S80 2001 How To Replace Your Fuel Door Hinge

[vegasjetskier]

Is your fuel door hinge hanging on by a thread? Here's how to change it yourself. The hinge is a plastic part that costs $15 at the dealer. These must break often as the parts man knew exactly what I was talking about right off the bat.

Here's a pic of my old hinge. The top spring retention clip has already broken clear off and the bottom door retention clip has cracked. It wouldn't have been too long before my door left the car:



This is the new Volvo hinge:



Start off by using your thumbs or a suitable tool to push the spring out of the retention clips. It really doesn't matter if you break the clips off since you are replacing the whole hinge.

Now take a pin punch, nail, or jeweler's screwdriver and hammer the four hinge rivet pins all the way through the rivets and into the body. You'll have to rap the pins pretty hard to drive them through. Here are the four places where the pins are in sequence (shown by the jeweler's screwdriver in the rivet hole:









After you punch out all the rivet pins, just pull on the fuel door and the hinge will come off the car:



Now push the hinge around to what would be the "door open" position if it were still on the car and pull the hinge off the pin in the door. It takes some force to do this. Be careful not to break the door.

Here's a pic of the door next to the old hinge (closest to the door) and the new hinge (farthest from the door):



Now place the new hinge on the door hinge pin and force it down on the pin. It takes quite a bit of force to get it to snap into place. I've read that some people put the hinge on the car first and then had trouble getting the door onto the pin, so I put the hinge on the door first. I placed the door on a rag and used a screwdriver to apply downward force on the two areas where the hinge snaps on:





Now place the hinge on the side of the car and make sure all the rivets drop into their holes. Use a punch, extension, screwdriver, or other suitable tool to drive all the pins in until they are flush with the surface of the hinge plastic:









Now use your thumbs to gently push the spring over and into the spring retaining clips:



It should look like this when you're done.



You just saved a few bucks over having the dealer do it for you.

I'm going to load this into the S80 repair database. I don't know if it applies to any other models.

[MadeInJapan]

Think it's the same for all P2 cars ('01 and newer V70/XC70/S60/S80).

[ArekZ]

When my Volvo was 2 y.o. this door spring fell off completely. Horrified by the idea of going to my local Volvo garage or even just buying a new hinge from Volvo (which would probably break in 2 years anyway), I thought of a temporary solution.
For a few pounds, I bought a door latch magnet, *NOT* this one:
http://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/ ... _200328315
but a similar one. And the size (25mm x 14mm of the magnet with the metal plates) was such that I could simply attach it into the door (at 45deg, in the bottom corner opposite to the hinge) and it's been working well for me for the last 6 years.

The magnet attaches well to the fuel door probably because it has less paint than the main car body. And the crucial parameter when looking for such magenet is the 14mm height (at least for my Volvo). The thickness and the length may vary more.

[gsbeliso]

If you're new hinge didn't come with rubber washers, don't forget to retrieve the rubber washers on the back of the old hinge and transfer to the new one; there are four located on the back - one for each rivet hole.

[Retired MVS Contributor]

Think it's the same for all P2 cars ('01 and newer V70/XC70/S60/S80).

It's the same in the wife's 1991 740!!!...Volvo needs to get a life and redesign it...

[danks_S80]

I finally replaced my hinge. Got a part online for $9 and 5 minutes later it was normal again. No need to lock the doors while driving to keep it from flying open! Good point on the rubber washers as mine only came with 3 (not sure why, maybe they were all there and I lost 1 when I opened it).

[98v70GLT]

Hi all,
I just replaced the fuel door on our XC70 '03.
First I drilled out the pegs on the old one, this works like a charm and prevents you from having to hit them and maybe bending some metal that you rather not bend?! I don't know this for a fact, but an ounce of prevention is worth a......
Than, to take the old hinge off the door, again to prevent breaking anything, I used an oscillating saw with a straight blade and cut off the retaining flap/clip. (One side came off by it self, the other side was left hanging a little bit but broke off easily after cutting. I just took care of not cutting in on the door parts.) This allows the old hinge to come off the door with ease.
Finally, this took some trials, I pushed the new hinge on by pushing in two directions: one to push down on the retaining flap and the other direction to clip in the new hinge. As I said, it took some trials but it worked well.
The saw I used is from Harborfreight: Oscillating Multifunction Power Tool ITEM # 67256.
I hope this helps.

[rburner]

I found probably the easiest and cheapest fix yet for my 1999 s80 volvo gas door repair. I use 3/16 drill bit and slowly drilled through the original plastic pop rivits on the "allready hanging off " broken hinge and replaced with (4) aluminum 3/16 in. diameter 1/16 in. -1/8 in. grip range which are available at Ace or any hardware store for $3.00-$4.00 or ina kit with pop rivet gun for around the same $15.00 you probably paid for the new hinge alone and this way you get a new tool with many other uses at the same price or cheaper. and i replaced 2 sets of hinge rivets on my 2 s80's in about 10 minutes.