Well I finally did something. For years I've been toying with buying an R, and while the focus has primarily been on finding a V70R, this time I settled for an S60R. It's certainly not the most desirable version of the R, but it's a pretty well cared for example that's showing a bit of age in the cosmetics. The Sapphire Black paint needs some correction and the Atacama interior needs a really good scrub and condition, the rather curbed wheels that came with will remain dedicated for winter while I've already secured a mint set of Pegs for summer.



At 227,000 km it's got average mileage for a 2004 (almost 17 years old already... god I feel old) but it has a documented history of service and I would say it's not been a troublesome car to the previous owners. As far as I can tell the angle gear or drive collar have never been serviced so I plan on grabbing an AG from PNP to reseal & re-bearing and a new collar so I have them both ready to go. The suspension and alignment was done somewhat recently as were the strut mounts & a couple of lower control arm bushings. The sway bar endlinks are clonking and bonking, the sunroof rattles, the center console needs paint (or replacement with an '05+ console) and a new cupholder, and the DIM (driver information module, little digital thingie telling me my fuel economy etc) needs a resolder. There's not much more to my immediate list other than maintenance. It's a quiet, comfortable, pleasant driving car for the daily commute. I really didn't want a 6 speed for the commute so I'm not upset with the Girltronic transmission, though I'm sure it'll require attention at some point.

There is one thing that NEEDS to happen though, and that's to improve the headlights. I have a plan for that, and then another plan if that's not good enough. These bi-xenon headlamps are simply horrible, as I'm sure a few of you can confirm. Everything works, they're just an awful design and are lacking a proper high beam. I'd like to hear a bit more of the exhaust (and the rear muffler is showing some age) so while that time will come, it's not going to come this year.

It won't be a terribly exciting "build thread" but whatever I do to the car, I'll do it here. I just wanted to keep the three of you still on the forum in the loop.

Nice looking car...I'll be watching with great interest as I consider dumping my fleet of 240's.

“The three of us”, lol...

Matt nice score, as Craig said looking forward with interest to your build thread.

We finally bought something new to us and actually built in this century, but it’s not a Volvo (weird I know) so no post.



Say it isn’t so? Could be a glut of 240’s on the market then as we’ve got some pruning to do as well....

As of yet, I'm waiting for the third person to chime in, so maybe my pessimistic statement is actually optimistic!



Thanks Jim. If I had more patience I would have found a better deal on a nicer car with fewer miles, but I may also have bought that hardtop AW11 MR2 currently on Kijiji. What did you end up getting? I posted about my Saab, you might as well do the same.

“As of yet, I'm waiting for the third person to chime in, so maybe my pessimistic statement is actually optimistic!”

Hi, “I’m” here , holed up at home. Hope all are well

Craig.

Hey Matt, we picked up a 13’ Q5, 3.0T with s-line package. Yesterday it barfed up the “steering defective “ message and I could barely move the wheel Tried restarting a couple of times and nothing, so phoned for a tow. Tried it one last time and it cleared itself so I drove it home, faaack!

For all of the reading I did before I never found this known issue, but it’s obviously out of warranty and when owners demanded a recall on the issue Audi told them to go pound sand... Other than this issue I really like the car, just wishing it had gone more than a couple of weeks before taking a dump.

That's balls, Jim. Sorry to hear it. I wouldn't buy a remotely modern Audi myself, I'm pretty afraid of them. That being said, I told myself I wouldn't buy another car with stability control and look how that worked out for me.

As you do, I set up a Row 52 notification for when any Volvo of 2001-2007 vintage shows up. On Thursday I got a note that an '06 XC70 showed up, so I went to look at it. Score!

I have coveralls and tools in the car so after work I went and picked up this:



IPD turbo suction hose, hot and cold side boost hoses, HD boost solenoid, solid engine bar mounts, and a set of reasonable headlights & front floor mats.

Sunday after the sun came out I went back and picked up this:



SNAAB exhaust and what's left of a downpipe.

Now: The boost hoses will work on my car but I think this yuge piece of sillycone draped across the top of the engine looks dumb, and the suction hose won't fit my car at all, but I know a fella with an XC who's having boost issues so he's going to pick up these hoses from me. The downpipe obviously had the cat removed with Pick&Pull's usual surgical precision, so I'll have some work to do there, and the rear section of the exhaust took a pretty good hit in the accident that rendered the car in the JY in the first place. I should be able to pull it straight-ish, and the cosmetic damage to the muffler & tip won't bug me unless it sticks out from under the bumper. The plan is to pull it straight by strapping it between the truck and a power pole and applying whatever heat might be necessary, and to install it on my car to see if it's ridiculously loud or if it's something I can live with. For $32 it was a gamble I was willing to take... Even if I have to chop out the two 2" elbows and replace them, I'm good with that.



If the exhaust is tolerable from a noise standpoint and doesn't rattle or bang around, I'll consider grafting a section back into the downpipe and adding a good high flow cat and installing that later. For the $12 I paid those parts are worth having too.

The headlights will be discussed later.

Fourth person! Oh man. Matt, I'm really excited for you! This thing is gonna be sweet! Happy to hear it's got the Atacama interior.

I hear you on the headlights big time. I wish there were something I could do to improve mine. I'll be anxious to see what you sort out.

Incredible score at the JY! Holy crap! If you don't end up offloading those hoses, I'd be interested in the big ugly over the top of the engine one.

(edit) Coburn, are you seriously considering offloading a 240???

I was really excited about the interior too, but it seems like there's a lot of these things with this colour interior and this colour interior tends to wear terribly. Mine's not the greatest, but I'll be buying a gallon of leatherique and will attempt to get some of the stains out. Leatherique apparently makes a dye for it but you have to dye the whole seat, and I've seen so many dye jobs go bad or only last a few months. I'm hoping it'll just clean up and I can maintain it.

The headlights: I don't know what research you did on these while you had your XC, but there are options. None of them particularly straightforward, elegant, and cheap. Pick two. I'm such a fussbucket about lights that fixing this is not an option for me, it has to be done. Those Hellas on your XC looked the part, but they don't exactly fit on an R.

The hose is spoken for, but what would you put it on? I don't remember knowing you'd bought another Volvo?

Nice score Matt. To anyone else it’s mostly junk, so cool to see you salvage stuff for cheap and make it work.

So, the headlights:

For anyone not familiar with the DOT Volvo Bi-Xenon Headlamp units, here's what they look like.



I've highlighted the daytime running light. For the Euro market, this lamp is used as a high beam: there is no fresnel in front of the reflector, the reflector is properly silvered, and the bulb is an H7 or H9 or some proper high beam bulb. For North American cars they repurposed this lamp to a DRL, which they dimmed by painting the reflector silver and they diffused by installing the fresnel, and they used a 9006XS bulb.

The main lamp is a 35w D2R HID bulb and the whole reflector tilts up and down as commanded by the high beam switch. It doesn't re-focus to intensify the beam for long distance, it just points the low beam up higher. The result is a higher, wider, and vastly DIMMER light pattern.

There is also a height adjustment tied to the 4C suspension that can be run through a self-calibration procedure in VIDA, but at the end of it the headlights are usually pointed down too far. They can then be raised up to be somewhat useful on low beam, but the high beam is still terrible.

The car is communicating to the headlights in a number of ways: First, the level sensor is expecting to see that motor. Next, the high beam circuit is expecting to see that motor. Third, the DRLs are expecting to see the 9006 bulb, though apparently this can be changed using VIDA so that DRL duties are handled by the Xenon bulb. It's also reported that the car still retains the high beam circuit used in Europe-land, but it's not hooked to anything in the North American cars aside from the solenoid that tilts the reflector. Apparently it's "not possible" to reprogram the car to expect to see Halogen lights versus the Xenons (I'm dubious of this claim, but proceeding as though it's fact for now).

The most direct option, simplest, but the most expensive one, is to have a set of European headlights shipped over and change the car's DRL mode. This will cost in excess of $1k by the time the lamps are shipped. This gets you an improved low beam pattern and a reasonable high beam that can be upgraded with LED, HID or whatever hot rod Halogen bulb you like.

Exploring other options:

- Install Halogen lamps, reprogram the DRLs, and either reconfigure the car's brain or the wiring to drive the halogens. This may throw a code for the auto leveling, but if the leveling motor is pirated from a set of junkyard Xenons I may be able to confuse the computer into thinking they're still intact. (Installing Euro Halogen lamps is an option once the configuration is perfected, about half the price of Euro Xenons and not much less difficult to replace).

- Upgrade the Xenon high beam, reprogram the DRLs. This requires disassembly of the lamp, sending the high beam reflectors to Michigan to have them treated, and removing the fresnel. Then yadda yadda with the bulbs. It's been done a few times by other folks with decent results, and no codes.

- Retrofit a bi-xenon projector into this housing. This gets a fabulous low beam but (in my experience) a marginal high beam. Both low and high beam are improved over the stock part, and no codes are thrown since the DRLs and height adjusters remain intact, and the circuit to operate the high beam solenoid is repurposed to operate ... the high beam solenoid. I hate bi-xenon projectors though, and a retrofit version is hanging way off balance so I am not sure how long it'll live.

- Install a light bar behind the grille. Should work, not cheap, a pain to aim, a pain to clean.

The Halogen lights I grabbed are from an '06, so have the clear plastic lenses versus the fluted glass lenses of the -04 cars. These use an H11 low beam bulb and an H9 high beam. The H11 is just a low-wattage H9 with a slightly different mounting tab and electrical plug, both of which can be modified to install an H9 into the H11 lamp. The H9 also doesn't have the paint shield on the bulb but the Volvo lamp has a glare shield built in, so glare probably won't be a problem. H11 = 55w 1325 lumens, H9 = 65w 2100 lumens. I've been extremely happy with the S-V.4 LED bulbs (36w, 3600 lumens) in my Saab so I wouldn't have any hesitation of installing them in the high beams of any of my cars. As low beams they're also excellent but I'm not sure I'd install them into a DOT pattern lamp. Retrofitting an Halogen projector into the low beam would be an upgrade possibility, and I know these LED bulbs work magnificently in a projector.

Here they are alongside a set of high/low Halogen projectors in my stash:



Unfortunately both the low beam bulbs in the lights I grabbed are blown, and I have no others, so I can't power them up to see how good/bad they are. That they have a proper low and high beam, plus a city light (cool!), and they're not terrible looking (like the -04 ones with the black surrounds). They're also not horrendously uncommon so if one gets damaged they're easily and cheaply replaced.

So that's what I know at this point. Again, I'm not acting on anything until I have worked down to this level on my priority list.

I assumed the hose would fit on the XC just fine, but perhaps I'm wrong. The one other blue hose you have there is already on my car.

I did a fair bit of research on lights for mine. (edit: upon reading your second post not nearly as much as you) There's three further problems for me in that I have plastic headlamps (the R's only ever got glass) which haze on the outside (easily fixed) but also haze on the inside due to heat (impossible to fix). And I also have the ABL xenons which move with your steering wheel, so if you replace them with something else you get codes from that too. And they only made these lights for one year on the XC70 (two or three on the S60) so finding replacements is near impossible. When you do they insanely expensive ($1,700 from the dealership), and they still suck, or they are hazy as well.

I ended up adding the Hellas using the factory harness and relay. It was hard to find, but install was a treat. They only work when you flick on your brights, which is fine. But the low beams are so bad that I've resorted to driving with my high beams on sans Hella when I'm on the highway. I still have never had anyone flash me, that's how dim they are.

Yeah, it seems the Atacama in particular wears badly. Still my favourite interior colour ever even if it's rough. It's a shame because the XC interiors wear like iron, though I've still considered an R Nordkapp swap into my car.

Damn, just read your second post. So much to consider here. I've often wished I could do the European halogens in my car. Sooooo much simpler. But the reprogramming shit scares me. I talked to a guy on Swedespeed about it once but gave up. It just all seemed to complicated for me.