I'm looking for a roomy daily driver and I happen to like boost so the 850's have caught my eye. Aside from the typical used car inspection is there anything specific to these cars that I should look for? Is there a specific year I should look out for as more desirable due to any changes? I won't use it for any racing but would like to still modify it for fun. I'll stick to very basic mods like intake, exhaust, and ECU reflash. How well do the automatics hold up to those sort of mods when driven enthusiastically but not maniacally? Is an aftermarket tranny cooler a must? Or would I be better off finding a manual?

 

Hi and welcome to the site.

Any turbo 850 will serve you well. No problems with any particular year, just normal 15+ year car stuff to watch out for. You can look in the DIY sticky and see the 850 buyer's guide. That will help you a lot.

PCV, Timing Belt, and yes Auto tranny service are important. The tranny can hold up to typical mods but not really the heavy duty ones. If you go to SUPER POWER you will need a trans cooler and maybe some other drivetrain mods. Your basic stage 1 or 2 ecu and turbo upgrades shouldn't be an issue.

The 850 tranny's were/are a spot of neglect. Most people were told that the fluid NEVER needs replaced. To which is a certain death sooner or later. I just picked up this wagon I now have which did have a dead tranny in it with what looked to be dark pond water in the transmission. Yes it drove me around for about 2,500 miles and my have lasted for years with codes and no torque or kick down so I swapped it with a used unit. A well cared for tranny can last upwards of 500,000 miles. Just a crap shoot but if you check the fluid in the car you're looking at and it feels to shift well under pressure and with normal driving you may be ok. The first hint of a problem seems to be HARD shifting into reverse. That may be the beginning of the end which can be years away.

Happy searching and I do love my 850's.

 

Thank you for the info! I will check out that buyers guide. I'll also be very picky about people with maintenance records now if some people were smart enough to never maintain their transmissions. I know for sure I will never upgrade to a bigger turbo and only stick to intake/exhaust/reflash but still on the fence about whether or not I should get an auto or a manual. I have never owned an auto which makes me apprehensive to try one but my weekend car is a manual and I feel like my commute car should be an auto for more relaxing commutes.

EDIT:
Whoa lot's of info in that thread! So what vendors do you guys have the best luck with the ECU reflashes? Like proven performance as compared to marketing hype?

 

Well if you find a stick 850 turbo then it was converted. There were no 850 turbo's ever brought to the U.S. new.

I would use ARD tuning for the ECU upgrade.

 

Edited...

 

LOL my bad!!

 

+1 for ARD.
I've had an iPd Stage I and ST Stage III tunes on my 850R and my current ARD Blue Tune is by far the best.
Active Research & Development

But before you start any tuning make sure you do a Stage 0 first...

 

LOL well thanks for narrowing my search down to an auto

 

Still searching for the right one. I was thinking of checking out S70's too. What are the big differences between these and 850's as they look awfully similar to me. Any difference under the hood for the turbo inline 5's?

EDIT:
I'm browsing S70 board and so far looks like I'd be dealing with almost the same car...

 

you can import one, but don't so we can hoard them all up here.

 

IMO the 850's were better looking over the S70, they are cheaper to buy, less technical to maintain, in the s70 pretty much everything is controlled by one computer and any mods to it needs to have the computer altered by the dealership, or someone with the expensive Volvo software.

 

the 98 mechanically is almost identical to the 97 850.. ? the only difference is the computing system, but some 850's even had motronic 4.4 same as the s70.

 

Very rare to get an 850 here in Australia with the 4.4......

 

I don't care who you are, this is just SEXY!!!

 

stick with the 96 newer ones. there are odd wiring glitches in the first few years of the 850s. Computers were also much better the later years.

these things really are 15 years plus old!?! doesn't seem like it, at least all the ones I work on....oh wait there was that one that had 455k miles on it last week.

 

I think I'll stick to looking for 850's. Found one locally which sounds like a complete piece of crap but he says it's supposedly IPD chipped. I might check it out if the price is right but the guy sounds kind of shady. I'll post up a link here later since I can't get to Craigslist here at work. Maybe one of you guys can swoop it up instead of me haha.

 

me personally any "go fast" mods top any car or truck throws a read flag right away. I think. the car or truck was driven hard. Probably not cared for very well, and that means problems down the road. Stock is best, even if it needs a little work, you know usually it wasn't driven into the ground.

 

on the other hand if it's modded it could have been very well taken care of.. If you take care of your car it'll take care of you.

 

your taking a guess at it, remember that too.

 

I use to thing the same way but some people do mod their cars and still take very well care of them.