[AlainBrighton]

Hi all,

although it has been 10 years of membership of this excellent forum, I have still not come to terms with the search function of the forum so I will post my question in my own thread.

My RHD 2010 D5 185 Executive has gone to Scotland and last week I found a LHD 2006 (pre-facelift) XC90 2.5 T with only 155800 kilometers (less than 98K in miles) from the estate of the only owner. It is a car produced for the UAE and the owner drove it there for 10 years before having it shipped to Norfolk. As it looked slightly dusty (owner passed away end of last year) the car came with not only the fully stamped book yet also with a folder of about 100 A4s, consisting of the original invoice, all Volvo main dealer history in Dubai and independent garage in Norfolk as well as all MoT test over the past 17 years. Even better, it is from 19.03.2006 so just in the cheap tax bracket :-)

Inspection was really good, I need a few things to replace though:
- Saggy headlining including on the sunroof. As I am only on the 6th Volvo and this one having spent a lot of time in Dubai I was told this was really common but ofcourse the next question is: does anyone know of a great yet not overly expensive upholsterer preferably in the South East or around Oxford to fix this issue ?
- There are nearly new h7 halogen headlights. Originally the car came with LHD HID/Xenon headlights so I have to change them back as I always have the headlight failure service message appearin and wondering if there is any chance of finding used LHD HID/Xenon headlights in the UK or best to source them in Europe ?
- Last year there was an advisory on the rear shock absorbers .... do these pre-facelift versions have the Nivomat or not ? Any brand recommended ?
- The N/S mirror (passenger mirror in this case being LHD) is not adjusting enough and even manually it seems stuck to the extent that any more force from me will probably cause it breaking. Now it is the folding, memory and puddle light mirror and I was wondering if the connectors for all pre-facelift mirrors are alike ?

Thank you all for your thoughts, that is if you have some :-)