Hi,
I'm thinking of selling my beloved 740 and upgrading to a newer 960 model sedan. I'd really like to hone in on one year or two before I start shopping. I've done some reading on them, but can't decide whether I want a '92-'94 or a '95-'97. I like the '92-'94 body style better, and the 201 horsepower vs 180 in the later ones. So that would seem to settle it, right? Well, I am drawn to the interior in the later ones with the wood trim/nice stereo and more modern look, but the quality seems to be worse. I see a lot of cars on craigslist with broken up door panels, peeling vinyl, they look terrible, even worse than my 25 year old 740. However, the reliability seems to be improved in the later ones as far as better timing belt, no more porous blocks. Plus I see a lot more of the later ones around.
But which one drives better?
For me "better" comes down to power, handling, ride, interior quality, and which one is easier to work on? I usually do all repairs on my car myself, so that's a big concern. Especially with the rear multilink suspension, which I understand is different between the earlier and later 960s.

Which one has the more comfortable ride?
Better handling?
Does the 201 hp version actually feel faster? and worth the 30K timing belt changes?

Which years do you guys like best?

 

My 98 had broken door panel stuff and so did most of the 960 I have seen in junkyard. The armrest/grab handle was broken on mine, I used super glue on a less broken one from the yard. It's held for more than a year and I have spares now.

They all seem to have broken armrest-cupholders and vinyl peeling away from door panels in the corners. But you can reupholster the door panels just like any other.

I would prefer a later engine, hands down. You can always install early camshafts, they do have a higher lift. I don't think the "lost power" was frequently useable, and it was made up for in low end torque. The stall speed of the converter was changed to match the new cams.

I would not worry about the lower horsepower rating at all unless you had a manual shift gearbox. Any extra power you happened to get will be sucked away by the automatic gearbox these cars have.

 

Thanks for the reply. You know honestly I don't mind fixing interior plastic, can live with that, mostly I just hate the peeling door panels. Maybe I can find a low mileage/senior owned one that's still good. How big of a job is it to reupholster the door panels?

I would much rather have low end torque than high rpm power, so the later engine appeals to me. My DD is a 740 with the 114 hp B230F, so low end power is what I'm used to anyway. I have a relaxed driving style, and rarely get that motor above 3000 RPM. So I won't be matting the gas pedal or manually shifting gears to squeeze out those 20 extra horses. lol
How do you like the ride/interior comfort on the 960? I guess that's the other deciding factor for me, since I would use the car daily and probably for long trips.

 

I also have a '98 (S90). The 1998 S90 is the same as a 1997 960 other than a few new options such as the SE package. Like any model, the last year is usually the best year to buy. Honestly, the ride quality is Mercedes Benz E series comparable - smooth, yet firm.


The 960 was designed to be a tourer which means it loves highway driving. The engine performs best at 60-70mph or 2,500 to 3,000 rpm. The more stop and go driving you do, the more I would suggest using the best fuels, filters and oil.


The best thing about ownership is appreciating the engineering that went into this thing. When you start working on it, you realize how much thought went into every little part.


Some people complain about the maintenance required for these cars but when you calculate that cost over the amount of miles you get out of these cars, cost to own is low. Most of these 960's have lots of miles on them but I've seen a few out there with 60 - 70,000 miles going for reasonable prices.


Good luck and I'm sure you'll be thrilled with your purchase.

 

Get vinyl, heat gun, glue and glue it on.

I have not yet replaced any but I have used the heat gun to stretch out slightly shrunken vinyl and reglue it.

I hope I will be able to get my car to ride the way Hylton says. 190K miles and it's probably riding on just the springs. The car tramlines a little too so I might have to get a press and change the bushings. Anyway I have had mine for a year, still have a list of things to do, and apart from things like tires I could easily spend $500 on the car today.

 

I remember reading that Volvo used some kind of "environmentally friendly" glue in the 90s that was junk and that's what caused the door problem. At least it's fixable.

If I've learned anything about buying a used Volvo, it's that maintenance records are a MUST. I took a gamble on the last one with not a shred of paperwork
and paid dearly. lol

Most of these cars seem to be well taken care of, even high milers probably due to their high initial cost and the type of people
who would usually buy them (older, more mature people). My goal is to find one with no more than 130K on it.

I would love to find one with that elusive aqua blue/teal color.
But they're like finding a needle in a haystack.

 

What problems did you have with your last try?

We must have gotten lucky because we inherited ours from someone who couldn't be bothered. We got a couple work order tickets from jiffy lube and knowledge that it had PNP switch issues and was running on 5 cylinders for 40,000 miles before we got it. We should have found no compression in that hole and a gearbox full of sticky tar. When I took the timing belt off I found the date still legible and concluded that it had been there for 110,000 miles.

Now we are taking the car on road trips but I am wondering what is going to happen to the gearbox when I flush the oil. I'm considering saving what I pump out so I can put it back if the gearbox starts slipping with new oil.

 

I was talking about when I bought my '89 740, as in your case by people who couldn't be bothered. Should have known that even without service records, but I loved the car and had to have it. I have all the issues I fixed listed in my garage page.

So much for "lifetime fluid", huh? The problem is a lot of people believe that nonsense, and you see 960s with blown trannys and only 180K miles. However the 960 transmission does seem to be stout, lots of them with 250K and original trans. Most of the trans problems I hear about on this forum are electronics related and not mechanical. Holding onto the old fluid is definitely a good idea. Sometimes the little metal bits (I call them "friction modifiers" ) are all that keep a transmission going when they have a lot of wear on 'em. After a fluid change (might take several to get all that stuff out) with cherry red fluid in there you will be able to see how bad its wearing, i.e., how fast does it turn back to that tar stuff after you change the fluid. On my annihilated AW70 it went from red to gunmetal grey in a matter of hours, but kept on going until I could get it rebuilt.
if the fluid looks good, it just slips a tiny bit after the change I would reccomend Lucas transmission fix. It fixed a rough shift in my rebuilt AW70 from 1-2.

What was the PNP issue? end up just replacing the switch?

 

There's an S90 in that color on Ebay right now!

 

Exactly! Just bite the bullet and change them all as well as the ball joints. Due to how well these cars hold their shape, it's easy to forget that these rubber parts are 14 years old and gone through many heat cycles.


I always say that regardless of how much $$$ these cars need to be brought up to shape, it's a heck of a lot cheaper than buying the same quality car brand new today.

 

Just curious, what is the SE package? Most S90s I see are identical as you say. Today I saw a nice midnight blue S90 with different wheels than the usual, always wondered if that meant a special model. never seen a 960 with these wheels.

I believe they're called Andromeda

Now I'm definitely set on a '97 or '98 car, thanks for clarifying a lot of things for me. I've totally changed my opinion on the 960 thanks to you guys, used to think they were overcomplicated and unreliable, and not worth the extra dough over a 940. Contrary to their often maligned reputation they seem to have all the earlier gremlins of the 700/900 worked out and are still reasonably simple, reliable, and easy to work on. And I'm really looking forward to all the added luxury over my 740.
I've only driven a 960 wagon around a parking lot (back when I worked at a Volvo dealer) but remember liking it a lot, that's what got me interested in them.

 

Yup. The green book says to take the exhaust manifold off blablabla and to use some special tool to align it blablabla but I managed to slide it between the trans and exhaust. The alignment is pretty easy too.

The PNP switch will go bad from time to time. The contacts wear, and due to it being mounted outside, it suffers from debris ingress too. My car is on at least her 3rd switch (it had been replaced once before.) When I drive, I frequently move to neutral and use the parking brake, but this is a bad behavior to have when I know the switch will wear out.

I have a collection of ATSG books that I got from a torrent somewhere, but have no idea where to get rebuild parts. I've never been inside an automatic box before but I've seen it done and it looks a lot easier than rebuilding a manual shift box. So if it comes to that, I'd rather service the gearbox myself.

I got an inverted flare (m16x1.5) to -6 fitting and a -6 to pushon hose adapter to make the gearbox oil flush go easier and hopefully avoid mess. The only glitch with our gearbox now is a heavy downshift (perhaps 2-1, maybe 3-2, not sure) when braking to a stop.

 

I am rather amazed at the low cost of these bushings from the dealer (the only place to get originals now, lemfoerder stopped selling them in the aftermarket.)

I think that this car is really simple. Most of my wrenching experience is on German cars with a three letter acronym for a name. Compared to that, the 960 is like a Tercel. I have not seen any of the electrical complexity or 'needlessly above and beyond' engineering that is the bane of the aforementioned kraut cars. Volvos that came after the 960 and 850 seem to be heading in that direction though. It's nice to ride around in but it's not a high feature luxury car.

I've had to fix less on the 960 than I did in 2006 when I bought my '94 kraut car with 125k miles. Some of that stuff was 'needless' like the hoses that connect the oil filter to the engine block, and some of it was just difficult because of other situational needlessness, such as having to remove the rad and steering pump to reach the alternator or having a giant $60 PCV valve. And then there were some PO mistakes, like a missing heat shield made the steering box leaky. I have had NO situations like that on the 960.

One more thing, there is not a speck of rust on my S90 body. I have three other 90's vehicles and they are all asking for blast & paint in spots. Not the volvo.

A final benefit of the later years is the obd2. The original dealers' autodiagnos scantool is unobtainable but I found the VOL-FCR software with license key in the internet, being able to get some live data from the engine and gearbox has been useful from time to time.

 

It's unbelievable when compared to anything else out there. Mine has 14 winters of salt and snow with only a little surface rust on one spot of the rear wheel well. Underneath is still solid!

 

That's the wheel that was on the SE model. It's a 16 inch wheel so theoretically it will be a firmer ride than the two 15 inch wheels that were available. Oddly enough, I find that wheel does not look good on every color. My car is blackberry (purple) and looks much better with the premium wheel over the wheel you posted. I do like the 16 wheel on the white, silver, grey, blue and black cars though.


As far as I know, the SE also came with suede seat inserts in the hip and lumbar area and wood trim on the steering wheel. Other than that, everything else is the same. The only other options aside from the SE package (available mid year in 1998) was the premium 15 inch wheels and multi CD pack in the trunk. Mine has both.

 

I prefer the normal premium wheels as well. Less flashy, and they seem to work well with all the colors. I thought they were 16"?



As good as the rustproofing is I still see some 960s (rarely) with visible rust in the fenders/rockers. Must be from people never ever washing their car, especially up North where cars get a good salting in the winter. But in 90% of them there is just a small chip here or there on the paint where there is surface rust. That's it.

One more thing I was wondering about: how is the rear suspension holding up on your car? Is it reliable, had to replace the bushings/CV axles yet? The multilink setup would be a new world for me, I'm a solid axle man. It sounds like the kind of ride quality I'm looking for though, so any extra maintenance cost would be worth it.

 

I stand corrected on that wheel size! I always thought the standard wheels were the same size as mine (pic attached). Suspension is holding up fine but I will probably replace the end links and rubber bushings this spring as I just hit 100K. Rear suspension is pretty neat - has a transverse leaf spring similar to an older Corvette! Funny but I have never heard of anyone needing to replace rear CV joints on the big Volvo.

 

I have recently been under my car and will confirm that the bellows around the axle joints are ok.

I couldn't find the drain/fill plugs for gear oil however.

I had my car on a 4 wheel alignment rack about a month ago and they implied the rear suspension was in spec. Some of the bushings look scary to replace. I don't even want to think about how I would deal with the leaf spring if I had to take it apart. There are a lot of links in this rearend.

 

I think this factory diagram applies to cars up to 1996, of course the subframe/support changed with the later cars with the leaf spring suspension. Don't know if this will help you find the plugs, I just figured that the diff would be about the same, even if the access points look different. I wonder what's in the way? Limited slip fluid for that diff I believe. 75W-90 with a Moly MoS2 additive.

If I change the bushings in any car I like to do a bunch of them at once, and only if I'm already changing shocks or something like that. Not something I enjoy doing, mostly its taking links apart that always goes hard. But very rewarding when the car drives 10X better afterwards.

 

The Andromeda wheels were frequently seen on the 1998 S90s, generally those that also had the suede seat inserts and wood trim on the steering wheel. In So Cal, those were essentially on all of the 98 year models available. However, in 2013 we did purchase a low mileage 98 (the VIN has a different code for each year) from Sacramento that had the Mercurius wheels, just like our original 97 (no suede, steering wheel wood, either). The Mercurius as noted above are 6.5" width and I think the Andromeda were 7" width, although Volvo supplied the same 205/55-16 tires on both wheels. By the way, I've been very happy using 215/55-16 tires on the 6.5" wheels mainly to get a bit more protection for the wheels when the wife parks, the tires are rated for that wheel width and the speedo is only off by about 2% when the tires are new (close to accurate when tires are getting to replacement). Personal preference, but the wife and I like the look of the Mercurius wheels better.

The only problem I've found with the IRS on the 960/S90 models is the bushings on the upper arms, you have to drop the whole rear subframe and use several very expensive factory tools to change them (approx. $1K dealer quote to install $50 worth of parts!). I did improve them a bit by cutting some urethane plugs from replacement truck bushings, which I could them jam into the cavities in the OEM Volvo bushings at the rear. Going through that I did wish for the live axle design from 940s (not the SE model), which are much easier to work on and apparently close to 150 lbs lighter.