Just Bought a 2006 XC70

LewiiV · 2016-09-10T10:50:09+00:00

The bearing surfaces on the engine are exceedingly sensitive to low oil pressure, The engine is 99% toast if the oil strainer is clean and its still showing...

jaykenneally

Finding the parts for a manual swap is the hardest part. Donor cars are few and far between (and are usually good enough examples that its hard to justify wrecking them) so you then end up importing EVERYTHING from the UK/US which makes for a very expensive conversion (mine was over $6000 in parts).

Was it worth it? Yep. 6 speed manual all wheel drive XC70 with 122000 on it. Its mint and I love it. The P2 is a good car. I don't like the later P3s. I mean I like all the mod cons (bluetooth, keyless start etc) but the P3 isn't much bigger or heavier but god damn it feels it. At least the P2 handles kind of well.

P2's do chew through auto transmissions, brakes, front lower control arms, ball joints, strut tops, struts themselves, basically everything on the front end. Most of these front wheel drive Volvo's are heavy on the front end but P2's are moreso. Mum was thinking of going back to using her XC for everything (she only drives it occasionally at the moment as she has an 85 240 as a daily) and I told her that the cost of maintenance on the XC would increase so much from daily use that it would end up being cheaper to keep the 240 as a daily.

@Philia_Bear I'm interested on your opinion about the oil viscosity. I've been following the owners manual fairly religiously which suggests to use 5W-40. I've been running Penrite HPR-5 5W-40 in all of our white-block Volvo's, and that is also the viscosity we use at BMG for turbo white blocks. Can you tell me why 10W-50 is better? I'm assuming 5W is too thin? But then I thought the oil galleries in these are quite tight, requiring a thinner oil? Anyway, whatever the best oil is, I'll definitely make the switch next oil change, just want to know why I'm doing it haha. At least we haven't followed the owners manual on mums XC70, which suggests 0W-40 or something ridiculous (I cant even find that oil most of the time or its very expensive).

sucksqueezebangblow

i use 0w40 Mobil 1. Compared to a 10w40 it has lower cSt at 40c which gives it a head start getting to operating temp cSt. Thinking it's too thin isn't correct.

I'm on the fence about going any thicker since I don't drive the car hard for sustained periods at all.

If mine was manual, I would drive it harder and since these motors seem to run hot, going to something Xw50 might be good. Penrite do offer their 5w50 top shelf Pao ester so maybe I'd go with that. They seem to have dropped their Sin0, 0w50 product.

Ex850R

@JeremyK I found that the lighter oil in my cars wasn't good , the engine just didn't like it so even tried mineral grade I don't recal. Ask Graeme when my 855R wS still alive we spoke about this a bit and think the last trial was semi synthetic Castrol quality version.
But go with what Mike says , he knows.

Ex850R

Has the original OP been scared off??

bigal

@LewiiV How's the XC70 going?

bigal

Buy a BMW 530d and have
1. A better ride
2. Better handling
3. Far more power
4. Half the fuel use
5. Better resale value
6. Cheaper and simpler maintenance

Im a volvo master mechanic
Ill put my experience against anyone else in this country any day of the week

Wow!

Ben

I second the motion, get rid of it as soon as you possibly can! I had one, it died on me and cost a fortune. Plenty of folks come on here, say their mechanic knows that model and they usually sell a few months or years later.

It seems the only people that keep them alive are very smart mechanics that catch a good car. The rest of us mere mortals get royally screwed by Volvo. Ignore Mike's advice at your peril :)

precopster

I religiously used 10W/40 Semi synthetic (and the odd dose of full synthetic when I could afford it) in my 2000 V70 non turbo with CVVT for exactly 100K kilometres and she is now sitting on exactly 352K and consuming as much oil now as she was when first purchased which is around 1.5 litres per 10,000kms. Considering these are essentially the same as a P2 turbo motor with shimmed tappets and the same crank as a 2.4T I think it went well enough. Some folks in USA suggest 5W 30 for Winter and 10W 40/50 for Summer (and they have the mileages to prove their theory) but our temperatures are far warmer here so the higher viscosities are starting to make more sense for me as well.

« Previous Page