Reliability

Guest · Post by **Guest** » 05 Feb 2005, 13:11

Hey, I'm glad I came upon this forum, seems alot like my old car forum. But here's the situation. I'm looking at getting a 1996 Volvo 850 turbo(not the R) and I was just wondering how reliable they are. I usually change my own oil, and have the knowledge to do some simple repairs. All the cars that my family and I have owned we've used synthetic in, specifically Mobile 1. I'm in college currently and have a 500 mile drive to and from home maybe 4 times a year. This car that I'm looking at has 160,00, but the previous owner said that 60,000 was put on in the past couple years, all highway(long commute). So i was wondering based on the knowledge of this board, do you guys/gals think this is a good car. Thanks

P.S. I did do some reading before posting, in case there are any "search nazies"

Guest · Post by **Guest** » 05 Feb 2005, 17:25

I'm in college myself... I own a 97 850 turbo that I've had since 2000. Overall it's been pretty good. There was one major problem with a frozen brake caliper that caused all the brakes to be changed but was covered under the extended warranty at the time. Repairs at the dealer are usually expensive, but a board like this makes a lot of the fixes do it yourself.

Obviously, each car is gonna be a little different. But general problems that I've seen are a/c, bearings, vaccum lines, and brakes. I'm sure there's others but I haven't run into too many. Overall, I would just get the car checked out for some of these general problems and see if the guy can show you some service history.

Hope this helped some... take care