Hello all,
I am in need of a new vehicle and am really interested in a 1994 850 turbo wagon, except I don't know much about these cars. The person is willing to let her go for $2000. He says It runs great, smooth shifting transmission, powerful engine, but... the check engine light is on and shows code 522 and 153. Previous owner told him the code was oxygen sensor/emissions control, but the car ran so good in his eyes it was not worth making the $500 repair just to shut the light off. Does this sound legitimate? The car has some scratches here and there but looks pretty good. Does this price seem good? I'm just not sure. Any advice of things to check out would be great help to me! Thanks,
CLH

 

Those codes do lead to a rear O2 sensor being bad.
If the car is in good shape 2k isnt really all that bad.

 

How many miles are on the car? Sounds like a very good deal, if the miles are reasonable like 150K or less. If it's over that look at the maintenance records if they are available. If these cars are maintained reasonably well, they will last a long time, but if neglected that's another story.

 

Well I thought it sounded like a reasonable price, and he had it listed for $2,500. The car shows it has only 88 thousand miles on it ( very possible because it is located in Hawaii and you cant drive very far on Oahu), but the owner said the title shows a little over 100,000 (He's not sure if someone changed the milage or not). At any rate I still think that's pretty good, the car looks like it's been cared for in the pictures, and he says the car has been well maintained well by the previous owner and himself. Im taking his word for it and a chance if I go with this one because I live on another island and will have to ship it to me without test driving it. HA! Sometimes you gotta take a chance right? Does anyone have advice on how to do a safe transaction long distance? He puts car in my name, I send him $$? Somthing like that?

 

My advice is find somebody local tothe car and pay for a pre-purchase inspection. Somebody very familiar with Volvo's. But for $2,000 I would expect them to find things wrong. Make sure the timing belt has been changed recently. That is by far the most imortant thing.

By the way the oddometer is known to break on these cars. You can pull the actuall mileage from the onboard computer though. Do a search on this forum and you will find how to do it. Have the guy selling pull it for you or have it done during the inspection.

 

I tried to search for information on how to check the on board computer for the correct mileage but can't find anything. Can you help?

 

I paid less for my 96 turbo wagon.

BUT, I needed to put:

rear shocks/mounts
PCV system
radiator
and other misc things.


$2,000 isn't a good deal.

I still think I got a steal on the car, and the labor wasn't all that difficult. A pain, but I have done worse. (Attempt a spark plug and valve cover gasket job on a Lexus SC300 with the 2JZ inline-6 under the hood. You'll appreciate your 850 even more)


Post up some pics, as sometimes it is hard to tell what you're getting into. We can generally make a better call that way.


Welcome to the forums!

 

I just posted a thread on how to do it and pasted the address of the thread in the Helpful Hints thread at the top of this forum.

 

I bought a '94 850 Turbo Wagon with 163k miles for $2,200 about three weeks ago. There is only one non-cosmetic thing that I found wrong with the car. IMO the challenge in this price range is to find a vehicle that is clean and has been serviced regularly (verifiable).