Hello everyone.

I'm new here, and a relatively new owner of a 2011 XC90 3.2 AWD with about 66k on the odometer. The car is in decent shape, no accidents, and fully maintained over it's life by the dealer. I had the car checked out by both the dealer and my Volvo mechanic (I'm also a longtime S60 owner), both of whom said the XC was not only a good car but a good deal when I bought it late last year. It was ony $12k from a retiring college professor who'd bought it new. It is in beautiful cosmetic shape.

My issue: The steering wheel can fairly hard to turn, or more precisely, hard to hold on center, and it's little jerky while driving, not rapidly, as if the car has thrown a tire weight or if the wheels were out of balance, but gently back and forth, as if I were driving on a slightly bumpy dirt road, though I'm driving on smooth pavement.

The car did need an alignment, and I learned the passenger side inner and outer tie rods were frozen. I had those replaced with genuine Volvo parts, and got the alignment from a solid shop. But I was still finding the steering hard to hold, and the wheel still little shaky. My mechanic thought maybe the car was low of power steering fluid, but when he looked he found the fluid was dirty and gritty. He drained it all and replaced it with entirely new, fresh fluid. This did not improve the problems. Two weeks later the new fluid is still relatively clean. Now he says maybe this is just how the car drives, and that it is fine. But it isnt - I'm still getting that shake through the steering wheel, and sometimes even a skip or a jump through the wheels when I'm driving slowly and turning hard, like when parking. And the car is still hard to hold when going straight at high speed on the highway.

Any ideas or thoughts? I'd be grateful. (And definitely no accidents - confirmed this with the dealer and mechanic again.)

Thanks.
Z