Thought I would drop a line and say I am in the process of purchasing a 2009 V50 T5 and am very excited to be part of the forum - car is in Ottawa and has a 6 spd manual and currently is showing 130k on the odometer - will be looking to you when questions arise...Timing belt has been changed...anything I should consider as due maintenance.
Thanks in advance.

 

Sweet - T5 six-speed! I would probably still be driving my V50 if it was set up like that (it was a 2.4i with an automatic slushbox).

It's great that the timing belt has been changed - that's the big one. I'd say that a turbocharger with that kind of miles is going to be suspect - my 2001 V70 T5 had its turbo replaced at around 100,000 miles, and the replacement was still OK when I sold it with 240,000 miles. The normal wear items like struts and shocks, and probably front axles are also getting pretty suspect at that age / mileage. Same with a lot of bushings, particularly the control arm bushings. The fronts are more expensive, though not hideous. The rear upper control arm bushings do tend to wear out (usually you can see that the wheels are canted in a bit more at the top when this happens).

Overall, the V50 is a solid, reliable vehicle, and if your candidate has decent service records, and is priced appropriately (which means less than a lot of lesser cars, due to the general perception that Volvos cost more to maintain), it sounds like a cool car.

 

Okay good advice, I will certainly look those items over - I can check on line ...but how do you know if your turbo is about to fail? And what happens if it does? I have have had older 740 intercooler and a C70 - but never had to deal with them.
Thanks for the quick response

 

Really there's little indication of a turbo that's about to go - from what I've seen, they work fine until right before they don't - they might give you an indication they're on the way out by making some odd noises (different "odd noises" than the "normal odd noises" a turbo makes). ;-)

If you have access to a Volvo-specific code reader, that's always a good thing to use to look at a candidate - you might find some "interesting things" that are otherwise invisible. Of course, even a generic OBD reader would be better than nothing. My preference there is the (excellent) Torque Pro app on my 'droid phone, using a $15 Bluetooth OBD "dongle" - really amazing what it can tell you about a car, including cool options like graphing your O2 sensor outputs and reading things like tranny temperatures, vacuum and turbo boost (especially with a T5!). If you don't have a 'droid phone, there are other similar apps / dongles (though they usually cost a lot more, particularly if you happen to have an Apple phone - what a shock, huh?). ;-)

 

Sorry tried to respond to this post but it would not send- I am looking to see what would work best for my iphone. Have the car now and it is a beauty to drive. Did the oil and air - the oil cap was pretty dirty so I hope it is not an indication of how the car was treated
Now I have the car the PO had replaced the AC compressor - and I just did the check on the low pressure side for refrigerant. It was low so I carefully added so to put it in the safe zone and now I can hear the compressor cycling. I will probably have to take it in but I am wondering if the refrigerant is still low....or would the whole system need to be flushed..... I did some reading on searches but could not find a post where this was happening when the compressor had been replaced.