VOLVO V70 D5 INFO pls.

[warninglight]

An S80 with that mileage is going to be so cheap as to be worth a punt, no?

 

Assuming it's priced to around £700 max and is now on its third cambelt and second water pump!

[SiC]

If >2003 then most gearbox problems (if not left broken for years), can be solved with a valve body change. They can be had reasonably cheaply new now - http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Volvo-S80-Automatic-AF55-50-Gearbox-Valve-Body-/181479114641

[phil_lihp]

A friend of mine has one on an 05 plate, about 150,000 miles on it, he's had it maybe 3 years or so and gets it serviced at a dealer every year, to my knowledge he's had very little trouble with it.  There's a known fault with these where water gets into one of the fuseboxes and causes the alarm to go off randomly, the fix for that was to pull the fuse which also stops the sunroof working but I don't know of any other problems he's had with it.

[warninglight]

As I understand it that alarm fault is the backup battery in the alarm siren (in the inner wing) which spills its guts over the PCBs, making it go a bit haywire.

 

Alarm System Service or similar comes up on the dash. A new siren is c. £120 the last time I checked. My S60 had the fuse pulled which killed the sunroof too. Fuse back in and siren disconnected has sorted that. The alarm does occasionally still go off of its own volition but now does nothing more than flash the hazards for a bit. Tempting to fix it, but it's not a huge inconvenience.

[Lankytim]

Will the valve body change not work with post 2003 Vulvas then?

[SiC]

Requires an updated wiring loom, or creative routing of the cable. Also requires an update of the transmission computer (dealer or specialist).