Any clues as to how to access the top shock mount on a 2001 C70? Don't see it in the trunk or under the rear seat.

 

Coupe or covertible?

 

Convertible

 

Remove the lower seat by pulling up from the bottom. Remove bolts at the bottom of the back section. I removed the head rest and flipped the backseat onto the back of the car.
Now.. there should be some holes with plastic and foil coving them. These are the access holes for the shocks. I have done 90 % of work on my cars and spent 25 years working on aircraft and this is one job I never want to do again. There is very little room to work.
I went to Lowe's and got air contitioner/heating duct insulation, it is a padded insulated foil that is sticky on one side.

Cb

 

thanks for the help cb...what a pain in the a$$ that was. once i figured out i needed to reach up under the seat back to release the head rest clips i thought i was home free. then, once inside, i couldn't figure out how to get the mount out with the shock on it so i had to work a wrench in to release the nut while holding the top of the bolt stationary with vice grips. wounds should heal in a couple of weeks!

 

Hi, I am sorry I forgot about the headrest. The shocks are about the worst thing I have ever done. I would really like to talk to the guy who did that design. I wonder what Volvo charges to do the job !!!!

Cb my hands did finally heal...........

 

After replacing the front struts and mounts with Bilstein touring struts, I went for the shocks on my 2000 C70. I was replacing the 10 year old originals with a set of Bilstein touring shocks.

Shock removal:

To remove the seat, pull up on the front the seat cushion. then lift the unit out of the way. Next pull the center pass-through out and disconnect the nylon strap.
You then have a nut in each lower corner of the rear seat back (13 mm head) to remove.
Pull upward to pivot it on the top of the seat. I stuck the cartons the struts came in to hold seat back in place as I used a screw driver to trip the nylon fasteners holding the headrests. After removing the headrests, I pivoted the back to the back of the car.

On my c70 there are 2 subwoofers behind the seats. Each have 4 T-25 torx head screws, a phillips head screw and a pop rivet. You only have to remove the 4 torx heads. Now you can see those shock mounts and shock nut. Not a lot of space to work, and all access is that subwoofer hole.

For the shock top, you can use a 1/4" open end wrench to keep the shaft from rotating, but it is a lot easier to use a shock mount tool. I ended up have to cut it down to size to make it fit. For the nut, you need an offset box wrench. I got a complete set for 17 bucks at Advance Auto Parts. You put the wrench on, then the shock nut tool. You only get 2 sides of nut turn at most, but slow and steady will do the job. Same way with the 1/4" wrench if you are using that, but it will take longer. Not enough room to get an air wrench in there. Heck on the left side, even a ratchet wrench cannot fit.

On the right side are a bunch of electrical boxes that take up even more room. First you remove the 2 nuts so that the metal L holding some wiring harness in place can be moved out of the way. To the right side are 3 small bolts holding a black box on the other side of the metal. Loosen the top one, and remove the bottom 2. The electrical box can now give a bit when turning the wrench so you get a bit more rotation on each turn.
Once you get the top nut off, go below and remove the shock mounting nut and spacer. You can then pull the shock off the lower bolt and remove from the car.

If you are only removing the shock, read below for installation tips.

Shock Mount removal:
In my case, With 10 years, it was time to remove the shock mounts. Each is held in place with 2 8 mm bolts. The problem is there is very little room and they bolts are twice as long as they need to be. So the bottom half that stick out below the frame are corroded . Loosen the bolt as much as you can with a socket, the spray some PB blaster on the bolt before retightening. Now go below and give the bolt ends a hit of PB Blaster.
Go back into the cabin and loosen the bolt as much as possible, shoot some PB blaster and then retighten the bolts. Note: The left forward mount bolt will not allow socket to fit, so use a a 12 mm wrench. OK, the mount bolts are tightened all the way down. What we have done is worked PB Blaster into the threads.
Now go underneath the car and using a heavy duty cutoff wheel in a dremel tool, cut off the ends of the bolts just below the nut. Takes about 1 minute each. The HD cutoff wheels just barely fit in the shock tower. You can cut into some old steel (eg the old shock shaft) to wear the disk down a bit in diameter before begining to give you a bit more room. If you hit the mount rubber, you will get some serious smoke so work carefully. I wear long sleeves and a leather glove to protect against that glowing bolt end that will be falling down. And of course I have been wearing eye protection. Now you can go inside the car and unscrew the bolts as you have just cut off all the corroded portion of the mount bolts. This way you do not strip the nuts weled to the frame.
Installation of the mounts is straight forward. Just be sure to coat the bolts with antiseize to try and keep the corrsion down.

Shock installation:
Push new shock up from beneath and then install the washer and start nut on from the top.
Lower the car a bit, attach the lower shock mount hole to the stud.

Mounting the shock can be a pain with the confined space. What really makes it brutal is the manufacturers who do not want the nut to loosen. So they either supply nylock nuts or nuts with a thread just off a smidgen to cause some friction. Friction that makes it a pain to tighten. To get around this, before starting, take the new nut to a hardware store and match up with some quality plain nuts (in my case the Bilsteins use a 10mm 1.50 pitch nut). Get 4 of them. This way you can assemble by handing tightening the 1st nut, then snug it the last 2 turns with tools. Then put 2nd nut on top to lock the 1st on in place. This will save you at least 30 minutes. Be sure to take the NEW nut with you. The size or thread pitch can vary between shock manufacturers.

When done, reattach the nuts holding the L and the black box bolts on the right side.
Once done, put reinstall the speakers, the seat back and the seat bottom. Then reinstall the pass through bolster.

I can see why a garage does not want to do these. A lot of time (eg $$$) to remove and reinstall because of the confined space.

 

Thanks guys. I couldn't find that damn mount either, and I have been building foreign cars for 40 years. Now, I get the joy of doing it. I just put the a whole engine and everything else in mime, and am not looking forward to doing the rear shocks, the last item on the list...