Greetings from a new member,

I've joined this forum as part of my research into the failure of my 2012 S60 engine.

The car is a 2012 S60 T4 Powershift which I purchased second hand in June 2016; the car had done 132,000 kms at that point. The car recently had the major 150,000 km service at a workshop that is not an official Volvo centre but they are all qualified Volvo technicians who work almost exclusively on Volvo cars.

The car has now done 153,000 kms and I was driving out of town at 100 kms/hr when I felt a vibration through the throttle pedal and the car started to run roughly and lost almost all power. I was able to get it home and the following day had it towed to the workshop mentioned above.

A compression test was done which indicated zero compression on #1 cylinder and poor compression on #3. The workshop manager showed me a piston from another Volvo engine where a section of the piston had melted and said that my situation showed very similar symptoms.

The engine strip down showed exactly the same damage (melting) to the #1 piston (see attached photos) and minor scoring of the cylinder wall.

His opinion is that it could have been due to a carbon buildup on the injector or inlet valve which caused pre-ignition which then resulted in excessively high localized temperatures and melted that section of the piston. He said that this is definitely not an isolated case. Apparently the fix is to fit two head gaskets. I did write to Volvo South Africa but considering that it is a second-hand car and out of warranty, I'm not surprised that they have not responded.

Component failures can and do happen but this is not a particularly high mileage car, nor is it driven hard and this is not an isolated case which points to a design or manufacturing defect which Volvo would certainly not admit to. But here's my beef: the repair involves buying a 'short block' which is a new engine block complete with crankshaft, rods and pistons. Unbelievably you cannot buy replacement pistons/rings for this engine so the entire lower engine assembly has to be replaced even though a lot of the parts are still perfectly usable, not to even mention unnecessary additional costs of the repair plus damage to the environment by the unnecessary dumping of serviceable engine parts.

Apologies for my long-winded description but I would appreciate any comments from the more knowledgeable members here.

Thanks.

 

Unless it is a safety defect, warranty laws will typically render the manufacturer untouchable. There are plenty of design defects out there. The only ones that the government gets involved in are the safety ones.

You're on your own.

 

I have to add to my saga above about the melted piston - the cylinder head is also cracked, EVERY cylinder is cracked in exactly the same place, between the spark plug holes and the exhaust valve seats.
The only thing left that can still pack up is the gearbox ... sigh

 

Did you have a check engine light before this all happened?

 

No Tony, it did not come on prior to the breakdown. However, it did flash on briefly while the engine was spluttering and running roughly but then went out.

 

The head cracks suggest to me some serious overheating - either a blocked cooling passage in the head or (and this is from the day when the only electrics on a motor were distributor points, coil (1) and plug wires) running very lean - and I don't know if the latter is possible with current engine management systems.