What did you do to your P2 Volvo today?

Post by **scot850** » 11 Mar 2026, 23:32

Stripped the rear inner panels out of the 06 V70 yesterday, then pulled the rear light units to replace the bulbs following a stop lamp issue. The car is to be dropped off tomorrow afternoon at an electronics installer for a new head unit and a back up camera to be fitted on Friday if all goes well.

Naturally when removing the panels I found signs of previous intrusions with cracked parts, broken and missing clips and a butchered spoiler brake lamp cable which explains why it does not work.

Today I had hoped to re-install the taillight lamps with new bulbs. I found one issue in that some sites list a 1156 bulb for the rear brake light and the back up lamp. Others list 7506 as the bulb. They both fit and the car had both fitted. Problem is that the 1156 is a 27W bulb and the 7506 is a 21W bulb. I would have expected the 21W bulb to be the European standard. Would the 27W bulb not throw a light? It doesn't seem to, but may explain why some cars I have worked on have burnt bulb contacts and melted traces on the lamp units.

Due to time constraints, I had it pull the reserve set of re-finished tail lights and use those. Weird though, when I got my wife to help with checking the lights, initially none of the rear lights would work at all. Eventually with some fiddling on the ignition key and the light switch, everything started to work as it should and no messages as yet!

I tried to repair again the high level spoiler brake light cable. However, my repair appears no more successful than the one I cut out. It is weird that when checking resistances in the wires, first I get a reading and then randomly it goes O.L. I had hoped to de-pin the original light but all of my de-pin tools don't seem to work for this version. So I will have to just cut it again as the connector will not fit through the spoiler hole. I'll try repairing it again on my workbench later. The new light unit does not have the connector fitted to allow the cable to e pulled through.

Last job was to fit the folding mirror button into the center stack before the guys take the head unit out. It is a fiddly job getting the stack unit out and getting the new button in but now done. I was not surprised that whoever fitted the current single din bluetooth unit has cut the original connectors off. I had a stupid idea that if they had done it correctly, it would be just un-hooked and I can drop that unit into our son's car. The small buttons which are blue lit on black are illegible to my eyes. Hopefully the double din unit is better and it is also capable foe wireless streaming.

Post by **abscate** » 13 Mar 2026, 13:08

Dropped it off at Volvo for airbag upgrade and new windshield , and cat inspection

Post by **Krons** » 13 Mar 2026, 15:20

abscate wrote: 13 Mar 2026, 13:08 Dropped it off at Volvo for airbag upgrade and new windshield , and cat inspection

While I haven’t looked at a lot of catalytic converters, that cat looks good!

Post by **br0dy519** » 13 Mar 2026, 17:24

Ah yes. The airbag recall where if I lived 2km over across the magic detroit river, it would apply to my vehicle.

Post by **abscate** » 15 Mar 2026, 03:03

br0dy519 wrote: 13 Mar 2026, 17:24 Ah yes. The airbag recall where if I lived 2km over across the magic detroit river, it would apply to my vehicle.

I’ll trade you a pointless upgrade for Tim Hortons, Health care, polite people, amd the Hono(u)able Mark Carney.

Did you know Canada is the most admired country in the World?

Post by **br0dy519** » 15 Mar 2026, 11:56

You can have Tim Horton’s.

Post by **BlackBart** » 15 Mar 2026, 13:27

abscate wrote: 15 Mar 2026, 03:03 Did you know Canada is the most admired country in the World?

I don’t doubt that. I’m so frustrated at how insulting we’ve been to our admirable neighbors to the North.

Post by **scot850** » 16 Mar 2026, 00:23

Thank you!

Today after having disassembled a totally frozen down pipe from the house roof which was todays unplanned job, it left me time to finally tackle the tailgate spoiler high level brake light. My mechanic buddy had fitted the spoiler from a junkyard car, but said that as soon as it was connected it would throw a brake light error message so he had just reconnected the original one and left it unplugged.

I had ordered a replacement light unit as I suspected it would be faulty. Sure enough the cable had been cut and reconnected. I am going to assume that as you cannot feed the cable through for the light, someone had replaced the light portion by cutting the cable to feed it through the spoiler and rejoining the cable about 6" from the plug end. I guess whatever they did the connection was bad. I tried to buzz it out but the signal would read about 50% of that of the new one and then go OL. I had hoped to de-pin the plug in the hope that once it was back on the bench I would try to salvage it for a spare. Disconnecting it from the spoiled I found it had been refitted at some point with 2 threaded M6 screw bolts with washers that were too tight for the recesses and they had cracked the mounts badly. I could not de-pin the connector so I just cut and removed it. I connected a spare wire to the cable and taped them together and pulled the cable through the spoiler and then used the wire to pull the new one back through. Connecting it up and testing it it worked as it should and all was mostly good. The new cable comes with a surface mount connector but no hole to put it into so I drilled a suitable hole in the tailgate. Be careful here as the logical point for the hole is beside one of the inner panel mounts and they have a web which can catch on the connector.

After that it was just a case of cleaning and fitting the inner tailgate panels.

Last job to do was to re-attach 3 of the tailgate hatch opening seals that had become unglued. I used 3M high tack thin film double sided tape and then is was all done!

Neil.

Post by **scot850** » 19 Mar 2026, 00:23

Pent an hour sanding the taillights for the V70. These are the ones that came off it, but due to time constraints I fitted a set of taillights I had already polished up to look new.

Disappointingly, both RH units (upper and lower) turned out to have small cracks. The upper one is hard to notice right at the top but the lower one is larger and more obvious. I'll keep them as emergency spare unit I can find a better set to keep. As I was doing these I also sanded the C30 taillight I pilled for my buddy. It was not terrible but had a lot of surface swirls in it. Tomorrow I will polish them all and seal them.

I had not updated on the new Bluetooth head unit and backup camera (no back up sensors were fitted to this car) we had fitted to the 06 V70. The main reason was I was not happy with the head unit not having the spec the store had claimed it had. I returned to the company today and explained the issue. The young sales guy was mortified and realized he had sold and installed the wrong unit! Poor guy was really upset. I have dealt with the company for 25 years and the main reason is should anything go wrong, they really step up to try to rectify the issue as best they can. Being a reasonable customer also helps!!

Bottom line they 'correct' unit is $300 CDN more expensive at regular pricing. He apologised and they will fit the upgraded unit at cost price for only $130 more which includes a $10 increase in the 4 year warranty cover (free instore credit if not used) and $5 tax.

I'm happy with that. The only real disappointment even at that is the Sony unit I had fitted to my Toyota 8 hears ago by them has a user option to allow programming of the steering wheel buttons. This means although the Toyota has no answer and hang up buttons on the steering wheel I can re-define buttons to do this function when my phone rings. So much for modern tech!!

I guess I can work out how to use Android Auto or Google to use voice commands to operate the phone functions!

Another of my local Volvo buddies is working on a process to repair Alarm modules. So far he has just pulled 6 from the junkyard a couple of days ago and although all 6 switched of the error message, he has now opened 4 of them and one looks like someone has poured acid over it (well the battery did). The unit is not worth rebuilding. The others with a little cleaning of the board should all be good to go again with new batteries. He has a source in the UK for $60 CDN for batteries, but is working on a lower cost option locally.

It is a fun project!

Neil.

Post by **BlackBart** » 28 Mar 2026, 17:55

Replacing my rear sway bar end links. I thought it was odd the left one seems to be rubbing on the parking brake cable. It’s behind the cable.

I started with taking off the right one, and could it be they should be in FRONT of the parking brake cable instead of in back? It doesn’t look like the upper ball joint will reach the control arm without pushing on the cable.

Thanks -