Just bought a very nice looking 98 V70 AWD, 155,500 miles, seems to be in great condition and was well cared for. The seller put in new lower control arms, ball joints and fixed some other issues.
My general question regarding working on this car. Can I pretty much use instructions meant for late model 850's as well as early V70's? My engine is a low pressure turbo and has a distributor which I think means it's an early V70. There seems to be a lot of 850 info that is easily applied to the early v70's. Am I right? Any heavy gotchas using this approach to finding maintannce tasks specific to the V70?

The car has some heavy miles but believe it or not, the only thing I can see needs fixing is a dash bulb and it looks like it's one I can do from underneath. I've done a dashtop removal on my old 98 V70R and it wasn't a big deal anyway. Other than that, I can't find anything wrong. If I can't confirm T-Belt replacement, I'll be doing that, WP and the accessory belt for peace of mind. I love this car so far. If it proves to be OK, number 2 will be purchased as my fix it up car. Can't have too many cars, this is #7 in the driveway.

 

congrats post some pictures so we can see

 

Yep; the '98 is an 850 in S/V70 trim pretty much. Big diff with your car though is the AWD; make some jobs more of a pain...

 

Unless you really think you need the awd (and I bet you don't) the fwd version is much cheaper and easier to work on. There are many parts that are specific to the awd cars. Sell it before you get to replace something really fun like the fuel pump.