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Reg_Bo11ox' Volvo S80 D5 adventure


Mr_Bo11ox

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Drove this to work this morning, the first time I have done any decent ~70mph wafting in it. Annoyingly, theres still a wheelbearing drone. I think I might have changed the wrong one!!!!

I’ll have to sort it, as its otherwise almost silent at 70mph. Can’t be having the peace and quiet disrupted like that, it was spoiling my enjoyment of my CD of Portuguese ‘Fado’ songs and thus stopping me from feeling really sad and miserable by the time I got to work. Unacceptable. Still, at least I know they are pretty easy to change.

Also ordered a new hinge for the fuel flap which swings open on left-hand bends (£6!)

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I had a really easy S80 (99 I think) with the 2.9 petrol and it was a lovely thing to drive. No pretentious of sportiness you get with some of the german stuff just big comfy seats and a nice ride.
I aways thought that shoulder on the door that goes all the way back to the boot and into the tail light was a really neat design.
I'd love to rock one of those.

I think they came with a simple 4spd auto too, rather than the SplodeTronic.

Sent from my SM-G960F using Tapatalk

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7 hours ago, Jenson Velcro said:

Could the noise just be a tyre?

I’ve had it before when a tyre is old or tread gets low and new boots solves the problem.

I had this very issue on an old BMW E39, spent a fortune on new front wheel bearings and it was the nearly new tyres making the noise. I wasn’t vexed at all about it, honest

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10 minutes ago, scdan4 said:

I’d like to also own up to changing wheel bearings and discovering that it was the tyres.

 

I almost went one worse, when our ML started getting noisy from the front end, I eliminated wheel bearings because it was constant and not affected by bends. So I decided after reading on the internet , obviously , it needed a front diff .  This is a common problem and even secondhand ones go for £300+ , plus of course labour. Another fucking disaster looming.

Then I bought some new tyres, that cured the diff noise, instantly.

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1 hour ago, Steviemillar said:

I had this very issue on an old BMW E39, spent a fortune on new front wheel bearings and it was the nearly new tyres making the noise. I wasn’t vexed at all about it, honest

Deffo worth checking, I had a nasty drone that I put down to a wheel bearing, I was convinced.  

Then I shoved a couple of new tyres on and it was silent.  

As soon as I removed one wheel, I could see an undulating water pattern on the inner edge of the tyre and immediately concluded ‘bet that is the cause of the noise’ and it was.

I’ve knocked up 5000 miles since the tyre swap and all is silent.  

 

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Terrible photo, great car. I love my S60. I would echo the comments on crashy suspension but otherwise I've never had a car so good at effortlessly covering distance.

I have a bad back and always get out feeling refreshed.

A shame it's going this year when our EV arrives......fcf664b2270af3506cc143b7a732ce30.jpg

Sent from my SM-A202F using Tapatalk

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22 hours ago, Mr_Bo11ox said:

good tips chaps. I will make a token attempt to diagnose the problem properly this time rather than just buying bits, lashing them on then evaluating the consequences or lack thereof

Two separate people got in my car whilst I had the rumble and both said ‘you got a wheel bearing gone on this’ within a few yards.

it isn’t just us shitters that get it wrong.  When I was a 17, a neighbour witnessed me pulling engines out and all sorts.  He wandered over one evening and I thought I was gonna get a lecture about fixing cars in the street, but no, he wanted me to test drive his Morris Ital 2.0 Auto.  He explained he had an annoying rattle and the main stealers had replaced discs, pads, bearings, shocks and the whole nine yards, emptied his wallet and told him nowt wrong.

Anyway, grabbed my toolbox and off we went.  After half a mile I pulled into the lay-by, got out and had a look at the NSF.  I said to you mind if I take the wheel trims off.  He said ‘fine’ so off they came.  When we set back off, the rattle had gone.

He was real chuffed and was off to tell the main stealers what he thought.  In all fairness, I had a head start as just about everything had already been replaced.

 

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I don’t suppose many 2.0 Ital’s survived.  I had a 1.7SL Estate once that thought it was a 2.0, it had a really sweet engine in it, we called it the rocket and it got driven hard.

A mate of mine, who was in the trade ‘proper’ reckoned it would get to 80k and go ‘Bang’

Late one night, having done a good stretch of the M6 and M42 ‘flat’ it developed a slight miss, then a cough, flames out the zorst and ‘Bang’ followed by a nasty rattle, I just kept my foot in, almost got it home.  Head of a valve had dropped off and smashed the piston and head proper like.

whist I was fixing it, neighbour with the 2.0 wandered over for a chat “I’ve blown this one up, let me know if you need yours test driving again ?

I had an S60 as a fleet car for a few months, my first and only Volvo.  It had the D5 diesel and I was well impressed with that car and engine.  Yours has come together well and should serve you well for some time.

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On 7/15/2020 at 9:10 PM, bramz7 said:

Please press resume on the cruise after going from 70 (or higher) down to 60. I've never had such hard acceleration from cruise. 

I may be able to top this, although not in a standard car. Years ago, when my Stellar was still 'powered' by a lowly 1.6 litre engine, kicking out 74 rampaging horses on a good day, I fitted an aftermarket cruise control system. Obviously when setting this up I adjusted the sensitivity of the response to match the engine.

However, upon fitting the V8 I neglected to tweak the cruise control - which I realised fairly soon as the action was a little jerky. When pressing resume however, I wasn't quite expecting the on/off action!

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On my old V70, I had the wheel bearings fail on the front, however they didn't really drone, just a sudden transition from silent to  'holy sh*t - the wheel's about to fall off!' The first after hitting an average UK sized pothole, and the other a few months later after driving up a farm track.

As mentioned, probably worth swapping wheels about first, to see if you can move the noise to the rear. 

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+1 on the tyres, I’ve just replaced the ditchfinders on my wife’s Astra with some half decent Continentals. It’s like a different car and the droning has vanished. +1 also for not doing as I did on my XR2 and replacing a wheel bearing (twice, after fucking up the first attempt) then finding it was EXACTLY THE FRIGGING SAME with the problem eventually diagnosed as being a shagged diff. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Quick update on this plus comments invited on what to do next.

IMG_20200804_105120043.jpg

I've driven this Volvo about 1000 miles now, its going great. Pretty much everything is working and its so comfortable that I still look forward to getting in it and going somewhere. BUT its got a persistent problem, which is that it is losing coolant somewhere, not obscene amounts but enough to be an annoyance and disrupt the Karma significantly.

Theres no sign of an external leak, not that I can find anyway. No drips when you park up. No steam in the exhaust and no oil in the water or vice versa. No mayo under the oil cap and it starts on the button and sounds 'normal'. So wheres the coolant going? I chucked a radweld in it, but that didn't fix owt.

The only clue I've got is that the other day when I was pottering about (on a mega hot day) I caught it in the act of pushing some water out of the expansion bottle lid. I've inspected the seal on that and it seems OK. I have also tried to see if any bubbles are coming up in the expansion bottle. I am not certain about this, because its all compartmentalized inside the bottle its difficult to see, so I might do the old trick of taping an upturned pop bottle to the filler hole and raising the water head up so I can see better if there are any bubbles coming up. I have run it for 15 secs from cold and removed the cap to see if any pressure had built up, and I didn't detect any.

Basically I am wondering if there is a very slight head gasket leak. I've studied the Volvo forums and theyre pretty insistent on there that D5 head gaskets 'don't go' but even this HG could not really be considered 'failed'. My feeling is, after 190k and however many hot/cold cycles that entails it seems possible that the best gasket in the world could suffer some wear on one of its sealing beads that could let a bit of combustion pressure through. Looking at replacement gaskets they are all the multi-layer steel type so a 'minor fail' like this seems possible.

I reckon i could probably change it OK (can't see it being any more of a fiddle than a K-series VVC for example) but it looks like an expensive business. £50 for the gasket, £20 for new stretch bolts and another £50 for a kit with all the other gaskets in. Also i havent got a torque wrench believe it or not, so thats a few more quid unless I can borrow one off the neighbour. Plus that's a full days work innit. On the upside, its surprisingly OK to work on this thing I find - everything I've done on it so far has been pretty straightforward and theres plenty of room in the engine bay (unlike that Fiat Croma). Would probably be quite a satisfying job to clear up in a day and if I was sure that would sort the problem I would defo tackle it.

I don't wanna get embroiled in it till I'm a bit more certain that its defo the root cause though. The car is quite usable as long as you keep an eye on the coolant level (drove down to Cambridge on Sunday with no problems at all) Any tips? Has anyone on here got involved in a D5 head gasket job before? How can I pin-point the issue? I know you can buy sniff-test kits off ebay for a tenner or so, I'm thinking of trying one of those next. Any comments gang?

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The expansion tanks on the petrols do 'go off' with age, without really showing any obvious symptoms other than persistent coolant loss, I'd assume it's the same on the oil burners. Tickman's UV dye suggestion is worth following, but a tank and cap aren't expensive to get as a precautionary measure.

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