Hi guys, I have a pretty bad problem with my beloved 240 wagon. I had a lot of front end vibration/clunking coming out of the car recently so found a reputable shop here to take a look at it.
When they looked at it they said the motor mounts were shot, the drive shaft coupling needed replacing, the u-joints needed replacing, the rear springs needed replacing, and the rear sway link bushings were completely shot and there was metal-to-metal contact. I also had them replace the strut tower bushings/mounts and the fuel pump and filter. So, I spent the $1400 to have all those items replaced.

I went to pick up the car and it drove great...down city streets.

When I got on the highway, there was an obvious road vibration coming out of the rear end as I got up to 60mph. It reverberated throughout the cabin and a little through the steering wheel, so I drove it right back.

They called me a little later saying they felt the drive shaft wasn't balanced. So somehow it went out of balance after they did all the work? They ended up sending the car to another shop which added weights to the drive shaft to balance it.

I went to pick up the car yesterday and 70% of the vibration was gone, but it was still definitely noticable.

Can anyone tell me based on this info what they did wrong or could be the possible fix? They're having the car sent over to a tire shop to get the wheels balanced but I don't think that's it. It feels like it's something in the actual driveline. I know what an out of balance wheel feels like. Anyways, thanks for your help (again)

Nick

 

the drive shaft was indexed when it was assemble and balanced in the factory, its real important if you seperate the two halves at the spline that you put it together the same way it came apart.

but, this is a 26 year old car... everything rubber in it, including those bushings, motor mounts, etc, are quite probably shot.

I dunno, but if I was paying a shop to replace strut bushings, I'd probably get new struts/shocks, too.

if it was driven significantly with that much vibration before the repairs, yeah, your tire balance is suspect, in fact the tires could have significant uneven wear which even balancing will only partly mask. I took tires off an old VW once that had flat spots all the way around it, due to bad suspension bits causing nasty resonant vibrations the driver/owner hippie chick had ignored for a year... you spun the tire with the car in the air, and you could feel bumps on it as it went around. there was plenty of tread on these tires, but no balance would have fixed it.

 

why would they do that to a drive shaft that was balanced to begin with.
sounds like it was re-assembled wrong...

 

'drive shaft coupling needed replacing', 'ujoints replaced'...

the U joints are an integral part of the driveshaft, and if that coupling is referring to the piece '9' here, which is also part of one of the U joints, well, that driveshaft assembly needs to be rebalanced. this is normally done by drilling, not by gluing weights on it.

 

It is really hard to guess what's wrong after such an extensive repair, who knows what they did wrong, or used substandard parts, or?

I am generally biased against such diagnoses, calling for so much work, naming so many things to be replaced all at once. I am always suspicious that the shop is either incompetent or looking for extra income when they list several causes for a specific issue--almost always it is one thing casing the problem! A competent shop will diagnose it right and fix it, not replace a bunch of parts "to be on the safe side". These days especially, many new parts are substandard. You change them, assume they are perfect since they are new when in fact, may be not...
"Volvo, do less!"

 

Thank you all for your advice and help. I guess I might have to just pull the car from these guys and send it elsewhere. Unfortunately there's no good 'Volvo' expert here in Santa Cruz.

N

 

Specialized *used* to be good when they were a Volvo-only shop and the lead mechanic did most of the work himself. Now they seem to have that dealer shop mentality, and don't want to work on anything over about 10-15 years old.