Why I hate my 2000 V70R!

[misha]

...By the way Delphi coilpacks are made in China, not USA as I hoped...

Delphi is UK brand not U.S.

[abscate]

I absolutely feel your pain as I am in deep on the 1998 S70 GLT that I have. I paid $3000 US for the car 7 years ago and have put more than that into it doing 90 percent of the work myself. I have put 70k miles on it, so cost per mile would be high. Right now the car is worth, maybe, around $1200 or something South of it. So, my solution is, it is going up for sale in the yard this weekend. It is time to get out of this thing...

Clark - you have a great Town Judge who lets off speeders who are polite in court, by the way - especially when State Cops rudely interrupt.



70,000 miles/$6000 is 11 cents per mile to drive a luxury car? Thats pretty good.There is a great used Volvo parts Valhalla north of you in Utica, too.

[scot850]

I tried to be positive with the 'R' for maybe the first 3 years and $10000 + driving a whole 5000km and the car in bits for maybe a year fixing stuff. Since then it keeps wearing me down. Just when I think nothing else can possibly break something does!

If I were driving maybe 10-20,000km a year and these issues happened, then I would look at it differently. But this car has barely done 10,000km in 5 years (about 6,500 miles). Mostly due to it being broken so often that I get fed up fixing it and leave it for a while. Either that or I am waiting for 5-6 months for the back-order or un-obtanium parts found somewhere in the world.

Now maybe if it ran long enough (maybe 6 months) without breaking something, maybe I could have a sunnier outlook on the car. There is another issue here in Calgary. That of the dumbass careless owners. I have got so fed up of parking the car away from others and coming back to find yet another ding in it. Latest one is the 'double-tap' from the ass that hit it getting out and then back in on the same door. It makes you paranoid to leave it anywhere. Ideally I'd like to have the front and rear bumpers, hood and top of the tailgate painted (first 3 from hits in parking lots and the rocks chipping the paint in the winter, and the last from flaking paint on the top of the tailgate). But what is the point when you know it will just get dinged again. There is no rust on the bodywork, I do keep the dings touched in with paint.

We plan to move out to a smaller house in a couple of years (but bigger garage with room for a hoist!). Maybe the car can then get used for longer runs and have a beater for the shopping.

Neil.

[clarkS70glt]

11 cents per mile (in my case) may not sound bad if everything worked as it should, there were no leaks, there were no weird noises, etc. For me, it's not so much the cost of ownership, but the combination of the cost and the time spent. The time spent working on the car has really worn me down, especially since most of what I have replaced is ready for replacement again. I thought that I would be able to get more than 70,000 miles out of all the work that I did, using quality oem parts. Even with the FCP replacement policy, I just don't want to spend more time rebuilding this car a second time.

In general, cars are a pain/money pit/expense, but this one has been a little too painful for me. As I stated, it will be up for sale this weekend and I hope I can find a buyer.

[PeteB]

I'm with you all, there are SOME cars that need constant attention, this is one of them.
My 1980s Honda was not, my 2011 Sonata is not. Most of my other cars needed a lot
not as much as the Volvo. Alfa's are about as bad as the Volvo.

I bought my youngest son a 2010 Ford Focus stick with a Mazda engine with a timing
chain and it has been excellent and I'll probably get another for my older son.

[precopster]

...By the way Delphi coilpacks are made in China, not USA as I hoped...

Delphi is UK brand not U.S.

Yes the concept of selling reboxed rubbish was conceived in UK, made in China and transferred to an Amazon USA warehouse.

[abscate]

I put a lot into refreshing my 1999 at 140k miles

ETM, new AC evap, new suspension, PVC, radiator. Probably about 4k at shop rates.

I've driven this car for work from DC to Cleveland to Boston. Now at 200k and its never stranded me.

I guess I'm wondering why some experience the constant nibbling and some don't

[grntrdbx]

Brother, I hear ya' when you say you hate fixing your R. I should've never bought my '04' R from the previous owner. The original owner was the wife of the guy I bought it from. I don't know how she was with it, but he treated it like a pickup. He had non factory roof rack clamped in the upper door sills and a spacecase in the roof that looked like it was a permanent fixture. I couldn't take that thing whistling on the roof, so on the way home from he seller, I stopped to get the family Chinese takeout and removed it in the street in front of the restaurant! Anyway, just like you I've had a love/hate relationship with mine. I've replaced most of the suspension, purchased and sold performance parts for it because I've been frustrated enough with it to put it up for sale numerous times in the last 3yrs, but no-one has been interested enough to buy it, so it languishes in my driveway. I've probably only put 200 miles on it in the last 3yrs. I'm afraid to let my kids drive it (new drivers) because if they wreck it I probably won't be willing to fix it. It currently needs a rear diff module rebuild. I'm just not willing to put another $800 into it. I also bought a beater '04' focus in January 2016 for $500 when the R was in the shop for a $1200 b.s. repair for 2months (don't ask, this was the final straw in the rear diff diagnosis that never got fixed). Needless to say, I've got about $3k into it with all of the rebuilt suspension, performance parts etc. and it's been a great car! Why do the cheap cars never let you down, and the expensive ones always leave you stranded? Beats me.

[Clemens]

Why do the cheap cars never let you down, and the expensive ones always leave you stranded? Beats me.

Most probably because as opposed to cars up to the 80ies, these days the cheap cars are the reliable ones with very high production numbers and nothing fancy about them. On the other hand of the spectrum you have expensive cars with low production numbers, thousands of feet of electrical wiring and parts unique to them.
My 96 R is as reliable as my 94 T5M and the 95 NA (knock on wood) because it is basically a very nicely equipped standard 96 Turbo wagon. The later R models are basically very unique cars (like the S60/V70 R).

[scot850]

Lots of good viewpoints here. On the P2 V70R or even an S60R, I have often considered them as a newer option of performance Volvo but having heard so many horror stories of the electronics systems being overly complex and now as all P2's get older their are more and more issues coming to light around the AWD system, especially the Haldex system. Xemodex do a re-built cicuit board, oil pump and filter kit for it, but still is about $700 CDN if I recall. Then add the suspension system. Our 06 XC70 has 4-C adjustable shocks. Here in Canada they are $1100 CDN each from the dealer! Replacing the springs and shocks here is close to $6000!!! Makes the cars scrap really quickly. I can reduce the parts costs by about a 1/3rd by importing the parts from the US, but it makes the cars un-economic to own and run unless someone has already invested the money recently.

Even having Vida does not answer all the questions even with dealers, so for now I will stay away from those. I have been looking at XC90's but again they are proving to find a good one. Again owners just don't maintain them so by the time I consider buying one at a reasonable (cheap) price they need too much to bring them back. Even worse than the P80's I've owned.

Oh well, even the chase is becoming waring! Maybe time to consider different brands, but then I would be walking into the unknown.

Neil.