Hello everyone, My husband and I helped my daughter in buying a 1998 V70 wagon for her family. She has an infant and when she received her tax money wanted a car that was more dependable then what she had. We thought with 80K miles it was a good deal for her. She has had this for a month and took to a dealer day before and was told she had an oil leak. My son said he would fix it so we picked the car up and I followed him home and the car caught fire on the highway. Fire department said it was electrical. Should the dealership have caught this or checked for recalls or could they have even caused this to have happened?

 

Should the dealer have caught it? Depends on what services they performed and where they were working. If they were looking at the rear brakes, one would be hard pressed to say they should have caught a potential fire hazard by the air filter, for instance. A buyer's check prior to purchase is always a good thing and can often be a deal breaker on a purchase. Still, many flaws can be fine today and a fire tomorrow. Is the car totaled?

 

yes it is

 

Can they tell what caused the fire? That's pretty rare. Sorry to hear that happened.

Why did you take the car to the dealer? What service did they preform?

 

My daughter took the car in to have it checked for an oil leak. The dealer found 2 leaks and my son told her not to spend the $2000 at the dealer, he said he would fix it for her with my husbands help this weekend. We picked up the car and i followed him home with my grandbaby in the car and it started smoking real bad then he pulled over and flames were under the hood. The firemen said it was electrical. My husband now thinks it had to do with the ABS since the light was on aprior to the fire and the front brakes were recently replaced. Any known recalls for this?

 

I don't know about recalls but I'm sure if there was any that it would have been taken care of by now.

It's really strange that a 13 year old car just all the sudden caught fire after a mechanic was under the hood. I wonder if there was a fuel like damaged or comeone messed up some kind of wire by leaning on it or something. I wonder if they took something loose looking for the leaks and didn't connect it back or something.

Our S70 had some oil leaks a few months ago. On my way home from a metting one night it started leaking so bad that I left a trail of oil for 2 miles. I lost about 3 quarts of oil. So, I would guess that it was a electrical mis-hap or a fuel related one.

 

This doesn't delute what I have posted above but I found this post about a V90 fire.
https://volvoforums.com/forum/sale-t...73/#post265769