Holy Cow! $31,412.00 in repairs over 10 years! This is good?

[FlyingVolvo]

It's really amazing what you can do yourself with a site like this... it's equally amazing how much a dealer with charge for stuff. I looked through my records and saw my dad had the cabin filter replaced once at the dealer $105!!! A $15 part and 5 minutes of labor. Had I known what I know now, I would have accused them of theft!

[SimLyons]

I had an unfortunate "run-in" with a woman who ran a red light. There was a bus on my left side and I had no sight of her Honda at all. The bus hit his brakes and at that moment I saw her...too late. My '92 945 totaled her Civic (T-boned) and she went to the hospital. My Volvo went to the shop and $15,000+ later I drove it away. The car was near-perfect.I had no complaints and the insurance paid the bill. BTW, the Volvo was drivable after the accident. It was just expensive to replace parts, repair, paint, etc. (Air bag worked as advertised and I walked away with a bruised wrist)

[ArchieBrown]

I concur with Ed. I think that saving money is one of the upsides to being an enthusiast - as its generally enthusiasts who are lurking in car forums benefiting from all the cumulative knowledge that they provide. People who aren't enthusiasts (or spanner heads at least) are those who can easily accumulate a wad of receipts.

A case in point, one of my colleagues has a BMW X5 that is having the kinds of repairable issues that we're seeing with our Volvos - and because she's not a spanner girl, she loses about 3 grand every time she drives into a dealership. She's dumped almost 10 grand into this X5 in a year.

IMHO, the 20 odd grand that has been spent on this R is in mechanical repairs is a little excessive, but not a complete blowout - especially if the stealership has done the repairs.

You'd hope its a pretty sweet 850R by now though.

[Xilikon]

If you leave the dealer or indy do the work, it could make for pretty sweet bills. The previous owner of my car have shown a lot of invoices and there are some big ones :

about 2000$ spent on a timing belt/waterpump job (which also include diagnostic and replacement of a ABS module with a rebuilt one).
3600$ on a full brake job (rotors, pads, calipers, brake bleeding) which also included new control arms and some suspension parts off my head.
1600$ to replace the fuel pump (mind you, the indy shop dropped the whole rear and the fuel pump was 504$ itself for a Scan-tech POS !).

All this from january 2010 to may 2011.

I do agree that browsing the forums like here and getting informations from those who experienced issues help a lot with saving money. Very often, dealers and indies are clueless and throw parts to fix a problem until it's solved, racking up big bills.

[t5ftw]

I have had my 99 S70 T5 for 13 months now and I poured $5,000 including tool purchases because I have done many jobs myself. I feel like rebuilding the entire car. It sounds horrible but I don't think I can find any better car even taking all these cost account.

[voodoorobaz]

Buy a Jeep and all the money you put into it will be for fun parts. I gave up on Volvo, Sorry Guys. Had several. best one ever was a 1993 wagon. Every one since then has been a POS. Bought a 2002 s60 t-5 new and it had several problems also. sold it before warranty was up. Horrible cars to own.

[JRL]

I have had my 99 S70 T5 for 13 months now and I poured $5,000 including tool purchases because I have done many jobs myself. I feel like rebuilding the entire car. It sounds horrible but I don't think I can find any better car even taking all these cost account.

and I have about 6500 wholesale dollars plus some free work into my 99T5M but that ain't 38 large and it's 100% as new

[trs80]

If any car requires that much repair work its time to retire it. If you plan to own an older vehicle you need to know how to do the work yourself. $20k in repairs would have been better spent on a new loan/lease.

So is the car in good running order now?

[bronxnativ]

The PO of my 95 spent over $8,000.00 on it. I saw some pretty basic stuff that he could have done himself (mounts, brakes, tune-up, etc.). Are some folks just to damn lazy to learn how to fix their own? I mean our cars are not that hard to work on!

BTW: I might be posting my 95 on this site for sale. Not yet comfortable of selling my car to "out of state" invisible buyers!

[precopster]

In one transaction at a Volvo specialist I spent $5,300 to have a motor replaced of which $3,200 was on the replacement of a faulty cylinder head that was later found to be perfectly servicable!!

Since then (almost three years now) I have spent $3,500 on the parts for three cars (tools were about $600) and I have learned how to service/maintain these Swedish armchairs very well by using the generous help of the contributors to this forum.