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Rainagain's S80, now FOR SALE, now only £749! Roffle?


rainagain

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Nevertheless I carried on, I felt inside the door and I could feel that there was still something sticking out of the slider that the blue part could click onto, in fact it felt remarkably intact. With a lot of jiggling the window up and down I managed to slip the new blue slider in and clip the window mech arm into it. I can only assume that the blue bit I removed was part of another failed window mech that someone had replaced. I smothered the lot in grease and put it back together, it worked beautifully smooth. I then moved onto sorting a couple of rust spots on the drivers door.

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I then thought I really should do something about the faded plastic as it really shows the car's age up. I know from here I should have just gone and got some Linseed oil but having previusuly owned a Corsa B I had some T-cut trim dye which promises a permaneat fix. The bumpers looked really faded before and slight better after, however later tonight I noticed the finish looked a bit wrinkly and when I ran my hand over most of it came off :(  Looks like I'll need to wait for the rest of it to fall off then do it properly with linseed oil.

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Your rear brakes appear to be the same design as on my V70, so I'll offer a grain of 'Volvo brake wisdom'.

The handbrake is a lousy design which uses little drum brakes incorporated in the rear disks. The only adjustment is at the lever end and this is only designed to compensate for stretch in the cable or play in the mechanisms, but not wear in the shoes or drums. Do yourself a favour and buy some proper adjusters to replace the solid spacer that Volvo used to save a few krona. The handbrake probably still won't be brilliant, but getting it to work well enough for an MOT becomes much quicker and easier .

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These are my favourite barges to be ferried in. Popular cabs in Sweden and I have been in a few 350,000km examples which felt like they were about a year old. Always had a secret urge for one of these, all the luxury of the German brands, all the toys, none of the image issues. Perfect!

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Your rear brakes appear to be the same design as on my V70, so I'll offer a grain of 'Volvo brake wisdom'.

 

The handbrake is a lousy design which uses little drum brakes incorporated in the rear disks. The only adjustment is at the lever end and this is only designed to compensate for stretch in the cable or play in the mechanisms, but not wear in the shoes or drums. Do yourself a favour and buy some proper adjusters to replace the solid spacer that Volvo used to save a few krona. The handbrake probably still won't be brilliant, but getting it to work well enough for an MOT becomes much quicker and easier .

 

The handbrake on my 850, which does have the adjusters, is excellent. Even on dry tarmac you can't overcome the handbrake when trying to pull away, if the car moves at all it will be dragging the back wheels.

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Your rear brakes appear to be the same design as on my V70, so I'll offer a grain of 'Volvo brake wisdom'.

 

The handbrake is a lousy design which uses little drum brakes incorporated in the rear disks. The only adjustment is at the lever end and this is only designed to compensate for stretch in the cable or play in the mechanisms, but not wear in the shoes or drums. Do yourself a favour and buy some proper adjusters to replace the solid spacer that Volvo used to save a few krona. The handbrake probably still won't be brilliant, but getting it to work well enough for an MOT becomes much quicker and easier .

The hand brake is terrible, luckily I can put it in park, I will think I'll need these for the next MOT

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Another 'key learning' from the hours spent with my head inside a Volvo's rear wheelarch is to replace the handbrake shoes when you have the rear brakes apart, even if they aren't worn out.  

 

The reason for this wild extravagance is that the linings come unstuck from the shoes.  If you are a winner, you will notice that your handbrake has suddenly stopped working and investigate before anything expensive happens.  If you are less fortunate, the loose brake lining will get caught up and jam the brake on whilst you are driving. The shoes then shear their pivot point off the hub, which I suspect is a 'fail safe' to prevent the wheel locking up.   You can then either replace the hub (which looked like a bit of a faff, iirc) or buy a shonky looking bracket to repair it with.  

 

For once, I was in group A and managed to retrieve the loose lining from mine before it did any damage, then drove around with no handbrake until I could get to the motor factor for some new shoes.   Not having a handbrake is far more inconvenient than it sounds.

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You'll find a detached lining and a load of dust when you open it up. The disc/drums, on the 850/V70 and 940 at least, are so comically cheap that I generally change them if they are worn at all. If you don't have adjusters you should be able to get a pair from Upullit for a couple of pounds, there's no advantage at all in buying them new.

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No petrol Volvo with a five cylinder engine will do more than 30mpg on a good combined cycle, and you can squeeze 40 on a very well-behaved run.

 

The 2.4 20v is a wonderfully smooth engine, but in 140hp form it's really not enough for a very large saloon/estate (same engine was put into the V70).

 

The engine will go on forever and a day, so if you want to waft everywhere at 50-60mph and don't mind changing down to 4th for hills if you have passengers/luggage, it's hard to beat. What I would say is that my V70 with the 140hp 2.4 in it over winter was getting 22mpg from a tank, which involved a good blast at 70mph each way going to work and back.

 

If it's the 170hp flavour of the 2.4 20v then snatch the seller's hand off. If my V70 had been a 170hp I'd have kept it forever. Probably. Again, I wouldn't hope for more than 30mpg if you're lucky, expect 25mpg to avoid disappointment.

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My daily commute is 30 miles A roads which involve slowing down for 30mph through villages and 30 miles motorway. There's a few good sized hills on the motorway. Doing 70 on motorway and you're best to do 60 along the A roads gave me 30mpg. Dropping the motorway speed to 60 gave me 35mpg for the combined trip. On straight level road doing sixty you easily see high 30's mid 40's on the instantaneous read out. Rantingyoof is totally right about the 140bhp, the worse thing though if you look at the power curve it climbs nicely to 140 then drops off. So when you're overtaking you're accelerating past then suddenly you stop accelerating as the revs climb and you hit the dip. I've seen a place in Nottingham that will put the 170 map on for £160 and I'm quite tempted if I'm down that way.

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That would be £160 well spent, we had an early S80 auto 170 and it was great, surprisingly quick for a barge.

Anyway, a local Volvo specialist had it for a service and ripped the front bumper off on the ramp. They were apologetic and the owner dropped off his own V70 for Mrs N to use whilst it was repaired.

She called me to say there was something wrong with the estate, it 'wouldn't go and felt funny'

Turned out it was perfectly OK, just a 140, but for her to notice is amazing .

Years before I swapped her 2600 SD1 for a Twin Plenum Vitesse- both black, it was only when a friend's husband commented on the boy racer spoiler on her car that she asked me about it , and I explained it was a different car.

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The window not winding up straight is quite a common fault and I had bought new blue plastic sliders to go in the runners. It was then I discovered that the original slider hadn't broken up instead it looked like part of the slider mechanism had seared off. As I live in Siberia whilst I was wondering if the S60 uses the same mechanism as these are more common in the breakers, a gust of wind blew the door card over and against a handy small wall which nicely scuffed the top of it. To say I was incredibly pissed off at this would be putting it mildly. 

 

These slider pics fill me with fear, spent hours fixing them on E36 BMWs and now W210 Mercedes.   Why are they so shite?   Hope yours is fixed for good now, I have been driving round with no rear door card and a repaired but not replaced mechanism for about 6 months.

 

Also, S80s are now on my list of barges earmarked for future purchase.

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Lovely car, just lovely.

Gearbox fluid looks ok to me, not brown burnt and stinky, and Volvo call it filled for life. I have always believed that only bad things can come from changing the auto box fluid, if gearbox is working well. If gearbox is not working well, then only good things can come from changing it.

Got to be the right fluid as well.

There is a Volvo forum that has  many scary "I changed my trans fluid and now its fooked....." type threads

 

Handbrake works much better for MOT etc with a little pull while on the move to clean up the surfaces. If the shoes are nearly dead then this process will kill them, naturally.

 

Lovely car.

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Lovely car, just lovely.

Gearbox fluid looks ok to me, not brown burnt and stinky, and Volvo call it filled for life. I have always believed that only bad things can come from changing the auto box fluid, if gearbox is working well. If gearbox is not working well, then only good things can come from changing it.

Got to be the right fluid as well.

There is a Volvo forum that has  many scary "I changed my trans fluid and now its fooked....." type threads

 

Handbrake works much better for MOT etc with a little pull while on the move to clean up the surfaces. If the shoes are nearly dead then this process will kill them, naturally.

 

Lovely car.

 

I'm the opposite; Changed the auto fluid on my 850 and it went from good to divine. Simplest thing in the world to change - A bit of a faff on your own, but with 2 people it's a breeze.

 

Undo the oil cooler, start her up, take 1/2 litre out, Stop. Add half a litre. Repeat.

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I'm the opposite; Changed the auto fluid on my 850 and it went from good to divine. Simplest thing in the world to change - A bit of a faff on your own, but with 2 people it's a breeze.

 

Undo the oil cooler, start her up, take 1/2 litre out, Stop. Add half a litre. Repeat.

This sounds like a good idea do you have a link to a guide showing this at all? Looks a less faffing than other methods.
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An update from this morning, I noticed after the cambelt change I could feel some vibration in the steering wheel at 65mph+. I initially thought maybe I had an unbalanced wheel or a bit of grit had got stuck to the hub when I had the driver's front wheel off. But if for example I put cruise on at 70mph and let the car go up and down the hills on the M90 the vibration is only there under power. I.e. when going down hill there's no vibration but when climbing back up the vibration returns. According to the Volvo forums this is an indication one of my driveshafts is knackered. I think its a bit weird this coincided with the cambelt change. I used the gear hold function to check that it wasn't at a certain engine rpm to rule out the engine. Anyone know what else it could be?

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Funny you should say that I noticed the top bush that connects to the steady bar is torn. Think this is the cause? If so where would you recommend I get a bush from? Ive seen them on ebay, but I have bought wishbones from ebay that used jelly for rubber in the past which makes me weary of buying a mount. You can also shake the whole top cross bar quite easily, is this normal?

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