I never claimed to be a mechanic but after all the things I've replaced do to poor mechanics at my local volvo dealer which caused most of my problems. I will be the only one that works on my car. A far stretch from my comfy office chair. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions regarding any items I have listed in the title of this post.

I took my car to the local dealer to get a recall done on it. Of course they found a few things that needed to be fixed so I gave them the go ahead to give it the full 120K service. They also replaced the thermostat even though I told them that I had just replaced it and please leave it in there. They replaced the bottom hose to the coolant tank as well. I have no idea how much fluid they lost during the replacement of those hoses but according to the service manager, they always check the coolant to see if it needs to be replaced. I got the car back a day later and on the 20 minute drive home I started smelling coolant. I pulled into the napa auto parts 3 blocks from my house and bought coolant, and a top hose that the tech had over tightened and thus put a hole in it. $35 aside from the $1100 I had just given the dealer. That was in April of 09. December of 2009 we had a cold snap here where it got down to 14 degrees F for about a week. The radiator cracked in the midst of the cold, I replaced it. $220 and an *** load of time, 9hrs. Two weeks later, the car started over heating and my first thought was the thermostat even though they should be good for a 100k plus, but it was acting similarly to months before when I replaced the original one. It was sporadic, some times it would overheat in a 5 min. trip around the block and sometimes it would go for a 20 min trip with no problems. I bought a new thermostat, $14 but it didn't fix the overheating issue. I took it to a friend that is more of a ford mechanic and he couldn't figure it out. I was peering into the engine compartment on the pulley side to see if perhaps the water pump was going out and yahtzee! I saw a drip off of the lower part of the block that ran down on top of the control arm and then down into the tire. New water pump $65 and while I'm in there, since it has an internal water pump, a timing belt and tensioner pulley. I recommend the kit, Napa $215. For all the work I put into it not counting the ABS mod. I spent $514 roughly.

I called the dealer and asked if they could give me a bid for replacing everything that I had replaced. Their bill would have come to $2309 at the very least. still not including the ABS mod. They wanted an additional $1300 for that. I did it myself for $250 (Thank you IPD USA on the web at http://www.ipdusa.com/) I sent the Dealer a bill for $2309 and I have yet to hear back from them... not even a phone call. it's been a month.

2000 V70 XC 132,000 and still my ski rig of choice!