The swiss army knife - Volvo XC90
Discussion
As a long time lurker and new forum poster – I thought it was about time to make my first thread and introduce the new motor!
Starting off I had the usual plethora of sheds whilst I was young, ranging from a mini to a fiesta, escorts, fiat uno etc etc etc – the typical sub £500 piles of rust that most of us probably cut our teeth on. At that point I got a proper job and immediately fell in love with offroading, trials and challenge events. So the next 15 years of my life were spent in and under a Landrover series 2A and a defender 90 300tdi. Much fun and games were had and I learnt how to rebuild engines, gearboxes and how to weld. But the time came when it just wasn’t practical to do 5000 miles a year in an offroad prepared defender and also you can never guarantee your motor would be working on a Monday morning after competing at a weekend!
Decided enough was enough and the Landrovers all went and I ended up with an Audi A6 allroad (2.7T) which was lovely but utterly unreliable. That got chopped in after a year for a Mercedes AMG. That was lovely and completely reliable. But I started getting scared about impending massive bills and crappy fuel economy when my job meant I was now needing to do 10-15000 miles commuting.
All this time the lovely MrsNicks had a Volvo XC90 with starship mileage – which we both absolutely loved.
So the time came to chop the dogtired XC90 and the Merc in and start it all again. This time MrsNicks would get a little city car and I would get a newer XC90 to fulfill commuting and family car/caravan towing duties.
Enter stage left – the new Volvo XC90! A genuine swiss army knife of a motor. Superbly comfy on a run, can tow significant stuff and absorb a huge amount of crap in the boot.
Bought for a very reasonable price from Volvo in Bury, and considering it had 40k miles and is 6 years old, its pretty much in new condition inside and out. As part of the deal they agreed to do a full major service and timing belt (year early). I also negotiated them to replace all the tyres and also the front brakes (had a big score on the nearside disk).
Done approximately 5000 miles so far – mix of motorway commuting, town work and towing a 6.5m twin axle caravan about the country and so far averaging 33.8mpg. Much more powerful than the old XC90, as this one has 200bhp and the old one only had 163. You can really feel the difference in pick up and 30-70 acceleration.
Whats on the cards for this motor then? I definitely want to make it my own and I have a list of mods I want to do over the next 12 months
- 4 wheel alignment, all these big buses benefit from a good alignment. It drives straight, but still worth doing
- Change all the interior lights to LEDs – currently investigating the right type of LEDs so it doesn’t throw CAN errors
- Install a 7” android tablet flush to the centre dash for media streaming, camera and Waze (satnav) so that it looks original fitment
- Install reversing camera and hook it up wirelessly to the dash tablet
- Change the auto box oil – sealed for life? Pah!
- Flush the steering fluid, as xc90s eat steering box seals due to oil degradation/overheating. Which then causes steering rack failure (£££)
- Remove the roof rails
- Investigate how the Nivomat rear self levelling shocks work – as I want to lower the whole car 2” but still retain the self levelling function on the rear. I believe they are mechanical with a calibrated 'height' set on them, so need to see if its possible to alter this calibrated ride height. If not, then i'll rip them off and install a set of non self leveling lowered springs and some Bilstein B6 shocks
- Replace the wheels with a set of BBS super RS alloys
- Wrap the lower front and rear bumper trim from silver to black and wrap the wing mirror silver trim to black
and lastly carry on driving the snot out of it.
Starting off I had the usual plethora of sheds whilst I was young, ranging from a mini to a fiesta, escorts, fiat uno etc etc etc – the typical sub £500 piles of rust that most of us probably cut our teeth on. At that point I got a proper job and immediately fell in love with offroading, trials and challenge events. So the next 15 years of my life were spent in and under a Landrover series 2A and a defender 90 300tdi. Much fun and games were had and I learnt how to rebuild engines, gearboxes and how to weld. But the time came when it just wasn’t practical to do 5000 miles a year in an offroad prepared defender and also you can never guarantee your motor would be working on a Monday morning after competing at a weekend!
Decided enough was enough and the Landrovers all went and I ended up with an Audi A6 allroad (2.7T) which was lovely but utterly unreliable. That got chopped in after a year for a Mercedes AMG. That was lovely and completely reliable. But I started getting scared about impending massive bills and crappy fuel economy when my job meant I was now needing to do 10-15000 miles commuting.
All this time the lovely MrsNicks had a Volvo XC90 with starship mileage – which we both absolutely loved.
So the time came to chop the dogtired XC90 and the Merc in and start it all again. This time MrsNicks would get a little city car and I would get a newer XC90 to fulfill commuting and family car/caravan towing duties.
Enter stage left – the new Volvo XC90! A genuine swiss army knife of a motor. Superbly comfy on a run, can tow significant stuff and absorb a huge amount of crap in the boot.
Bought for a very reasonable price from Volvo in Bury, and considering it had 40k miles and is 6 years old, its pretty much in new condition inside and out. As part of the deal they agreed to do a full major service and timing belt (year early). I also negotiated them to replace all the tyres and also the front brakes (had a big score on the nearside disk).
Done approximately 5000 miles so far – mix of motorway commuting, town work and towing a 6.5m twin axle caravan about the country and so far averaging 33.8mpg. Much more powerful than the old XC90, as this one has 200bhp and the old one only had 163. You can really feel the difference in pick up and 30-70 acceleration.
Whats on the cards for this motor then? I definitely want to make it my own and I have a list of mods I want to do over the next 12 months
- 4 wheel alignment, all these big buses benefit from a good alignment. It drives straight, but still worth doing
- Change all the interior lights to LEDs – currently investigating the right type of LEDs so it doesn’t throw CAN errors
- Install a 7” android tablet flush to the centre dash for media streaming, camera and Waze (satnav) so that it looks original fitment
- Install reversing camera and hook it up wirelessly to the dash tablet
- Change the auto box oil – sealed for life? Pah!
- Flush the steering fluid, as xc90s eat steering box seals due to oil degradation/overheating. Which then causes steering rack failure (£££)
- Remove the roof rails
- Investigate how the Nivomat rear self levelling shocks work – as I want to lower the whole car 2” but still retain the self levelling function on the rear. I believe they are mechanical with a calibrated 'height' set on them, so need to see if its possible to alter this calibrated ride height. If not, then i'll rip them off and install a set of non self leveling lowered springs and some Bilstein B6 shocks
- Replace the wheels with a set of BBS super RS alloys
- Wrap the lower front and rear bumper trim from silver to black and wrap the wing mirror silver trim to black
and lastly carry on driving the snot out of it.
Edited by Nicks90 on Thursday 5th December 11:40
Congrats. Mrs Toon drives a 2008 black XC90 and the only car she will consider changing to is, a newer black XC90. It's taken care of all the ikea runs, family duties, camping trips and everything in between. I never really got the SUV thing until now but despite its flaws, I've really taken to the big Volvo. It is a tank. I had an incident where some bloke cut me up on the way back from Carlisle earlier this year. He got a hefty rear end impact from me. He apologised, claimed responsibility and after inspecting both cars he agreed to sort his damage out. The Volvo you ask... Can't even see a crease line, scratch or dent anywhere. No bent undercarriage or leaks so off we went. Yours looks great. Our's is very leggy now and over 100k on the clock. It's still going strong but we'll wait another year when the new shape prices reach a point we're comfortable with.
Enjoy. I'm sure you'll have some good adventures with it!
Enjoy. I'm sure you'll have some good adventures with it!
Nicks90 said:
The old XC90 had 280k miles on it and was starting to feel tired. Yours on 100k still has plenty of life left in it!
As for the new XC90. No thanks. It's a bloody ford Mondeo.....
We've got a new XC90 and I think your comment is one of the first negative remarks I've seen about the new shape - seems widely loved. Do you think it looks like a mondeo? The new one (which isn't even that new anymore) makes the old one look like an antique in every single way. As for the new XC90. No thanks. It's a bloody ford Mondeo.....
jke11y said:
Nicks90 said:
The old XC90 had 280k miles on it and was starting to feel tired. Yours on 100k still has plenty of life left in it!
As for the new XC90. No thanks. It's a bloody ford Mondeo.....
We've got a new XC90 and I think your comment is one of the first negative remarks I've seen about the new shape - seems widely loved. Do you think it looks like a mondeo? The new one (which isn't even that new anymore) makes the old one look like an antique in every single way. As for the new XC90. No thanks. It's a bloody ford Mondeo.....
Old xc90 was a lovely design, and one of the few 7 seater SUVs that were universally loved.,
The new one is blingtastic and no different from the flashy Germans. Much bigger too, bigger than many vans.
+1 to no thanks.
Understand some of the precautionary work to hopefully stave off impending financial ruin, but what is the point of swapping interior bulbs to LED? Seems a bit of a faff for no discernible benefit (to me at least). Same goes for the roof rails, but then I use mine a lot for moving bikes/canoes/surfboards around so I actively looked for roof rails.
The dash mounted tablet will have an android auto type skin on it and it's main use will be to run Waze. Secondly to have a dab radio type app and Spotify etc. Most importantly I want to install a wireless rear view camera, so at a touch of a (virtual) button I can have a reversing camera appear on the screen.
So please don't interpret what I said to mean watching videos and stuff!!! Hahaha
Basically I want to give the car a more modern feel just like what most other motors have.
I have a fair bit of knowledge on modifying android OS, so I want to get it set up so that when I turn on the ignition, the switched live charger will wake the tablet up, start the car app, connect the Bluetooth to my phone for data hotspot, connect the WiFi to the rear view camera (probably just use a dashcam or a wireless endoscope) automatically start the radio app to planet rock. When the ignition switched live turns off, close down all apps, put itself in airplane mode and put itself to sleep to conserve battery. If I use a chopped down cm Rom, I can probably get 5 days sleep standby from something like a fire tablet.
Same applies for the led interior bulbs. I hate the yellow glow worm bulbs that are in there at the minute. My wife's city beast has LEDs and they're brill and want the same in mine.
Now the roof rails ..... You can get adaptors from the states that allows you to easily remove and refit the rails. As I do occasionally need to use a roof box, I don't want to permanently ditch them, but 95% of the time I don't need them. And I realllllly like how they look sans rails.
So please don't interpret what I said to mean watching videos and stuff!!! Hahaha
Basically I want to give the car a more modern feel just like what most other motors have.
I have a fair bit of knowledge on modifying android OS, so I want to get it set up so that when I turn on the ignition, the switched live charger will wake the tablet up, start the car app, connect the Bluetooth to my phone for data hotspot, connect the WiFi to the rear view camera (probably just use a dashcam or a wireless endoscope) automatically start the radio app to planet rock. When the ignition switched live turns off, close down all apps, put itself in airplane mode and put itself to sleep to conserve battery. If I use a chopped down cm Rom, I can probably get 5 days sleep standby from something like a fire tablet.
Same applies for the led interior bulbs. I hate the yellow glow worm bulbs that are in there at the minute. My wife's city beast has LEDs and they're brill and want the same in mine.
Now the roof rails ..... You can get adaptors from the states that allows you to easily remove and refit the rails. As I do occasionally need to use a roof box, I don't want to permanently ditch them, but 95% of the time I don't need them. And I realllllly like how they look sans rails.
Really interested to see the mods on this. Love the the tablet idea and the removable bars. Not sure those wheels work for me on the Volvo, but maybe once lowered they will look right. I had those BBS wheels on a MK1 gti golf many years ago, a pain to keep clean but there's nothing with as much street cred, or there wasn't back then. Nice set of BBS ch would look really good I think.
Quite like the look of these. They look nice in white too -
https://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/201...
https://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/201...
Nath911t said:
Quite like the look of these. They look nice in white too -
https://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/201...
How not to sell a car, 101. No mention of age etc, and the audacity to charge £95 admin fee. fhttps://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/201...
k off.Report number 1!
One thing I noticed straight away was that this has a tighter turning circle than our old XC90. Presumably they took note of customer feedback on its supertanker turning circle and tried to do something about it. However I noticed on full lock the outside front tyre would 'skip'. Not sure if this was a tracking thing, a front suspension bush thing or a rear diff thing. As these have permanent 4wd via a bevel gear in the front transmission that permanent connects the rear diff. But the rear diff is a haldex unit that engages when it sees 1/7th turn slip between the front and rear.
Is having super tight (for such a big car) turning circle triggering the diff lockup and pushing it over the outside front tyre?
Well let's get it tracked and see what the score it.
Tracking done and it was miles out. All done and green on every corner plus they checked all the bushes and steering joints and it's all perfect.. However the skipping still occurs. Does drive much nicer at speed on the motorway, but I need to do a bit of research on the ovlov Knitted cardigan forums to see if 'they all do that, sir" or it's something else.
One thing I noticed straight away was that this has a tighter turning circle than our old XC90. Presumably they took note of customer feedback on its supertanker turning circle and tried to do something about it. However I noticed on full lock the outside front tyre would 'skip'. Not sure if this was a tracking thing, a front suspension bush thing or a rear diff thing. As these have permanent 4wd via a bevel gear in the front transmission that permanent connects the rear diff. But the rear diff is a haldex unit that engages when it sees 1/7th turn slip between the front and rear.
Is having super tight (for such a big car) turning circle triggering the diff lockup and pushing it over the outside front tyre?
Well let's get it tracked and see what the score it.
Tracking done and it was miles out. All done and green on every corner plus they checked all the bushes and steering joints and it's all perfect.. However the skipping still occurs. Does drive much nicer at speed on the motorway, but I need to do a bit of research on the ovlov Knitted cardigan forums to see if 'they all do that, sir" or it's something else.
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