I have owned a Volvo 960 Station wagon for the past 15 years now. It is the car I learned to drive on and the car I now drive to work everyday. It has a fair bit of wear and tear but only 118K miles on it.

I would like to keep this car at least through the end of the year (was looking into an s60r or something else, but want to wait till the economy picks up a bit), but it is a hard choice since repairing every bit is so expensive. I live in the Bay Area, and when driving down the freeway, the mirror glass flew off. Just that and the housing itself cost $100 with install.

I'll name a few issues.
1. The front seats do not move period. When I click the left toggle to move the seat back or forward, no reply. There is a lot of build up of Gunk under the seats, but removing the whole seat and fixing this issue I am sure would cost a fair bit of money.

2. Many of the little plastic parts are broken. I have saved most of them, but would have to glue it all back together to make them stay. The biggest problem is behind my steering wheel, and near my foot brake, there is a little black box that always falls out (it used to stick by glue), and it gets behind my brake so sometimes the break will not go all the way down. My current fix is a lot of duct tape.

3. The right passenger door inside door handle broke off. To open the door now, someone has to roll down the window, and open it from the outside. I know this will be a hefty cost to fix.

5. Oil is leaking, and it smells of gas alot. The mechanic said to let the car warm up every morning for a minute or so. I leave every morning to work at about 5 am so it is still fairly cold outside. I leave the car on for about 3-5 minutes, but you can smell the gas inside the car a lot, and the car will shake quite a bit.

There are a lot more problems I could go on about, but from the looks of this, would you say I could fix many of these issues myself, or is it best to have a mechanic work on it?
I would like to save some money by doing it myself, but need the car to still drive and don't want to mess any of this up.

Anyone ever been in this situation before and any tips here?

Really do appreciate it!

 

If you do the work, at least most of it, yourself you can save a lot and learn in the process. If you take it to a shop and say, "here, fix it all", you will be screwed. By the sound of your issues they are no big deal, cosmetics mainly. The car has low miles which should indicate healthy basics. When was the timing belt changed last?

 

I believe the timing belt was changed around 70k miles.
Are there any tutorials on how to fix this myself? I have never worked on cars before.

 

Man, I am all for saving money, but on T-belt..... If you don't know how to, maybe seek someone whom does and have them help you. The error can be deadly!

 

1) So the seat don't move? As long as it's in a comfy position, forget it.

2) Junkyard is your best friend. PickNPull is the way to go and get all that crap for like less than $20.00 if you find a similar car.

3) Hey, that's the passenger's problem Seriously, get one from a junkyard and when you figure out how to get the panel off the junk car, you are set to do yours.

5?) At least get that fixed by a tech. Gas is nothing to mess with if you are unsure of what you are doing.