97 850 black strip thingies

The black strips that run the length of my 850 wagon have split. Then
a buffer buggered up one side. I checked with the dealer and they want
ONLY $160 PER STRIP plus $85 PER STRIP for labor.

Any thoughts from other 850 owners with experience with this problem?

Chuck Fiedler
Nothing but Volvo since 1974

 

ebay

 

My dealer knows that I will never buy a car with detailing stripes. In
fact a couple times he has taken the stripes off a car at his expense
before I would buy it. They are just something else that can go wrong
and serves no purpose.

 

These are the ones along either side of the roof, correct?

I think this is one of those things which is going to fail on each and every
one Volvo sold. On my '96 850 they started failing about 2 years ago and
are now toast. Our car is silver-grey, so I have just peeled the black
plastic off bit by bit and use a bit of rubbing compound to clean up the
underlying aluminum. Now I have aluminum colored stripes instead of black.
Looks aok to me!

Some have reported success with cleaning the strips, masking them off, then
painting with black paint.

Finally, you can change them yourself easily enough. The are just clipped
into place. $85 labor per strip to replace them is absurd.

John

 

*************************************************************************

Kinda a similar thing:

Last winter one of the big rub strips on a door came off my wife's 97 850.
I told her to wait till spring when the thing would not be brittle. It is
quite obvious to me now that inside for a day would have worked too, du-uh!

Anyway she lost the strip. A new one from a dealer will not match the rest
of the strips on the car, are these available from a junkyard or other
suggestions?

Thanks

 

I would think that you should be able to find them at a junkyard. Time to
get out your yellow pages and let the fingers do the walking.

John