Hello everyone! I'm not a V50 or even any Volvo owner yet, but I'm considering one from the Denver CO area. Unfortunately, I live in CA so I'll need some help in ensuring I make the right decision. Thus, do you know of any Volvo enthusiast shop in the Denver area that can help with a PPI and possibly change the timing belt (car has ~100k miles)? Or do you think it's risky/wise to drive the car back to CA, as-is, and then change the belt in my own garage, at a more leisurely pace?

Thanks for all the help you can throw at me, to help me become one of you guys!

 

No idea about a shop, but at "only" 100,000 miles, I'd personally roll the dice and drive it home and do a DIY timing belt swap. The cost of having any shop to a TB can be pretty high, so there's a lot to gain, and not TOO much risk. If you can remove enough of the TB cover to see if there are obvious signs of problems (weather-checking, cracking, "splintering") it would be some comfort (assuming you don't see any of that, of course).

 

Thanks habbyguy! I think you're right! It's probably worth the throw of a dice, once I get the PPI shop or myself to do an easy visual inspection. The DIY will also get me more in touch with the new-to-me car, which is never a bad thing as I intend to do most of the routine maintenance work myself.

 

Absolutely - you don't really "own" a car until you've had it laying in pieces all around the garage. ;-) I didn't have to do a timing belt on my V50 (the previous owner had done it about 10,000 miles before I bought it, and I sold it since), but did have to do a TB on the Audi A3 I replaced it with (a tougher job on the Audi than it would have been on the Volvo). At the very least, you start getting an idea how the engineers do things (and often, start hating them). ;-)

I'd bet there's a 98% chance you won't have a problem with your trip. My Audi had 133,000 miles and I was launching into a 7-8,000 mile road trip, and thought that was just a step too far to leave with the old TB. The old one actually looked pretty good, but was showing some age, so I'm really happy to not be worrying about it.