Alright well thx anyways i will change the core soon and maybe depends if i do it or my dad i will take pics aswell and do a writeup .. also from what i have read it seems that you dont have to remove the dash up until year 2000 after that year the airbox changed and i think thats when you have to remove the dash so 2000 and below should be like the pictures in that link.

 

Thats what I know as well.
If you take pics and do a write up that would be Awesome.

I try to do the best I can. But doing something slow and taking a bunch of pics will end up pissing my boss off.
Then it will be the unemployment line for me again.

 

lol i kno what u mean . i'll try to do the writeup and all but it depends on ma dad hes a mechanic ( big rig diesel trucks lol) so if he does hes not gonna take pics or anything but i'll attempt to convince him to let me do it

U work at a volvo dealership Tech?

 

I did for 5 years till last December. Now at a indipendant Volvo shop.

 

My V70 smells like Maple Syrup occasionally as well. It used to be almost constantly until I had the transmission flushed about 6 months ago. The smell went and the transmission was behaving for a while. Its starting to get bad again and the smell is back intermittently, mostly when its running hot and the transmission is playing up.I have P0030 Heated oxygen sensor Heater Control Circuit DTC now as well. Does this sound like my coolant is getting into my transmission? I've heard that this can be a problem. Transmission symptoms are hard shifting, inconsistant throttle, and trouble deciding between 3rd and fourth when going about 50km/h. This only happens when its hot. I hardly use my aircon but when i do it does make the transmission symptoms worse. (a bitch when i need to defrost at the moment) Before i had it flushed and it was doing this, i would shift manually for a while and it would improve. Now if i do that it is just as bad and i get a "Transmission Service Required" message. This goes after a couple of restarts. The symptoms will remain as long as i'm driving in traffic. Another thing that has changed is that my temp gauge goes right down to almost nothing when i'm on the freeway. It never used to move much at all, a bit, but not much. Its also getting colder here in Sydney so the intake air at high speeds is a lot cooler. Driving in the city, the temp gauge sits right in the middle all the time, but it doesn't take much highway to send it back down again. i also had the MAF replaced last week. The car has 170,000kms on it and the ETM has a yellow sticker on it, but that was there when i bought it so i don't know how long ago that was done. (I have no history)

 

My wife's 99 S70T5 developed the antifreeze smell a couple of months after we got it. I knew immediately what it was and dreaded getting it fixed but we found an awesome volvo mechanic in town. Turns out, hers was about a 30 minute fix. There's just a small access panel to the core and it "pops right out" according to the guy. He showed it to me and the damaged one had a hair line fracture where the fins join the main housing where I guess the solder joint or weld had failed and developed a hairline fracture allowing coolant to seep out.

Vadis confirms my suspicion that the 98 is identical. Here's an exploded diagram with the heatercore or "heat exchanger" part number. It's basically a small radiator that hot coolant flows through that air passes across to warm up when you're running the heater. A cheap alternative fix to this would be to T off the send and return coolant lines just in front of the firewall behind the engine and connect a bypass valve to bypass those 2 lines going through the firewall. You wouldn't get hot air but the coolant wouldn't flow through the core and leak.