I've recently noticed that S60Rs can be had for like $3500, which seems like a steal for a 300hp AWD car. Are they a good idea? A bad idea? I think someone here rallycrosses his to great success but that's pretty much all I know about them.
I've recently noticed that S60Rs can be had for like $3500, which seems like a steal for a 300hp AWD car. Are they a good idea? A bad idea? I think someone here rallycrosses his to great success but that's pretty much all I know about them.
Here's the ad that got me thinking: https://corvallis.craigslist.org/cto/d/volvo-s60r/6724456767.html
I dig them - they've aged well and seem like a great tool to eat up miles with a smile. Great factory wheels as well.
I feel they don't exist. They were made from '04-07...
I have been extremely happy with mine so far. Bought it in November, have done something like 12k since then. Fuel economy is unimpressive (averaging 17mpg, can eke out 27mpg all-highway and feel like a hero doing it) and while it has STI/Evo power it has a few hundred pounds more on it, so it doesn't quite have the acceleration. But the active handling/AWD is impressive. It's fun to get a car this huge into stupid situations and feel the computers fix it. It is interesting that the Focus RS came from the same automaker group featuring a generation newer of most of the same tech.
And, unlike the STI/Evo, the interior is astoundingly good. (Also fragile - that soft leather will take an indentation and hold it for months) And it looks mostly like nothing unless you know to look for the auxiliary intercooler or twin tipped exhaust, or notice the big brakes. Very nice for staying under the radar.
I held out for an '06-07 because I wanted the unrestricted automatic ('04-05 autos had a 5 speed that was torque limited in the first couple gears to save the trans, manual trans have the world's coolest shift boot but are also rare and carry a premium on the used market, and I do not like turbo manuals) and all '06-07 have the larger rear sway bar and the "precharged" style Haldex, which can engage instantly instead of having to wait a moment for the pump to build pressure.
I would not rallycross one, it has about an inch of suspension travel, next to no steering angle, way too much weight, and the struts are kinda expensive to replace if you want to keep the car's main selling point (the "Four-C" active suspension) functional. Although it is not as bad as it used to be, you can get new struts on Rock Auto for $400-ish.
Oooh, that car is a steal!
Known issues. The struts as mentioned are somewhat dear. That manual trans will have the smaller angle drive, which at least is a common part (unlike the 6-speed auto's unit, which is only shared with V8 models but is different, so is a '06-07 automatic R only part... and yes I found this out the fun way) so when the drive collar strips, you will have less of a hard time finding a replacement.
About that collar. The angle drive is the bit that sends torque to the rear driveshaft. It connects to the trans with a separate collar. The angle drive does not have anything to locate it to the trans, no dowels or anything, it is located by the splines! Combine that and the fact that this junction is "dry", and you get fretting on the splines, which makes iron powder, which turns into iron oxide, which is jeweler's rouge aka an abrasive. Over time the splines wear out. (This issue is not specific to the Volvo - I had to do two Caddy CTS4 transfer cases/transmissions because the same issue happens with them. It is also a common issue with all wheel drive BMWs) The collar is replaceable but the mating spline on the angle drive is part of the shaft/gear assembly and this is only available as a $1500-ish unit from Volvo.
The engine block is not strong. It is an open deck block and Volvo sawed channels between the cylinders for cooling reasons. This worked fine until Volvo opened up the bores to 83mm and decided to try to make 300ft-lb mostly through forced induction. Blocks are known to crack the cylinder liners at the top where the channel is, as this is the point of least thickness. This problem mainly shows up in the 80-110k range so if this car has 163k on it then it probably did not have the problem, but one should still be cautious. The same engine was used in the euro Focus RS, which is a popular tuner car unlike the Volvos, and as such there are a lot of places where you can buy shims to fill in the channel (basically a section of .030"0ish steel with a certain contour, yes you can make these at home) which shores up the block, but serious big power guys just start with a common 81mm bore block and make up for the small hit in displacement with the ability to really crank the boost up. If the engine is gradually losing coolant or exhibits signs of a head gasket failure, more often than not it is actually a cracked block. (Say, Darton makes MID sleeves for the Volvo, too...)
like Knurled said above, the angle drive issue is what's kept me away from these cars. From what I've seen, unless you get a car it's already been replaced on, its not a matter of 'if' as much as its a 'when' issue.
my buddy has one. He's in Everett. Did the collar replacement himself. Took him a day working in his garage. The hardest part was pulling the old collar off.
edizzle89 said:like Knurled said above, the angle drive issue is what's kept me away from these cars. From what I've seen, unless you get a car it's already been replaced on, its not a matter of 'if' as much as its a 'when' issue.
I would be unconcerned, it's mostly an Internet OOGABOOGA like "omg teh apex seals" on rotaries or "ringlands!!!1" for Subarus. I have a friend who is afraid to LS swap a car be specifically bought to LS swap, because the Internet said the 4L60 is going to explode the first time he gets on the highway, if it doesn't first jump on his chest in his sleep and suck his breath.
I'd be far more interested in if the instrument cluster is a Christmas tree or not. Having a suspension control warning is a common issue. Could be bad struts, could just be one of the accelerometers (there is one bolted to each strut and one in the trunk) are off-axis. Or it could be someone replaced the electronic struts with Bilsteins and didn't care about the handling.
Fir the price of that car, as non-trashed as the interior and exterior look in the pics, even if you needed to replace the clutch, the collar, the drive, and all four struts, you'd still have less into it than buying a perfect car. And that interior is a desirable color. (Atacama?)
I had an 04 M66 V07R. I loved the car but had every single "R" issue at least once:
It was a great road car but didn't like going 10/10s. I wanted to track it but quickly realized that would be an expensive proposition. Rallycross would be out of the question. I did do ice racing and that was good - but low shocks and stress to the drivetrain on the ice.
I spent a lot of time and money keeping the car on the road. More than any other car I've owned.
That sound though, with an aftermarket exhaust. Drool
My old R:
I did One Lap 2017 in a V70R auto. Great car and no major problems, including the 4,400 miles of transit from and back to Seattle...
In reply to Wiscocrashtest :
Definitely not a 10/10ths car, I agree. It's way too genteel for that.
But that 5 cylinder howl. Worth every penny.
I still feel grateful over how easy to work on and cheap to repair the Volvo is. I get to work on Euro stuff all the time, and some cars are just breathtakingly expensive to work on. Steering shaft U-joint started binding up horribly in my car. $160 for the shaft. I didn't feel too bad about it, as the same problem on a customer's E46 was something like $800, before you figured in that the binding U-joint took out the rack, which was significantly more expensive. The shaft might have been $400, I was too much in shock to remember the exact number. Between that and the repair cost to fix an oil leak, the repair bill wound up being almost exactly what I spent to buy my entire car. (Needless to say, he scrapped the car, because E46s are not worth very much)
I had a moment the other week where I had to spend some time in a E39 M-sport. I had the realization that my little Volvo was roomier inside, had a much better interior, made objectively more power (296 vs 28something) and subjectively felt more powerful because the turbo 2.5 makes torque now and not eventually like the 4.4l V8, and rode a hell of a lot better, and while I didn't actually explore the BMW's limits (that would be improper) I have no doubt that its "dumb" suspension wouldn't be as well controlled.
What about the manual t5? With a tune, it can get similar power numbers. At that point, it is only really slower during launches. You can ignore all the weird angle gear and awd issues. If you go with the manual, you can swap in a reasonably cheap LSD whenever you need your first clutch.
ojannen said:What about the manual t5? With a tune, it can get similar power numbers. At that point, it is only really slower during launches. You can ignore all the weird angle gear and awd issues. If you go with the manual, you can swap in a reasonably cheap LSD whenever you need your first clutch.
The standard S60s use the same AWD gear as the manual trans S60Rs and '04-05 automatics. I wouldn't want to subject this chassis to these power levels with only front drive. As it is, even with help from the rear end, the front suspension bushings get kinda overwhelmed and they don't last very long. (They made non-AWD T5s? Maybe it's my location, but the only front drive S60s I have ever seen were nonturbos)
You wouldn't get the Brembo brakes, instead getting the failuriffic ATE junk. You wouldn't get the active handling, you wouldn't get the nice interior, and I'm pretty sure you wouldn't get the all-aluminum suspension. You would, at least, get the ability to run normal wheels. I think the only wheels that clear the brakes on the R are R wheels, and possibly Focus RS. The brakes have a very low rotor hat so wheels have to have high clearance spokes. The kicker is that non-Rs cost about the same as an R, and the Rs are still about half the price of an all wheel drive turbo S40, which have a huge value on the used market for some reason...
In reply to Knurled. :
Aw man, I went to bed thinking "I hope I didnt get that age range wrong." Oh well, I guess you see my honesty about not knowing much about them yet 
Thanks for all the input everyone! Am I right to assume that those Four-C struts are the way to go, handling-wise? What about one of the tunes IPD sells? Are those asking for trouble with the open deck?
Knurled, you're the guy I thought rallycrossed one! I saw that you mentioned rallycrossing your volvo and I didnt realize until now that particular volvo was your old S40, not your new S60R.
You know, if you could get that car for 2019 bucks...
My personal opinion:
The R is wrong. Too much tire, too low, too much brake, too much everything. Its a Volvo, for Chrissakes. T5 is adequate, and much more pleasant to do Volvo-like things with. If you want o be a hooligan, you don't belong in a Volvo.
I also hate the orange (George Hamilton deathmask) interior, but there are grey ones out there, too.
If it still has the exhaust bracket of death, remove it before you kill the driveshaft.
The 4C shocks in the R are ok, but pricey. The 4C setup in the XC70's makes me sad, because there is no position for the switch that makes the car as pleasant to drive as one with OE Boge shocks.
Before you buy, grab the driveshaft and give it a rattle. If it moves independently of the right front wheel, you need an angle drive. If it seems to move more than you would normally feel into a differential, you will need an angle drive someday. If it doesn't move more than a normal, pull the angle drive and grease the splines. While you are there, replace the oring on the turbo drain tube.
The most common source of AWD failure is the AOC pump in the diff. Second on the newer ones is the temp/pressure sensor. Sometimes the pump will short and murder the module. Xemodex rebuilds them.
In reply to Knurled. :
there are *some* aftermarket options. I had some Enkeis on mine:
I love Volvo wagons and have had 3. If I were to do it again, I would honestly skip the R and get the latest stick-shift T5 I could find (even rarer than a manual R). I would skip a lot of the R stuff that broke and didn't work that well to begin with. The 4C had three flavors of too-stiff, and all were crashy. 2004 Rs can get the 4C sensors tricked and you can go with KW coilovers. I think it's a trickier swap in later cars.
Also - the 05+ cars have some interior and exterior differences from the 04s. Also the Haldex is slightly different (maybe programming only?).
In reply to Wiscocrashtest :
I wouldn't categorize the suspension as "too stiff" except for Advanced. (Maybe this is one of the ways in which wagons were different from sedans?) I liken the Comfort mode to "Buick on worn shocks" - it is floaty and it will bottom out on gentle dips and crests in the highway at superlegal speeds - and Sport is just a smidge softer than my S40 was, which is kind of a good thing. Advanced, I don't think the suspension actually moves 
Fortunately with an automatic, the sport button on the shift console will get you the same shift scheduling and throttle/boost response in the other two modes, while keeping suspension motion that follows the road instead of skipping over bumps.
It is endlessly amusing to play with those buttons.
The thing that took a long time to get used to was how it would play with damping reactively. Like, if you go over a swell on the highway, the car doesn't pitch forward and back. It crests and lands, without the pitch angle of the car actually changing much.
V70R is one of my favorite looking wagons ever made.
Most of my contemporary Volvo experience is with S80s and the older S70/C70s. Suffice to say i've worked on a lot of Whiteblocks, at least.
I just got my mom a 2003 t6 S80 and did a bunch of work reinforcing/steadying up the various interior squeaks because, as i found out over 9 years with the last s80 (which we ran from 95 to 235k), the main problem with a Volvo that age is that all the trim fails. Fabric comes loose, plastics crack, door panels and consoles creak, leather cracks, grilles rattle, rubber trim gaskets fall apart, window problems, sunroof problems, instrument panel problems, etc etc etc. It's not that it ever stops running, it just fails to be a nice car after a while.
As much as i love the V70R, my hangup at this point is that it's a ~15 year old Volvo and I know what 15 year old Volvos are like. They are usually cars that used to be nice. There are nice old Volvos out there, they're just rare. I found one recently (the S80 T6) but it was $3k. A truly nice V70R is more like $9-14k for a car that's in my estimation not actually that much better than the $3k one.
So, in spite of my long love affair with its looks, I doubt i'll ever buy one unless I come across somebody that doesn't know what they're 'worth'.
I mean, the S60 is functionally identical and they're a lot cheaper than the wagons, but I feel like buying the 'sedan version' of one of the best looking wagons in existence would just bother the hell out of me in particular.
What a coincidence! I posted my sale ad tonight.
thatsnowinnebago said:Knurled, you're the guy I thought rallycrossed one! I saw that you mentioned rallycrossing your volvo and I didnt realize until now that particular volvo was your old S40, not your new S60R.
I, uh, DID rallycross the S60R, up in Michigan a couple times, where they run on much harder and smoother and more flowing courses than we have here. On Goodyear Eagle F1 tires (Focus ST takeoffs - yes, the big fat R wears the same shoe size as the FoST). I wouldn't say it "sucked" but I think I'd rather autocross it. Feeling the yaw control kick in was amusing as all heck. Overpowering the air conditioning was not.
Finding out that Aisin kinda screwed up the standpipe on the TF80 trans leaving the "full" level low enough that sustained hard left turns will starve the trans of fluid, resulting in seizing the pump bushing to the torque converter when said experience happens while bouncing the rev limiter, which cascades into the bushing eating the front seal and pouring all of the fluid out onto the ground, that was not as amusing. Later I found that you're supposed to run the trans a half quart overfull if you plan on tracking them. Now I know. (At least I got a 3500rpm stall converter out of that mess. SHH don't tell anyone)
In reply to Knurled. :
I feel like I don't know anything any more 
true, the Focus uses the same weird bolt pattern as the Volvo. Also both cars have big brakes so you can swap wheels back and forth. My Focus inherited the 17" Pegs after I sold the V70R:
In reply to Wiscocrashtest :
Same actual tire size too - 235/40R18.
It kinda needs more tire but there just ain't room....
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