What did you do to your P2 Volvo today?

[BlackBart]

Not sure what you mean by city lights,

It's the little yellow bulb here....

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It comes on independently or usually with the parking lights, so in dense Euro cities with plenty of streetlights you have a visibility glow without blasting people with headlights. They light up the housing itself without projecting much light outwards. It's starting to become rare since we have ubiquitous LED dots and stripes all over cars now.

I have them in the 7" round Cibie's in my Alfa, but I haven't wired them in yet.

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[P80GLT]

@ BlackBart
Yes we call them side lights, 1st position on the switch brings them on along with the side markers

[P80GLT]

Friday was spent raising my blood pressure a point or two. I've never heard spark plugs squeal as much as they did today when I tried to remove the spark plugs from the car, they were obviously reluctant to vacate their home after all this time. I originally started with a cold engine but the noise was so bad that I heated it up for 15 minutes before proceeding any further.

I ordered the plugs for one of the UK's largest Volvo dealer's online stores and before ordering I asked them what the correct plugs were for my 2.5T engine. I was given the part number for the longer reach plugs and proceeded to order them. Then my mate said it should be short plugs in my engine so after researching further I discovered I had indeed been given the incorrect information. Caveat Emptor...

I think the longer plugs could have caused a lot of damage had I fitted them…

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Well beyond their best by date, gaps at 1mm instead of the recommended 0.7mm

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An easy job on Saturday changing the 18 year old fuel filter. The original factory tape was still on the hose retaining clips which has kept them free from dirt and corrosion making for easy removal. I decided to tape up the clips when the new filter was fitted, I'm not sure what Volvo used at the factory but it did seem to be some sort of masking tape so I've done mine with that to make life easy next time the filter needs changed

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After changing the fuel filter on my V70 which took all of 15 minutes and feeling rather smug about it I told my mate to bring his S60 T5 over and I would change his filter in jig time. Car up on the ramp and everything went wrong from then on. The bolt for the filter bracket was overtightened and rusty to the point the 10mm six sided socket wouldn't grip, I hammered on a 3/8" multi-point socket and it wouldn't grip either so it was out with the air grinder and chop the head off the bolt, then the chisel to remove the flared head from the bolt, then the chisel again to get the remainder of the ragged edges off before the bracket could be removed. Vise grips eventually removed what was left of the bolt and new filter fitted.

Next was his spark plugs, I expected them to squeal in a similar fashion to what mine did the day before, but no, they were just over finger tight and almost fell out, except for number three which had obviously been tightened by a feather duster, it was so loose that the soot from the combustion had blown past the spark plug and covered the entire 'spark plug tube' with soot. All back together now and torqued down to the recommended 25Nm and my mate says the car is now a rocket ship, can I give him some money for petrol

[P80GLT]

I've removed the charge pipe on the V70 several times over the past few weeks but I could never get the clamp at the top of the intake hose to sit properly and I didn't know why. Today I decided to remove the hose and try to find the problem. Once removed I saw the hose was past its best and decided to put it back together and was going to order another, also I never saw the cause for the clamp not to sit correctly but I did notice the charge pipe was an odd shape at the end, however as I'm not familiar with these items nothing I saw raised any concerns.

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I visited my mate and mentioned the hose to him and he said he had an old one in his garage and after a coulpe of minutes appeared with a good used hose. When I returned home I decided to change the hose and that's when I discovered the problem...

The charge pipe has a metal sleeve that is there to prevent the clamp from crushing the pipe. With the engine hot the plastic pipe had expanded and the slight grip the pipe had on the metal sleeve let go and the sleeve fell off.

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Careful heating with a hot air gun, a large socket strategically placed on the sleeve and a bit of brute force and the sleeve is back to where it should be and the oddly shaped end is once again straight.

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Replacement hose put on and all stitched back together and sitting as it should

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[850scot]

When the plugs in a car I am working on are like that, I spray a little WD-40 down the spark plug recess and wind the plug out and in a little at a time until the threads get slick. Then they typically come pack out ok.

I them put a piece of lint free cloth on a rag and use it to clean the threads out before installing the plugs.

Finally, controversial I know, but then I use some thread ease for spark plugs and then torque them to normal value.
Then hopefully I won't have the problem next time!

Neil.

[XC70Rider]

Swapped my OE fuel pressure sensor with a used one I got off an S60 fuel rail several years back. I've been getting P0420 on and off for the past several months. No stalling and idling smooth so I ignored it. I finally got P0193 yesterday so that's why I swapped the pressure sensors. LTFR dropped from 7% down to zero on a 54 mile ride after that. No codes appeared during the ride.

[P80GLT]

Think I will buy a lottery ticket...

Unfortunately the air-con recharge I had done on the V70 didn’t work. I stay less than 1 mile from the shop that did the recharge so it didn’t try it on the road home. I went out to the car later that day and turned the A/C on and the compressor kicked in, but the air into the car wasn’t getting cooler, I turned it off and on again and the cooling fan came on at full speed and wouldn’t stop. After connecting my diagnostics I had a pressure sensor fault showing, when I cleared the DTC the fan went off. I left it at that and tried again a few days later with the same results.

I decided to have a professional diagnose the problem and after speaking to the ‘expert air-con company’ at the top of the Google listing for my area and not feeling confident about the answers they gave me I booked the car into my local Volvo Indie thinking that at least they would know what they were doing. Well that was a mistake on my part, they don’t have recharging facilities and after connecting Vida and not finding any DTCs they decided it needed a new compressor as they could ‘see metal filings’ that had apparently been coming from my compressor. They then told me to buy a new compressor from eBay… I was shocked and furious when I heard this and it makes me wonder what sort of service they are providing to the Volvo community.

I decided at this point in time to seek out a proper old school specialist, a mate told me about Keep Kool in Cambuslang and I took the car to be diagnosed. Willie put the gauges on the car, started the engine and put the A/C on and off and told me that it really does need a compressor, but not because of fictional metal filings being expelled which there wasn’t, but because it wasn’t pressurising the system and the clutch assembly was falling apart.

Back to Keep Kool where the V70 had some major surgery, Boost pipe off, top hose off, fan removed, serpentine belt off, power steering pump off, alternator off and eventually the air-con compressor removed. The compressor motor is seized solid and I’m unable to turn it over, it must have taken huge amount of power from the car’s system to get it turning. Also the outside of the compressor is covered in UV dye and was leaking refrigerant gas.

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The system was flushed and re-gassed and air-con is working perfectly, the pressure switch didn’t require changing even though it was showing a fault recently.

Once home I decided to remove the clutch assembly, the centre which should be attached, it fell out onto the floor. The clutch assembly was in far worse condition than first expected and I doubt I would have got many more miles out of it before it fell apart leaving a trail of destruction in its wake.

Clutch assembly falling to pieces

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Pulley off centre

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Fell apart when removed from compressor

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All buttoned up and mission accomplished

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[abscate]

My 1999 v70 clutch did that in 2018. I wrestled with the value of a compressor in my old car but have enjoyed cool AC every summer for 5 years. The pain of the new compressor price has long been forgotten.

[P80GLT]

@ abscate

Small price to pay to keep cool

[850 LPT]

Did an oil change yesterday and replaced the battery, which I bought last weekend at Costco. Since I didn't know how old the old one was I figured I replace it as part of preventative maintenance. Turns out the old one was manufactured in Aug. 2016 There was a sticker on it on the side which was not visible while it was installed.
Then I replaced the driver side washer nozzle which had a broken tab. I thought this was going to be an easy peasy 5 minute job and it turned into a royal pita. Those Volvo engineers don't give you any slack in the hose and it is nicely tucked away behind the sheet metal. And the opening is so small that you can't reach in.