Hi everyone! First time poster long time viewer here. I have been in the market for a volvo, specifically an s60, for a while now, and I may have finally found the one that will become mine. I am going to go take a look at it here in the next couple days, and my main question to you guys is what are some of the main things I should look for, listen for, smell for, feel for etc. with these cars? I'm coming from the land of Jeep where everything is mechanically as simple as can be so it will be a bit of a change. The car has 110,000 miles on it so obviously one of my first questions is whether the timing belt has been changed or not. What else should i look for?? Thanks a bunch guys

 

what year?
AWD S60 - check to make sure all four tires are the same.
Automatic - pull the dip stick and check the color and smell of the tranny fluid.
Take if for test drive, listen to the suspension action for any thumping, thuds, clanking, etc. lots of rubber mounts on these cars, and they go bad often. Take note how the automatic tranny shifts, any jumping from Park to drive, etc.

 

I'm also currently looking in the 2001-2004 range, probably around 100K miles, give or take. my biggest concern is that few things make me more upset than car repairs that I don't understand or wasn't expecting. I can probably deal with minor things like brakes, water pump, and other high-milage wear and tear. are these types of repairs typically easy for an average hobbyist-level mechanic to take care of? is there an easy way to check to make sure the timing belt has been replaced, other than asking the seller?
also, are there differences in reliability between FWD and AWD? anything to look for there?

(sorry for the long-winded response. admittedly, I'm nervous about the potential purchase.)

 

Beware of the early S60s. They are notorious for transmission problems. I recently got a 2002 S60 T5 with 124,000 miles and immediately started having transmission problems. After some relatively inexpensive work, I've got it functioning acceptably well. However, I am anticipating having to replace or rebuild the transmission in the future. I test drove the vehicle and didn't experience any problems. I would suggest taking any car you are considering on a long test drive. Try driving at a lot of different speeds and accelerating at different rates, both really slow and really aggressive. Mainly, just make transmission have to shift gears a lot.

Note any hard shifts or 'shift flares' (when the transmission goes into neutral and suddenly slams into gear during a shift). You can't miss the last one. Hard shifting is subjective. I drove a brand-new 2012 Volvo loaner for a few days. It also had the Geartronic transmission like my S60. After that experience, I've concluded that some of what I was considering 'hard' shifting is just the particular way the Geartronic transmission works. All that said, I wouldn't recommend against an early S60. The problems are preventable if you catch them early enough. Just make sure you don't get one with preexisting problems like I did. If you do get an pre-2004 S60, I would very strongly recommend doing preventative work on the transmission. I did mine for about $350. Once it's damaged, it's damaged. Feel free to message me.