2001 VOLVO V70 reviews

Volvo V70 V70 170BHP SE 2001

I own two Volvos with my first one being a 21 year old 740 that without doubt is the most reliable car i ever had, so with some trepidation i bought a V70 2001 about 4 years ago with 100,000 miles on it that had been converted to LPG, so with Volvo being owned by Ford and many parts on the V70 from Ford I was expecting Ford reliability, but to my genuine surprise with the car now having covered 151,000 this is not the case. The good bits first; the auto gear box is bullet proof comes from Aisin-Warner in Japan and simply a very tough box, the engine also very tough I have the 170bhp variant keep giving it regular synthetic oil changes and has not let me down. The bad bits are; the V70 mk2 has relatively soft bushes on the suspension points and as with many V70 my two front wishbones have been replaced due to bush wear, also to drop links need to be done, back tyres are now showing wear on the inside which is a common problem as the inner rear suspension bushes start to wear, also have a small leak in the A/C the needs topped up every summer. One other problem to note is the hand brake shoes, as with many automatics the handbrake tends not to be used much and Volvo decided to use a inferior brake shoe which over time the friction material comes away from the metal due to inferior glue, as a result the pad coming away gets logged between the drum and the other shoes and can cause catastrophic failure to the whole hub. I had this happen on one side at around 129,000 luckily I stopped as soon as I felt a shudder, when I took the drum off I found disintegrated brake shoe but luckily no major damage. I checked the other handbrake shoes to find the friction material was about to come away, so if you have a V70 Mr2 and the handbrake shoes have never been checked do so as the cost to replace the whole hub can be very costly. As to day to day living you would think this big car would be good for a family of five but the very poor rear leg room and not that roomy rear seats has led to many fights with my three sons in the back. It has got so bad that when we have to go on long trips we take the 7 seater 740 also LPG for the longer trips, so if you have three younger kids look for the 7 seater V70 will make a big difference. As to economy its pretty thirsty around the town on LPG it gets 20mpg but at 0.66 per litre this is equates to about 38mpg for the same cost if on petrol. On petrol you get 22.5mpg in town, on long runs LPG gives 27mpg and about 32mpg on petrol. I forgot to mention one last problem was the drivers heated seat has just recently stopped working, probably a loose connection but if anyone has had this happen and had it fixed let me know what the issue was, I miss that warm bum feeling on a snowy morning.