Hello,

I'm recently engaged to a 96 850 Turbo Wagon owner. She almost loves me as much as her car so I figured I need to learn how to work on her Volvo. The odometer gear broke at 148k and I found an oil change sticker from 2013 with the same miles on it... I'll try and dig the mileage out of the computer one of these days.

I've worked on cars as a hobby since I was a boy with my dad. After being laid off last year, I decided to turn that hobby into a career. I'm still new to it professionally but loving it all the same.

I'm looking forward to learning more about my Volvo and helping out as I can.

Eric

 

Welcome to the forum! I have sort of a similar story to you. I found myself taking care of an 850 turbo without really choosing one and I am a hobby mechanic. Long story short, I discovered I could buy more of them for $500 any time I needed anything, and that was a habit for a while. I am trying to stop. I find the 850's to be easy to work on once you get used to them, and parts support is good. They are in that phase of life where the junkyard is full of them. It is not easy to find a good 850 Turbo engine anymore, but any other item you want is pretty much oversupplied.

 

its not a career, its an addiction... My adage is no job is worth doing unless there's a new tool to be purchased. Since you have the 96, you are on the OBD2 set up (on my 95 I can pull the mileage from the diagnostics LED). I believe you can collect the info from the Drivers Information Module but that probably requires a VIDA DICE tool to read out (not an OBD2 reader). A dealer may be able to read back but will charge you the price of buying your own tool on eBay. Fixing the odometer gear is pretty straight forward. Only new tool opportunity is the T8 torx bit to separate the cluster. Word of advise - mark your needle positions (tach, speedo) as you need to pull off to access the odometer.