Do not blame Volvo. Thank Hella for the wiring issues. They supply the headlights to Volvo.

 

I found it better to put in a new harness because two of the connectors were brittle. There were several places on the web that had them for around $25 ea. The local dealer was higher.
Other tips:
To remove the turn signal assy from the headlight assy, press the white tab between the headlight and the turn signal assy using a screwdriver and pull the assy forward.

The Volvo wiring harness came with an extra wire/bulb socket. My car didn't need it but its easy to clip off.

After releasing the white tab on the reflector, separate the adjuster inside the headlight at the ball/snap socket or the reflector will not come off. A little silicon or WD40 on the ball will help you snap it back on.

Spent about 20 minutes/light to change the harness on my 2000 S70. I turned off my daytime driving light to slow baking of the new harness but removing one of the access panels from the back of the light would probably reduce the heat buildup sufficiently to prevent future reoccurance.

(Bad Design. Reported to NTSB but they did nothing!)

 

I have a friend with 95 850 turbo and having this headlight issue, its his daughter's car and does not want to have to deal with repairs etc. can anyone point me in the direction of somewhere you can order the wiring only? we have looked around for them and no luck so far.

 

to answer your question: no i don't off hand. i would go to the dealer if you must and get a part # then google away.

my advice to your friend is to do the fix however and save some $ since the light has to come apart to change the harness anyway it is all going o be in front of him and then pulling the pins and resheithing the wires is pretty straight forward and easy.
if he would rather pay instead of dealing with it though i guess i could do it to a set of headlights out of the j yard and ship them to him

 

I've replaced everything within the passenger headlight the first time. After it went out again I replaced the headlights with angel eyes. I just noticed tonight I'm having the same problem. This leads me to believe that the problem is with Volvo and not the headlight.

 

I had this problem on my 2000 S70. I found the wiring harness was still available for not too much money so I used that option. Change out was not difficult. Checking my 2002 S60 I found the gage of the wire was substantially heaver and had no problems. Since the replacement harness wire was the same gage as the burnt one, I elected to turn off the low beam daytime low beam driving lights...this is not an option on all Volvos but mine has it.
I took pictures and saved the old burnt wires and submitted my experience to NHTSA twice. Got absolutely no response. There was a headlight recall on some VINS but it did not concern the wiring harness since Volvo attributed the problem to something else (that I believe might have been a diversion tactic).
I think all the hanesses of this gage should have been recalled for safty reasons.

 

Same problem on 2000 Volvo S70. I was able to find a new wiring harness on the web (someplace). I had to cut off one small accessory light wire but it fix perfect otherwise. Since the wire looked a lot like the wire I replaced, I turned off my daytime running lights to reduce the heat buildup in the headlight enclosure. No more problem for 4 years.

I reported the problem to NHTSA three times with no response. There had been a recall on this issue but not for my Model/year.

Incidentally, the headlight wiring on my 2002 Volvo S60 is heavy duty and has no signs of cracking even with the daytime driving lights on full time.

 

Great stuff! It helped me a lot today fixing my headlights!