An addition to the fleet?

[rolsen11]

I'm set to go look at another Volvo on Saturday about an hour from me to double my car count from one to two. It's a 2004 S60 R for sale private party with the Atacama (orange) interior and the "space ball" 6 speed manual transmission. It's not perfect cosmetically (needs a detail) and has a fair number of miles and a lot of previous owners, but it seems to be in good mechanical order and most importantly, it's local to me (rare to find Volvos of this caliber where I live). I've been wanting to buy an actually sporty manual transmission car for a while now and this seems like my chance to get a special one that I have the tools and resources to keep maintained. Hopefully it doesn't turn out to be a turd when I go look at it since I know these R's can be pretty high maintenance machines. This one has had the transfer case and driveshaft + rear axles gone through already within the last 10k miles.

706111290_1297809522520448_8165700538425296276_n.jpg (118.47 KiB) Viewed 1362 times

707406828_1297803209187746_1780304940991873913_n.jpg (115.89 KiB) Viewed 1362 times

705892296_1297803105854423_4304481277448484983_n.jpg (97.09 KiB) Viewed 1362 times

[scot850]

Check all the electrical/electronics work. Take a code reader that reads Volvos with you to check for stored codes. 'R' models can be ok, but they are high maintenance vehicles at this age.

Good Luck!

Neil.

[matthew1]

At $5k give or take this could be a fun car.

[rolsen11]

Unfortunately he's asking 8k for it, which isn't totally out of the ball park when comparing it to similar S60 Rs sold on Cars and Bids. The manual transmission alone seems to consistently add 2k to the cars value. If it was an automatic I would agree that 5k would be the right price. I can't see him going that low, going to shoot for 7k pending laying my eyes on it in person.

[rolsen11]

Well, I bought it! Got it down to 7k. Cosmetically it's kinda rough. But it seems mechanically solid with the exception of a worn out clutch and a failing wheel bearing that I need to get done. Runs great and drives great. I've got some work to do but this won't be my primary car so I'm okay with that. The very big thing that made me feel comfortable at 7k despite the rough cosmetics is the fact that the transfer case, driveshaft and both rear cv axles have all been replaced recently. Once I get the wheel bearing and clutch done it'll be a good driver while I work on sorting the cosmetics, primarily the seats. The Atacama leather is dirty pretty much everywhere and shows signs of wear. There's a bunch of weird splotches on the seats too that I can't explain. It's gonna take some effort from a specialist to get them looking nice and bright again, hopefully that can be done. Overall though I'm excited to finally experience a high performance manual trans Volvo!

[erikv11]

Congrats, it should be fun!

[matthew1]

I'm excited to read about your work to bring this up. Congrats Rolsen.

[abscate]

Nice buy! Great news on the new stuff, and indeed with some love on your end , that’s a great ride!