

That having been said, the timing belt is remarkably cheap and easy to replace on these engines (~30-45 minutes start to finish if you've done it before), so if he's trying to sell you a car with a non-running engine there may be other problems that he's trying to hide.

Bill

The timing belt broke on my 480 ES -88, which made the pistons hit the valves ,.... NOT cheap! /Nisse

Generally speaking the B230, B200 engines are non-interference type engines. This means that there is no way that the pistons can contact the valves if the belt breaks while the engine is running. The twin-cam versions, B 234 and B204 and, a fortunately rare, version of the B230 with a Heron type head are interference types. The diesel engined versions of ALL Volvo models are also interference, as are the six cylinder in-line engines. I believe that most of the five cylinder engines are interference as well.

Cheers, Peter.