99 V70 power steering reservoir/hose

Found out today that our power steering reservoir is cracked. A year
ago, a hose and clamp were replaced after we found the car to be
leaking ps fluid...

Any thoughts on this? Is the car just a lemon or could I have done
something to crack the reservoir?

Thanks.

 

Huh, must be going around; our '99 v70 developed the same problem a
couple of weeks ago. Local independent Volvo specialist charged us
C$70 for the parts, plus an hour's labour (plus the replacement fluid,
of course). We've only had the car a few months so we're still trying
to figure out how it's going to treat us long-term; the mechanics
suggest evaluating after a year whether to call it a keeper or someone
else's problem. For the time being we chalked it up as
one-of-those-things.

Have you ever added fluid? What did you use? Volvo seems to say to use
Auto Trans Fluid, *not* brand-name PS fluid; the difference may
include compatibility with plastics. But the prior owners used only
dealer service so I'd assume (naively?) they used the right stuff...

Chip C
Toronto

 

Found out today that our power steering reservoir is cracked. A year

Chip,

We've only added fluid during these two periods of time when we saw
that we had leaking - and yes, we did use ATF.

Our bill came to almost $290 U.S. - we were quite ticked off about
that..apparently both a new design reservoir and a new design suction
hose were installed..

We definitely have a love/dislike relationship with the car... most
comfortable driving car I've ever had, love many of its features,
BUT... we've been to the Volvo dealer (which is a good distance away)
far too many times ...(to be fair, sometimes our fault or as the
result of being hit in a rear collision, but sometimes true Volvo
flaws). I have to qualify this by saying we had just gotten rid of a
Volkswagen that we had to go to lemon law arbitration on, so in late
99' when we bought this car, we were hoping for a relatively problem
free car...(or at least one that could be depended on to start again
once you parked it LOL).

One word of advice: be careful parking this car- it sits low to the
ground. I parked over a railroad tie in a parking lot, didn't know
that a nail was sticking out of the tie and really messed up the
bumper. It was very expensive to replace!

Best of luck with your V70.