This is long overdue and my first post on here. Special thanks and shoutout to @ZZZZZZZ for motivating me to share this with you all in hopes that someone else can achieve what I did.
This car was really special to me as it belonged to my grandfather who was a Colonel in the Military. 77k miles when I got it. Garage kept. He had just finished the timing belt and water pump at the dealer, as well as a brand new alternator, rear brakes, oil filler cap, cabin and engine air filters, and a fresh battery. My plan was to completely overhaul the car in hopes of getting 500k miles out of it. More on that later.
I hated that I had no room to put my elbow. Having an arm rest in a car feels like a basic human right. My friend’s 1951 Chevy Bel-Air has an armrest. I had 2 routes to go here: paint or fabric (or finding R door cards but good luck). There is a brilliant form (I can’t post links here because it’s my first post) on MatthewsVolvoSite by Ludermilch that gave me enough bread crumbs to execute this project flawlessly. I put an immense amount of thought into this and I think, as a 22 year old kid, I really outdid myself.
After I replaced the fuel filter by myself, I used trim removal tools from Amazon to swiftly pop out the door panels. I watched a YouTube video as a guide. Of course, a couple 25 year old plastic tabs broke, but I was able to find them on Amazon.
I don’t think I could have done this project without that Matthew’s guide. There were some steps I skipped to make my life easier. The guy cut the glue which I did not agree with. I did not cut at all. I was able to use my mother’s hair dryer on the highest setting and peel the glue back easy. He also used paint which I did not feel comfortable with doing. I did consider it heavily though. Instead, I went to Joann Fabrics and picked out a fabric I liked. Lucky enough, my upholster liked it too because of its elasticity. It’s a nice, soft, fleece material.
Fun part: I did a lot of prepping for my upholsterer. I had to peel the old vinyl and foam and scrub the living daylights out of it with acetone. I went through one Scrub Daddy per door. I wore an N95 mask with goggles. It was really messy.
I had to go to Home Depot and buy a Dremmel tool to sand down the plastic rivets holding in the front speakers.
I Gave the door panels, fabric, and the speaker nut hardware (from the MatthewsVolvoSite forms) to my upholsterer and waited 3 weeks. I think the speaker nut hardware was wrong because my upholsterer used different hardware.
The car looks completely different. In a good way. It matches so nicely. I think it’s worth mentioning that I saved around $800 worth of labor by doing the prep myself. One shop quoted me $250 per door panel. I knew I could do better. I hope this post can give someone else confidence if they are on the fence about re-doing their door panels!
My next stop was to add Apple CarPlay, a backup camera, a dash cam, a paint correction, and IPD strut bars. I was running out of things to do to the car as I already spent around 7 grand trying to make the car “stage 0”: the power steering system (installed myself), engine mounts (obviously not installed myself), $650 full ceramic window tint (that fishbowl baked in summer time), window switches, antennas (because I kept running through the automatic car wash with it up), dash bulbs (which was a fun project as I had to go to a junkyard for these blue caps that I had to put on the bulbs). Out of all places, I purchased the bulbs at a Honda dealer. The key fob needed new buttons ($15). The shifter knob deteriorated. Finding a new one was hard as it was NLA. Shoutout Volvo of Annapolis. I had my friend finesse the new shifter on as I did not understand the clamp design. I cleaned the grounds, had the dealer flush the brake fluid and trans fluid, added a $650 subwoofer (the 11 speakers were phenomenal). My control arm bushings were shot so I replaced those because my mechanic said the ball joints could pop out while driving. I added new shocks in the rear because he noticed one was leaking. Oh and new spark plugs.
The dealer recommended an ECU update. I went through with it because I wanted the best for the car but in hindsight I wouldn’t have done that again.
Speaking of the electronics… oh boy. I was EXTREMELY hesitant getting into this car at first. I actually said I didn’t want it. I feel like there is a stereotype that Volvo’s are finnicky with electronics, just like Alfa Romeos. I read a joke somewhere that the Japanese figured out electricals a long time ago, (and were able to do it cheaper) however Europeans, never cared. 8 months of flawless driving them boom… ETS light came on.
I get it. Things break. I found a company, Xemodex, based out of Canada who specializes in rebuilding these throttle units. My hope was to save some money by not going to the dealer (big mistake). The car has been dealer maintained all its life. I removed my throttle unit and sent it out. $650 and 1 month later I got it back. Here’s a tip: don’t cheap out on express shipping for international mail. My package got re-routed to the other side of the country. Here’s another tip: you can solder the ETM yourself and save buku bucks.
My daily driver was an electric scooter. I kept saying “it’s okay, it’s okay, the car is going to be back better than ever.” Here’s another tip: please don’t lie to yourself. What’s the saying? If it walks like a duck… Anyways, I put the unit back in. Instead of an ETS light, a check engine light comes on. I have no cruise control now and sometimes the car lags on throttle. Instead of turning to the dealer again, I turned to the internet. I stumbled upon a map of amazing and gracious volunteers who have ViDA scan tools. I contacted the pin closest to me, who happens to be @ZZZZZZZ and we scheduled an appointment (thank you). He pulls up in a beautiful P2 V70 wagon. After our mutual excitement fan-girling over the cars, we take mine for a spin. No smoking gun. The graphs all look normal. Crap. The car is actually driving perfectly… of course it is. We do find that my ABS module is in red as well as the ECM. Easy. Xemodex offers both of those units. I shell out $350 for the ABS and another $655 for the ECM.
Here it goes. E-Scooter-ing and metro-ing for another month. I suck it up. I do what I have to do. Xemodex tells me no faults found in the ECM. If I wanted the transfer service to a new unit it would have to be my call. I think back to the ECM being red in ViDA and am confident it is the smoking gun. I approve the purchase. They had trouble finding a donor unit, so you can add another month on top of my metro scooter excitements. This actually could not have happened at a better time. As my mechanic was tightening the control arms, one of the longer axles broke. He told me for the S70s the axels were all different throughout the years and not to mention if its FWD or AWD. FCP Euro really let me down by not having the OEM axel in stock as there’s nothing like Swedish steel. The OEM axles were expensive. There were tons of Chinese made axles and my mechanic warned me he does not install parts made in China. I found an axel made in the USA. Of course the quality was no where near but what else am I supposed to do. Used axel at a junkyard?
This is where I decided to do my door panels too! My timing was pretty excellent. I took advantage of the downtime to finish all of the projects. One final push and then I don’t have to ever worry about any problem ever again. I would consider the Volvo as just rolled off of the showroom floor.
Everything is buttoned up. Finally. I drive it off the lot. 8 miles later the check engine light shows up. I am officially ready to lose it and push the car off of a cliff. Same codes. ECM 532-D & ECM-900E. The car drives like crap. Plus I had safety concerns with the new axel. It’s not a matter of if but when. The 1 year 12k mile warranty did not put me at ease.
I finally say F it and take it to the dealer. I pay their diag fee. One of the porters was being too aggressive with the shifter and broke it. Always something with this car. I say I’m not taking it until you guys fix it. Luckily they did so yay new shifter linkage but they wouldn’t give me a loaner car??? I had a flight to California tomorrow and had to get to the airport. I should have thrown a massive fit instead of being a chill guy. I’m glad they didn’t give me a loaner though because I discovered my return flight was not at the same airport when I landed at 5 in the morning.
The dealer said “the ETM and ECM are pointing fingers at each other.” Great, what the hell do you want me to do with that information. They recommend an OEM throttle unit because they got triggered I went with an aftermarket unit, even though a user on Reddit said the dealers use Xemodex.
I had to make an executive decision. This car can’t pass state inspection or emissions with that light. Plus the drivability sucks. Every time I drove the car it made me frustrated. Do I keep pouring money into this or do I cut my losses now, let go, and cherish the memory?
I decided to list the car for 5 grand, which is the most it would probably ever be worth in its life. Fine. I drove the car for what like $150 a month for the amount of time that I had it. Not a bad deal. Plus I learned a lot of skills. I enjoyed having no car payment. Unfortunately for my situation I accepted it and turned to the dark side by using that money as a down payment for a brand new car.
I am blessed to have experience this. I am thankful to my grandfather for his baby. I have developed an appreciation for working automobiles lol. It just got to a point… I had to draw a line. It was such a headache. It felt like learning rocket science. Could I have figured out the fault? Possibly. It was probably something really stupid like a dirty ground. Do I miss the car? All the time. Am I ready to move on and enjoy my brand new car with a factory warranty? Yes.
I do need another car however. I am currently 2 months over my lease mileage lol. I think I will purchase a W204 C63 AMG. I have driven a lot of cars. I went to the Porsche Atlanta Experience Center HQ in Atlanta twice and drove a 992.1 GT3 and Turbo S. While they were great track weapons, I have never felt such a connection to a vehicle like the C63. The steering was my favorite part.
Thank you for listening to my Ted Talk. I hope you enjoyed reading about my experience as a young man with an old car.
This car was really special to me as it belonged to my grandfather who was a Colonel in the Military. 77k miles when I got it. Garage kept. He had just finished the timing belt and water pump at the dealer, as well as a brand new alternator, rear brakes, oil filler cap, cabin and engine air filters, and a fresh battery. My plan was to completely overhaul the car in hopes of getting 500k miles out of it. More on that later.
I hated that I had no room to put my elbow. Having an arm rest in a car feels like a basic human right. My friend’s 1951 Chevy Bel-Air has an armrest. I had 2 routes to go here: paint or fabric (or finding R door cards but good luck). There is a brilliant form (I can’t post links here because it’s my first post) on MatthewsVolvoSite by Ludermilch that gave me enough bread crumbs to execute this project flawlessly. I put an immense amount of thought into this and I think, as a 22 year old kid, I really outdid myself.
After I replaced the fuel filter by myself, I used trim removal tools from Amazon to swiftly pop out the door panels. I watched a YouTube video as a guide. Of course, a couple 25 year old plastic tabs broke, but I was able to find them on Amazon.
I don’t think I could have done this project without that Matthew’s guide. There were some steps I skipped to make my life easier. The guy cut the glue which I did not agree with. I did not cut at all. I was able to use my mother’s hair dryer on the highest setting and peel the glue back easy. He also used paint which I did not feel comfortable with doing. I did consider it heavily though. Instead, I went to Joann Fabrics and picked out a fabric I liked. Lucky enough, my upholster liked it too because of its elasticity. It’s a nice, soft, fleece material.
Fun part: I did a lot of prepping for my upholsterer. I had to peel the old vinyl and foam and scrub the living daylights out of it with acetone. I went through one Scrub Daddy per door. I wore an N95 mask with goggles. It was really messy.
I had to go to Home Depot and buy a Dremmel tool to sand down the plastic rivets holding in the front speakers.
I Gave the door panels, fabric, and the speaker nut hardware (from the MatthewsVolvoSite forms) to my upholsterer and waited 3 weeks. I think the speaker nut hardware was wrong because my upholsterer used different hardware.
The car looks completely different. In a good way. It matches so nicely. I think it’s worth mentioning that I saved around $800 worth of labor by doing the prep myself. One shop quoted me $250 per door panel. I knew I could do better. I hope this post can give someone else confidence if they are on the fence about re-doing their door panels!
My next stop was to add Apple CarPlay, a backup camera, a dash cam, a paint correction, and IPD strut bars. I was running out of things to do to the car as I already spent around 7 grand trying to make the car “stage 0”: the power steering system (installed myself), engine mounts (obviously not installed myself), $650 full ceramic window tint (that fishbowl baked in summer time), window switches, antennas (because I kept running through the automatic car wash with it up), dash bulbs (which was a fun project as I had to go to a junkyard for these blue caps that I had to put on the bulbs). Out of all places, I purchased the bulbs at a Honda dealer. The key fob needed new buttons ($15). The shifter knob deteriorated. Finding a new one was hard as it was NLA. Shoutout Volvo of Annapolis. I had my friend finesse the new shifter on as I did not understand the clamp design. I cleaned the grounds, had the dealer flush the brake fluid and trans fluid, added a $650 subwoofer (the 11 speakers were phenomenal). My control arm bushings were shot so I replaced those because my mechanic said the ball joints could pop out while driving. I added new shocks in the rear because he noticed one was leaking. Oh and new spark plugs.
The dealer recommended an ECU update. I went through with it because I wanted the best for the car but in hindsight I wouldn’t have done that again.
Speaking of the electronics… oh boy. I was EXTREMELY hesitant getting into this car at first. I actually said I didn’t want it. I feel like there is a stereotype that Volvo’s are finnicky with electronics, just like Alfa Romeos. I read a joke somewhere that the Japanese figured out electricals a long time ago, (and were able to do it cheaper) however Europeans, never cared. 8 months of flawless driving them boom… ETS light came on.
I get it. Things break. I found a company, Xemodex, based out of Canada who specializes in rebuilding these throttle units. My hope was to save some money by not going to the dealer (big mistake). The car has been dealer maintained all its life. I removed my throttle unit and sent it out. $650 and 1 month later I got it back. Here’s a tip: don’t cheap out on express shipping for international mail. My package got re-routed to the other side of the country. Here’s another tip: you can solder the ETM yourself and save buku bucks.
My daily driver was an electric scooter. I kept saying “it’s okay, it’s okay, the car is going to be back better than ever.” Here’s another tip: please don’t lie to yourself. What’s the saying? If it walks like a duck… Anyways, I put the unit back in. Instead of an ETS light, a check engine light comes on. I have no cruise control now and sometimes the car lags on throttle. Instead of turning to the dealer again, I turned to the internet. I stumbled upon a map of amazing and gracious volunteers who have ViDA scan tools. I contacted the pin closest to me, who happens to be @ZZZZZZZ and we scheduled an appointment (thank you). He pulls up in a beautiful P2 V70 wagon. After our mutual excitement fan-girling over the cars, we take mine for a spin. No smoking gun. The graphs all look normal. Crap. The car is actually driving perfectly… of course it is. We do find that my ABS module is in red as well as the ECM. Easy. Xemodex offers both of those units. I shell out $350 for the ABS and another $655 for the ECM.
Here it goes. E-Scooter-ing and metro-ing for another month. I suck it up. I do what I have to do. Xemodex tells me no faults found in the ECM. If I wanted the transfer service to a new unit it would have to be my call. I think back to the ECM being red in ViDA and am confident it is the smoking gun. I approve the purchase. They had trouble finding a donor unit, so you can add another month on top of my metro scooter excitements. This actually could not have happened at a better time. As my mechanic was tightening the control arms, one of the longer axles broke. He told me for the S70s the axels were all different throughout the years and not to mention if its FWD or AWD. FCP Euro really let me down by not having the OEM axel in stock as there’s nothing like Swedish steel. The OEM axles were expensive. There were tons of Chinese made axles and my mechanic warned me he does not install parts made in China. I found an axel made in the USA. Of course the quality was no where near but what else am I supposed to do. Used axel at a junkyard?
This is where I decided to do my door panels too! My timing was pretty excellent. I took advantage of the downtime to finish all of the projects. One final push and then I don’t have to ever worry about any problem ever again. I would consider the Volvo as just rolled off of the showroom floor.
Everything is buttoned up. Finally. I drive it off the lot. 8 miles later the check engine light shows up. I am officially ready to lose it and push the car off of a cliff. Same codes. ECM 532-D & ECM-900E. The car drives like crap. Plus I had safety concerns with the new axel. It’s not a matter of if but when. The 1 year 12k mile warranty did not put me at ease.
I finally say F it and take it to the dealer. I pay their diag fee. One of the porters was being too aggressive with the shifter and broke it. Always something with this car. I say I’m not taking it until you guys fix it. Luckily they did so yay new shifter linkage but they wouldn’t give me a loaner car??? I had a flight to California tomorrow and had to get to the airport. I should have thrown a massive fit instead of being a chill guy. I’m glad they didn’t give me a loaner though because I discovered my return flight was not at the same airport when I landed at 5 in the morning.
The dealer said “the ETM and ECM are pointing fingers at each other.” Great, what the hell do you want me to do with that information. They recommend an OEM throttle unit because they got triggered I went with an aftermarket unit, even though a user on Reddit said the dealers use Xemodex.
I had to make an executive decision. This car can’t pass state inspection or emissions with that light. Plus the drivability sucks. Every time I drove the car it made me frustrated. Do I keep pouring money into this or do I cut my losses now, let go, and cherish the memory?
I decided to list the car for 5 grand, which is the most it would probably ever be worth in its life. Fine. I drove the car for what like $150 a month for the amount of time that I had it. Not a bad deal. Plus I learned a lot of skills. I enjoyed having no car payment. Unfortunately for my situation I accepted it and turned to the dark side by using that money as a down payment for a brand new car.
I am blessed to have experience this. I am thankful to my grandfather for his baby. I have developed an appreciation for working automobiles lol. It just got to a point… I had to draw a line. It was such a headache. It felt like learning rocket science. Could I have figured out the fault? Possibly. It was probably something really stupid like a dirty ground. Do I miss the car? All the time. Am I ready to move on and enjoy my brand new car with a factory warranty? Yes.
I do need another car however. I am currently 2 months over my lease mileage lol. I think I will purchase a W204 C63 AMG. I have driven a lot of cars. I went to the Porsche Atlanta Experience Center HQ in Atlanta twice and drove a 992.1 GT3 and Turbo S. While they were great track weapons, I have never felt such a connection to a vehicle like the C63. The steering was my favorite part.
Thank you for listening to my Ted Talk. I hope you enjoyed reading about my experience as a young man with an old car.
