Preserve Your 850/S70/V70/XC70’s Air Conditioning System’s Evaporator

Your 850/S70/V70/XC70’s Air Conditioning System could use some imrpovements.

Typically it fails very high percentage on these cars. If it’s not too late, you can stretch the lifetime of this system with MadeInJapan’s advice:

MadeInJapan wrote:

“Unfortunately there is no good “sealer” for these systems. Anything you add that could seal leaks up ends up “gunking up” the system and creates havoc for the evacuation devices. Many places won’t even evacuate your A/C system if they know you’ve used these sealers. That said, there are newer evacuation devices with screens and filters to help deal with this. The best preventative measure especially for the evaporator is to make sure your 850 has a cabin air filter (originally these didn’t come with them but can be added) so that debris is kept out. Any small leave particles or other debris will sit down in the Evaporator tray, get filled with moisture (not to mention mold) and aid in the unit in rusting out. Typically, the evaporator develops little rust holes where the gas leaks out of and becomes larger as time goes on until it doesn’t hold gas at all, or it leaks out within a day or two.

Another thing you can do, but is difficult to keep the flap up under the windshield cowl, it so take a long hose attached to as powerful of a vacuum cleaner as you can and see if you can suck any debris out of the Evaporator location… you’ll hit the turbines of the A/C blower fan which is directly below this channel but still, you might be able to suck up any loose stuff that may be on its way to getting stuck down in there. I suppose you could also reach things better with a small flexible hose, going through, under the glove box from within the cabin by actually taking the blower motor out to help with access. I’ve personally never done this though have thought about it.”

Preserve Your 850/S70/V70/XC70’s Air Conditioning

Welcome to Volvo news, help and DIY fixes. We feature the Volvo Repair Database, the best Volvo Forum, and an awesome monthly Volvo newsletter. Joining is always free!