General: new to the volvo club

[Rollo61]

Hello all !!!

I'm Rollo,

I'm 26 and have just finished my apprenticeship as a mechanic and to celebrate I finally bought myself the car I've wanted for years, an older Volvo V70. But in my excitement to have a v70, and an unprepared last minuet viewing in the dark due to the owner leaving for a cruise the next day. I found myself the owner of a gorgeous 2005 automatic V70 with what I now know is the common problem of rusted strut towers. I am in the prosses of repairing them as well as the handbrake, strut mounts and rear shockers but i was wondering if any more experienced mk2 V70 owners had some advice for a newbie about any other common faults to look out for and any tips or general advice they're willing to pass on

[stuart bowes]

A lot of the common issues are electrical / sensor based so you'll want to get a decent code reader or ideally VIDA on a laptop with a dice or vcx module to connect via OBD

VIDA will tell you everything you need to know instead of firing parts at it at random, and can also do some of the necessary calibration jobs

the older ones have a habit of suffering from throttle body and DIM module failures amongst other things but you might be clear of that with a 2005

Rust doesn't usually come up as a problem as far as I've seen on here anyway but I guess it depends on the life its had and mileage etc. the only one that springs to mind is the guy who bought an S80 at 750,000 miles and the sills had a couple of holes in them

handbrake is fairly common and can be a bit of a faff but nothing too hard if you do a bit of reading up first

rear shocks are easy but the rear springs are not, you'll need internal spring compressors if you dont want to start dismantling the control arms etc

there's loads of good A1 auto youtube videos on it and just generally as with all car jobs it's always worth watching a few vids first to avoid pitfalls

make sure you're not losing any coolant and the cooling system works well because overheating can mean a warped head and you don't want that

gearbox fluid needs changing in the autos so read up on that as well

most of it is pretty much the same as any other car really nothing massively out of the ordinary

[Georgeandkira]

Best of luck with your 'NTY' vehicle.
You didn't mention the miles on the odo.

A word about ATF refreshment: Do a drain & fill first. They're beyond easy to do (as you know) and only require you purchase 4 l of fluid and a maybe a 18mm aluminum crush washer.

The look of the drained fluid will help you decide what to do further.
If the fluid is jet black and horrid, multiple drain & fills or a pump-out via a disconnected transmission cooling line (hose) might be in order.

In your zeal to 'get 'er done', you may be tempted to undo a large bolt head atop the transmission to refill. Do not do this as a huge headache will follow because you've disconnected internal parts.
You refill ATF through the dip-stick tube.

Also, as with any 19 year old vehicle, the control arm bushings might be shot. Replacing them with Polyurethane bushings is what I'd recommend.
They added an improvement in the control and feel of my 2002.

[ajm]

Originally Posted by Rollo61

But in my excitement to have a v70, and an unprepared last minuet viewing in the dark due to the owner leaving for a cruise the next day. I found myself the owner of a gorgeous 2005 automatic V70 with what I now know is the common problem of rusted strut towers.

I'm interested in pictures of the rusted strut towers... I'm a bit surprised to hear that really. My 2005 V70 (207k miles) has lived near the sea for nearly the last decade, was in Brighton for some time before that and has been kept outside since new as far as I know - basically I'd expect it to be as rusty as any other car its age.

There are wee spots of surface rust on the towers but nothing rusted through...

[Simmy]

a few wee spots is how it first shows iv had to have both mine repaired and plated my car was originally from scotland so it may have encountered more salt than others top spring mounts are another common failure part but are cheap and fairly easy to do if you are good with the spanners there is a vid by a guy called peppermint on you tube showing going round a `scrap yard it shows v70 an s60 with total strut tower breakthrough

[stuart bowes]

+1 on the wishbone polybushings, definitely a stiffer ride but vastly improved round corners as you would expect (and I'm hoping longer lasting which was the main reason I did it)

getting them in was fun, someone did a good walkthrough on that involving a press and a cut up piece of scaffold tube IIRC

I used lots of swearwords and brute force and got there in the end

[Georgeandkira]

To Rollo61: You said, "I'm 26 and have just finished my apprenticeship as a mechanic..."
Congratulations! You must tell us what kind of mechanics you went into.
Do you have any compliment of tools? How specific is your work?
What's your workshop like?
Nothing personal, of course.