ovloV

[The Arch Bishop]

My old Subaru is getting rather leggy with some minor faults cropping up after 137,000 miles, so with great sadness, it was time to go shopping last week (or at least spend a brain-numbing amount of time looking through Gumtree).

This is what I bought home today;

One owner, FSH, 86,000 miles and a bit grubby inside (as you can tell from the pictures) after 11 years of shuttling kids around Woking.

Needs a cambelt soonish, front pads and a slight wanderiness in the steering sorting, but other than that drives very well. Taking a bit of a gamble as it's an auto and they can be troublesome in these, but at the price I paid, it's well worth the risk.

Driving it home it's like steering a comfy sitting room. Managed an average of 32 mpg which may well be the highest I'll see....

 

[zinc2000]

Nice, love the big Volvo's and the 2.5 engine pulls like a train, plus the amount you can pile in the back is amazing

 

[tuonokid]

Nice Lee, just in time for the Crimbo shopping
Barry

 

[The Arch Bishop]

[post]356767[/post] Nice, love the big Volvo's and the 2.5 engine pulls like a train, plus the amount you can pile in the back is amazing

It seems to go well without ever feeling that it's going well. The acceleration seems very sluggish until you look at the speedo. Weird feeling!

In terms of load area, it'll be interesting to see if it can beat the Forester - record in that was three full size mountain bikes, two 9 year old's mountain bikes and one tiny mountain bike and luggage for 6 people for a week at centre parks. Admittedly, that was with the rear seats folded down and the kids in another car!

 

[TylerB]

I love the Volvo and it's a great car to drive, i just wish you more luck with it then my brother had. He owned exactly the same model for 2 years and honestly, he had nothing but expenses with it. It was literally one thing after another in need of repair/replacement. Need to add, it had 108k miles when he bought it. But a failing steering rack after this 120k miles on a Volvo is very weird.. But i guess every one can have bad luck, and the previous ownership make a huge difference. Yours actually looks very clean. Good luck with it, great load area that's for sure, perfect for making a nice trip.

 

[zinc2000]

It seems to go well without ever feeling that it's going well. The acceleration seems very sluggish until you look at the speedo. Weird feeling!

if you really want to move in a Volvo without apparently going well you should try a 960, amazing machine, big, heavy, all singing all dancing beast with the 3l 24v engine but accelerates and handles like a sports car half its size and all in armchair comfort.
used to have cruise control on constantly whilst chauffeuring in this, flick it off on approach to roundabouts then flick it back on at the exit.....nothing ever stayed with it....always up to the speed limit of course :wink:

 

[TGPlayer1]

Big Volvos have that strange ability to accelerate very fast without feeling like it's moving at all. I cruises about in an S80 D5 for a few days and I kept looking at the speedo in amazement!

 

[The Arch Bishop]

[post]356774[/post] I love the Volvo and it's a great car to drive, i just wish you more luck with it then my brother had. He owned exactly the same model for 2 years and honestly, he had nothing but expenses with it. It was literally one thing after another in need of repair/replacement. Need to add, it had 108k miles when he bought it. But a failing steering rack after this 120k miles on a Volvo is very weird.. But i guess every one can have bad luck, and the previous ownership make a huge difference. Yours actually looks very clean. Good luck with it, great load area that's for sure, perfect for making a nice trip.

The BORK factor is quite strong on these and it has a few issues already, but nothing daunting. I'm ideally looking for a good 30k miles out of it.
Current problems noticed - low and lumpy idle most probably a coil pack or the maf.
Slightly wobbly steering - rack seems fine and most of the suspension parts are pretty reasonable.

All in all, the build quality isn't as good as my Forester where the inside looks like it's done a quarter of its 137k miles. The Volvo looks like it's done more. However, it's still a well made thing.

 

[The Arch Bishop]

[post]356777[/post]

It seems to go well without ever feeling that it's going well. The acceleration seems very sluggish until you look at the speedo. Weird feeling!

if you really want to move in a Volvo without apparently going well you should try a 960, amazing machine, big, heavy, all singing all dancing beast with the 3l 24v engine but accelerates and handles like a sports car half its size and all in armchair comfort.
used to have cruise control on constantly whilst chauffeuring in this, flick it off on approach to roundabouts then flick it back on at the exit.....nothing ever stayed with it....always up to the speed limit of course :wink:

When I was a young teen, my best friend's Dad had a 960 3.0 from new and it was a superb car. I can remember that it was near-silent inside, made a superb noise when pushed and was just an utterly lovely thing. It's what made me realise that Volvos were superbly engineered.

 

[The Arch Bishop]

Not the best of starts in ownership - yesterday morning I got in to go to work to be greeted by the engine management light refusing to go out. I'd noticed a stumbling at tick-over on Sunday so it wasn't exactly a shock. I used a ODB tool and my phone (Torque app is the best money I've ever spent n the Google Play store) and grabbed three codes which basically pointed to the MAF or the Electronic Throttle Management sensor being the culprit. I parked it up and grabbed the keys to my freebie MFG instead.

The ETMs are a well known fault on the earlier cars (even Watchdog reported on them back in the day), but mine is a later Bosch car meaning they are generally very reliable but still prone to choking up if used for short trips. Hopefully it'll be a case of a clean out and all good, but if not, thanks to the bargain price for the car, I've got enough in my car buying fund to get it sorted.

Anyway, it's off to our local garage on Thursday for a good going over and some new brake pads.

For possibly the first time in history, the line 'My Volvo broke down so I had to drive my trusty MG' was uttered...

In the meantime, I've made a start un-grbbing the cabin. It's fair boggin in there. Under the car mats, I found the original Volvo fitted mats that had sadly not been protected from the riggers of family life. They were also foul, so my wife grabbed them and stuffed them in the washing machine on a 'hand wash' setting. Much better, but many stains remained, so a solution of Vanish and a scrubbing brush and a final go in the washing machine cleaned them up like new-ish.

The plastics are starting to release their grime after some rubbing with face wipes and it's at least not sticky to the touch any more.

The weekend will be an assault on the carpets. Wish me luck......

 

[tuonokid]

Hi Lee
I hope you have your Haz Mat suit at the ready, sort of reminds me of the Top Gear episode when they all bought BMW 3 series cabs. Hope you don't find the human faecal deposits
Barry

 

[The Arch Bishop]

I'm sure there'll be some thing manky lurking under the seats!

 

[zinc2000]

you can also use baby wipes on the interior as well, have no idea what they do to babies but they clean hard surfaces a treat, you can even get scented ones as well

 

[red]

I'd be careful using baby wipes on leather as it removes the coating

 

[The Arch Bishop]

[post]356926[/post] you can also use baby wipes on the interior as well, have no idea what they do to babies but they clean hard surfaces a treat, you can even get scented ones as well

The best were Waitrose basic baby wipes - cleaned oil off a gearbox lovely!!

[post]356934[/post] I'd be careful using baby wipes on leather as it removes the coating

I won't be using them on the leather, but I have bought some Megs APC as a do-all solution. I'm told it works very well on leather in a very diluted mixture. The proper leather cleaner does naff all. It's meant to be superb on carpets and plastics as well.

I've also just had a 3M headlight polishing kit through the post which is meant to be very good. Not sure what to seal the lights with afterwards though, so if anyone has any ideas....

 

[tuonokid]

Hi Lee
I used Indasa plastic adhesion promoter followed by a clear laquer both from rattle cans on the foglights and that worked ok but it wouldn't work without the adhesion promoter.
Barry

 

[The Arch Bishop]

The Volvo is currently at the local garage. So far it's needed new front discs and pads and they are still trying to work out why there is a 'communication' error with the electronic throttle - they've cleaned it out but it's not solved the issue.

On the plus side, the quote for the cambelt is £350 including the water pump, tensioner and a new aux belt so £200 less than the Subaru was.

The kicking steering seems to be resolved after I filled the almost empty steering reservoir and bled it. Apparently there's a slight leak at the rack which is where the fluid has gone over the years. That can wait for another time.

Good job it was cheap!

 

[Fanwheel]

That's a nice car Lee - always thought Volvos of this era have a classy kind of look about em. Hope the niggles are fixed without too much hassle.

 

[The Arch Bishop]

[post]356970[/post] That's a nice car Lee - always thought Volvos of this era have a classy kind of look about em. Hope the niggles are fixed without too much hassle.

Cheers! It's a bit Farmer's market/Ocado-looking, but it's a car that has aged well. One of the main reasons we bought it is that it's was spec'd with the fairly rare 7 seat option which means we can go for a day out with the parents and not have to take two cars.

I like the fact that the previous owner specified all of the family-friendly features (it's got a very cool pop-up table and cupholder arrangement in the centre-rear seat and the optional airbag bypass switch) but also ordered it with the large rear boot spoiler!

Hoping that I get it back for the weekend so I can get on with cleaning it up, but I'll settle for grubby but fully working!

 

[Neil]

Superb choice - it'd certainly be on my 'barge' list