opinions please! (1995 850 wagon)

-- My 1995 850 wagon with 170,000 miles has a leaky head gasket, a
leaky radiator.....to the tune of a 2500 dollar repair bill at the
local Volvo dealer. It has been a pretty trouble free car till now,
but this is a pretty expensive repair. We had hoped to get 250,000 or
300,000 miles out of "Helga", and perhaps we still could.

What is a reasonable number of miles to expect from this mostly
highway driven car?

What would the purveyors if this fine newsgroup do? Should I trade
her in on a newer model, or bite the bullet, fix her, and hope nothing
else bad happens for a while.

 

First, I would not trade in the vehicle. You won't get squat for it.

Second, I would find a non-dealer mechanic to do the work. This is not
highly specialized work. A head milling and gasket replacement isn't
all that bad. Be sure the valves and guides are checked and replaced
as needed. As for the radiator, I believe IPD has an improved
replacement for the original radiator. See www.ipdusa.com

If the car has been "pretty trouble free till now", I wouldn't give up
just for these issues. You don't say directly but I assume this is a
non-turbo vehicle so you don't have that set of issues to worry about.

I say fix it.

Chuck Fiedler
Nothing but Volvo since 1974

 

-- Thanks Chuck

Jay

 

So would I do here in Europe, Austria.
Viktor

 

Thank you Viktor
Jay
--

 

From The Neherlands I would also recommend to fix it. I'm pretty active on
the Dutch 850 forum (www.volvo850forum.nl) and we have quite a number of
cars with a mileage of 300.000 and more. Expect maintenance costs to
increase as well, however.

Good luck!
Marc

 

Newer models are ... newer, but overall weaker. They don't built
quality like they use to. And not just about cars. You have yourself
a great car. It's normal to incur maintenance costs.

 

The cost of buying a new car is the single biggest cost factor in driving a car.
IMHO, as long as you are happy with the safety level of the model, the car´s
body is healthy, you have a good experienced non-Volvo-dealer mechanic with
reasonable prices, access to junk yards with Volvo parts and and the internet
for buying new or second hand parts you are cheaper off with repairing it, even
if maintenance costs increase. If you sum it up and divide it by the mileage you
will still do fine, especially if you can expect higher lifetimes with this
brand of car compared to many others.
Regards
Viktor

 

Well I'm in Canada (near Toronto) and I have a 1995 850 wagon. Last
winter, with about 165000km, I discovered that, due to the previous
owner's negligence, I would have to replace the entire head. I bought
a used head with about 14000km on it for about $500, a head gasket
replacement kit from FCP Groton for about $85 and a few other
gaskets/head bolts for another $50, a new water pump locally, and had
it all installed for about $500. 6 months prior I got an aftermarket
radiator installed for about $200.

Since then I've driven another 14,000 km trouble free and everything
is lookin' good.

So I'd say a) it's worth fixing; b) you can probably get a better deal
on labour from a non-dealer garage; c) if you do some of the legwork
yourself (eg. Groton sells the headgasket set as a complete kit, the
dealer makes you buy every single gasket individually at astronomical
rates; the head bolts cannot be re-used and there are 12 of them...$10
each from the dealer or $2 each from Groton) you can save a bunch.

Good luck!
blurp

 

Ther's no reason you could not get a million or more miles if you are
willing to keep up with maintenance and fix things when they
inevitably break. It will be cheaper than buying a new car.

If you otherwise like the car and are comfortable with it not being a
new model then by all means fix Helga up and be money ahead.

 

If there are parts which are not available on the aftermarket it may be worth to
check at another car company which uses the same unit in its cars. For my Volvo
745 TD 1989 with a Volkswagen diesel engine I needed the flywheel gear ring
(ring around flywheel engaging in gear of starter). I got it at the Volkswagen
dealer for about a third what the Volvo dealer wanted. As much as I know, the
855 diesel engine is an Audi engine.
Viktor

 

Thanks for all the replies! She's in the shop now.

Jay
--

 

Beware the "improved" radiators. Often they are all metal deals which
in practice don't last as long as the Volvo OE plastic jobs.
Counterintuitive, but there you have it.

 

Same here in Switzerland.
Joerg