A friend of mine had a 1998 Volvo S70 that had an oil leak. She took it into the garage to get a look at it and the mechanic just patched the leak and sent her on her way. On her way home the car stalled and was completely dead. Apperently it was the tensioner arm that had seized up and also ruined the serpentine belt. So she had that done as well. Then the car started to misfire a lot.The mechanic said it was the coils so he replaced 2 or 3. Then he also replaced the plug wires. The car was still misfiring. She just totally lost faith in her previous mechanic.
It's very rare for a Volvo to act up
Please share your Volvo horror stories.

 

That's not a Volvo horror story, that's a crappy mechanic or cheap customer.

 

Well she has spent over $2000

 

Not sure why a mechanic would "just patch" an oil leak. That sounds like it wasn't correctly fixed. Probably either because they don't know how or the customer doesn't want to pay for the fix. Perhaps I'm misinterpreting though.

 

You've brought up a topic that is interesting to me. These days, you can't really buy a bad car, but of course you can easily find bad people. If you don't get good service out of a car, then as far as you know, you have a problem with bad people rather than a bad car. That is a common problem because almost all people can't really fix a car, or diagnose anything that goes wrong. The concept of a "lemon" car is not a real thing. Cars aren't really magic, it just seems like it.


So to me that's interesting. If I say "I just spent $1000 on this car, it should not need anymore money". But of course the car doesn't know that, and in fact you don't know what was done to it. If a mechanic says "this car needs a set of brakes" most people would have no clue whether the car really needs them, nor whether he repaired anything. It's just like when you said "the mechanic patched the leak". ES6T feels like he can critique it, when in fact, we have no idea what occurred. This is a third hand description of "leak fixing" and actually doesn't tell us anything.


I mentioned that in part because the car only has one coil.

 

This is kinda interesting; thunderchild found this old thread today because he just got a 2010 XC90.
https://volvoforums.com/forum/volvo-...ghtmare-81263/


Read that with an open mind. Great example of a car that, as far as we know, can be fixed for 10 cents. As far as we know.


Also note the prices quoted for easy repairs that don't have anything to do with the problem.

 

My point was just that a lot of "horror stories" get put on the internet by people who don't know what really happened. Doesn't help anyone.

 

So today she phoned me and said she brought it to the mechanic her friend recommended and its was only a little moisture getting into the distributor cap. Wow $2000 put into it just for a $60-$70 job...

 

Right. That could be it. Maybe. And if so, she could have fixed that free.