Volvo S80 diagnostic rubbish

[garethj]

To some extent the owners bring it on themselves. The scenario of the car needs a new cat, it'll cost £600 for a genuine one or £250 for a pattern one, what's going to happen? the instruction from the owner will be get the £250 one.

 

From experience, the £250 one is £250 for a reason, they contain less material and don't fit exactly the same. We had this on a Fabia, the lambda probe hole was further round, (straining the cable and very close to the floor) and it kept popping the light on every couple of weeks with an efficiency fault. You fall into the trap of, it's had a new cat, the fault must be something else. You spend time cleaning and resetting the throttle body, erasing learned values and checking for implausible signals from a myriad of sensors every time the car comes back, you spend time on it which you know the customer is not willing to pay for. You turn full circle and get a genuine second hand cat and the problems solved. Lesson learnt, make the customer aware that a cheap cat may not be upto the job.

True, sort of. I'm sure a replacement cat isn't to Volvo quality, it probably won't last 100,000 miles and it won't take the bumps that the original would, or maybe if you get it hot and drive through a puddle it'll crack where the original spec one would survive.

 

But it only works for a few months? Surely I shouldn't expect that?

 

I used to work for Serck who made car radiators, they sold original equipment ones, and aftermarket ones. The aftermarket ones wouldn't keep your car cool in death valley when the front was plastered with dead insects and half the fins were missing, the OE ones would. But for most people, under conditions you'd find in Britain and as long as you were a bit careful, it was fine. That's a fair exchange of quality against price. I don't think that's what I've had. I'm ---><---- this close to torching the fucking thing with the mechanic in the boot

[Morgan84]

Any part should last a year anyhow;provided its not mistreated

[Rocket88]

We had an old lady with a Fabia in for an ABS fault, she had gone to the local dealer where they fitted a new ABS unit at £650 and it didn't cure it. We code read it (at our standard charge), fixed it in 10 minutes and it was fine, cost her £50 in total. When she collected the car she was a bit mistrusting of our repair, we had to demonstrate that the system was working exactly as the manufacturer intended, maybe if she had had a much larger bill, she may have been more accepting that it was fixed. To my knowledge she never went back to the dealer for an explaination or some money back on her original £650 invoice.

 

Wasn't one of the big fuses on top of the battery, by any chance?

[r.welfare]

I was going to ask that! My wife had a Fabia previously which developed the same fault (IIRC traction control light came on too) - fusible link on the underside of the battery case. Total cost = £0 as there was a 'spare' one there, I was crapping myself it was going to be £££ to fix.

 

Gareth - may be worth a trip to Lakes (the big Volvo breakers) on the A1(M) just outside Biggleswade for a secondhand cat?

[Guest Len H]

Reading this thread makes me glad I've persisted with my offensively shit, almost fully analogue car.

[Guest]

Reading this thread makes me glad I've persisted with my offensively shit, almost fully analogue car.

 

Unless it's so obscure and shit no-one can get you a part for it when something goes hilariously wrong. Two of one, half a dozen of the other.

[AnthonyG]

If its Len H of old its either a Mk3 Golf or a 405 I think.

[theorganist]

I must admit this thread does make me very wary of ever owning a "modern car" again. Everything seems to expensive to repair!!

 

Unless it's so obscure and shit no-one can get you a part for it when something goes hilariously wrong. Two of one, half a dozen of the other.

 

Thats true although I have managed to keep a Renault 14 on the road for a year now so it is possible!!

[oldford]

Yes it was the fuse on top of the battery, a colleagues Audi A3 did a similar thing and threw up a power supply fault. One of the standard 30 amp blade fuses on top of the battery was dirty and arcing on the contacts, a clean up of the holder and a new fuse fixed it.

 

Talking of pattern cats lasting, we got a cheap one in for a Peugeot 106 which in fact made the CO emissions higher. thinking that our diagnosis was lacking, a new lambda probe went in without making any difference. We ended up splitting the old cat open and grafting the insides of an old Skoda Felicia cat into it. The cat transplant was 100% successful with virtually 0% CO emissions.

[RichL]

From experience I would suspect the original fault with the car was the throttle body. I worked at a Volvo main dealer at the time these were new and we did loads of warranty claims on all petrol models for this fault.They used to clog up with crap, it was possible to clean them up but the fault always came back. New ones were mega money then and needed software coding. Cat converters rarely fail on Volvo 5 pot engines and the fitting of the aftermarket item is what seems to have caused all the problems. I'm not suprised. As oldford has said they are cheap for a reason...