I bought the S60 about 2.5 years ago and after about 6 months the coolant (level low) warning / red triangle light can on . I have regularly filled it up and have noticed that, even when cold, there is a lot of hissing when the coolant tank cap is unscrewed. The problem hasnt gone away and it seems that I just need to unscrew the cap about every 50miles to release the pressure and then the warning light goes off, for about another 60 miles. Often the level is not actually low when the warning light comes on.

Volvo (Belfast) have looked at it and say the tank is not leaking and that they would really need to remove the head gasket to investigate further - this would take a few days and probably cost a good few hundred.

Has anyone else come across this? or got any advice ?

Thanks

 

volvos run a positive pressure in the coolant system so a typical test is to pressurize the system and see where coolant comes out and the system can be tested for pressure when warm to see if its in the normal range.

The obvious places for spotting a leak are the overflow tank, the cap, hoses to/from the tank, hoses to/from the radiator and the radiator itself (typically along seams). The less obvious places are the heater core/hoses to the heater core (usually there's a telltale sweet smell when the heater first comes on) and then the dreaded head-gasket/cylinder head. There's also a rare possibility of a leaking freeze plug in the block. Keep in mind coolant expands as it heats up (thus the reason for the overflow tank) so releasing pressure will change the volume of the coolant (you studied thermodynamics in engineering school right? :-) so that'll explain why you can make the light go away temporarily.

A failed head gasket or cracked cylinder head can present itself several ways - if the gasket is allowing exhaust gasses into the cooling system it can over-pressurize the system (you'll feel the upper radiator hose will get rock hard) - so there's a test to see if HCs are finding their way into the coolant (test kit runs about 40 USD, or the gasket can allow coolant to find its way into the intake or exhaust path. This can cause a slightly sweet smelling exhaust or see some white smoke from the exhaust. Note its possible for the turbo charger to have a blown seal that can also leak coolant into the exhaust. Your mechanic may opt for a leak down test as well (which puts compressed air into the cylinder via the spark plug hole then measures how quickly the pressure dissipates).

Given these tests are available to suss out a possible head gasket issue, I'd think you'd want the shop to tell you which tests have been done prior to pulling off the cylinder head just to do some discovery.

 

Hello I'm new to the forum but need some insight into what to look at I'm a mechanic got a volvo v60 2011 2L diesel D3 and got the same cooling issues happening but we've changed the lower radiator hose, Turbo Hose, Coolant Expansion tank and cap x2 for the cap and a thermostat and we done a HC test and found a cracking in the cylinder head so we put some of this Steel Seal that seems to seal the crack but we've had it running taking a test drive multiple didn't loss water but remove the cap still pressurised after sitting for a while any ideas what it could be any help will be appreciated