Hi All. New owner of a Volvo here. I recently bought a used '03 XC90, 2.5 turbo AWD. I bought it off of a volvo tech who recently put a "new" engine in it. He claims to have bought it off of a customer who brought it to the dealership for service. She sold it to him rather than replace the engine that "spun a bearing". It's showing 130K miles, but the engine that was put in it had about 92K miles on it.

Anyway, I'm still getting to know this car, and so far I'm really happy with it. That being said, I'm noticing some weirdness here and there, and I'm not sure if it's normal volvo stuff, or little things that I should find out more about.

For one, there is a red LED light on the dash that would indicate the alarm is set and active. I've never seen this light come on, and wonder if the alarm system has been disabled in some way. Is there a way to check this? If it has been disabled, I would assume there was a reason, so I wonder if that's really a rabbit hole I want to go down.

Also, when I lock the car with the key fob (the guy who sold this to me somehow converted the regular '03 key fob into a "switchblade" key), there seems to be a delay, or an inconsistency. Sometimes it seems to work just fine, other times, I can be standing right next to the car, and pushing the lock or unlock buttons seem to not be recognized by the car at all. Even when it is recognized, there seems to be a delay in the car actually locking or unlocking. BTW...is the horn supposed to sound when I lock the car? It doesn't on my car, and I kinda wondered if that was something associated with the alarm seeming not to work.

Anyway, I'm learning a lot about volvo's and I'm glad I found this forum. Any words of wisdom, or early model xc90 info that you can share I would gladly accept.

Thanks!

 

Seems like your alarm was disabled, which is a good thing. The alarm system on these cars goes bad (the siren does) and replacement can become costly. If after locking your car with a window down, you reach into the vehicle and the alarm does not go off, then it's because they removed the siren or they disable it. DO you have a sunroof? Does it work? If so, you are good.

In regards to the other question, no, the horn does not make any noise when you lock the car.
Enjoy your new car and congrats!