50K miles 2015 XC70 - replace rings and pistons
 

Hi folks,
2015 XC70 T6- only owner, all maintenance has been done. No other problems.

At ~55K miles, my oil light came on and the car needed 2 qts. I had regular service at 60K miles and told service about this. Then at ~69K I had to add a qt again. I had regular service at 70K miles and again told them about this.

Today I get a call telling me that Volvo says I need new rings and pistons - a $3,700 repair that they will provide with "customer participation" of $1,000.

Has anyone else needed rings and pistons at 50K miles? Is there anyway to get Volvo to pay for the whole repair?

Thanks!

You mention two quarts to bring it up to par, then 14k miles later another quart. I'll assume that you had an oil change at 60k so you ended up using 1 quart in 9k miles.

that's not high oil consumption

That's interesting - thanks for your help. Volvo service is giving me kind of a hard sell on this repair - "this offer is on the table for only a couple days and then you are on your own". Basically, you better do this or you will be stuck later.

That type of sales tactic is laughable. What was their diagnosis that says that you need new rings and pistons?

I agree and was pretty shocked - I've been a customer with this office for 7 years, through 4 Volvos.

He just kept telling me that they checked everything and this was the result.

The service manager is supposed to call me Monday to tell me more (hopefully before the deal is off the table).

My experience was with my VW CC - at about 48K miles (under warranty) my oil light began to flicker. root cause turned out to be debris (ie metal filings) in the pick up. VW (not the dealer) agreed to replace the long block under warranty, a $9800 repair on a car with a resale value of about $15,000. All the negotiations for coverage were between the dealer and the factory service team and I suspect my problem was not the first one they had seen. A few years back, BMW went through a similar issue on their V8s where their cylinder wall hardening process failed on a series of cars so the dealers went through a goodwill process of quietly repairing symtomatic cars to avoid the noise of a recall notice. As Tony noted, there is likely to be some policy guidance on what constitutes "burning oil" - old school was a quart every 1000 - but modern driver expectations is the car should go the full change cycle without an add (ie 7500 miles). I'd probably ask to talk to both the service manager (head guy, not the service advisor behind the counter) and see if you can get a contact for a factory rep to hear their policy. Keep in mind warranty repairs and goodwill are typically funded by the factory not the dealer so its good to understand where your case fits. On the practical side, $1000 seems like a lot of money but if your plans are to own the car for another 5-10 years and 100K+ miles then getting the rings tight may be a good piece of mind. There's no certainty the car will get worse but if it does you'd be looking a a big ticket item.

Seems like if you had cracked rings or scored cylinder walls (or whatever other reason to replace pistons) you should have some ferocious amounts of oil smoke coming out the tail pipe. Do you see anything like that? Are the spark plugs black?