Fuzzypicture,

Fantastic post - thank you so much. It does rather sound like the symptoms we're experiencing.

I need to put this next bit delicately.....the dealer's none too complimentary about us here on the website right now (if you get my meaning).

Is there any chance you can give us a bit more detail of the history with the two dealers and the symptoms / solution etc. I think tht it might help convince the folks at the dealer that they need to take 'the community' a bit more seriously.

They'll be calling us on Monday and, as you say, if the offer isn't to fix the thing FOC (that rarely happens to us) then I really do want to steer them down a path where they take a step-by-step approach to diagnosis rather than start by assuming that they'll just rip the lot out - i.e. mega-bill.

Once again, super post & thanks for taking the time.

David

Hi David,

first dealer changed the shoes, adjusted the handbrake and told me "thats as good as they get, well known for useless handbrake these cars, that'll be £142 thank you very much"

We ran the car for a few months, but the handbrake was useless, after a trip to Cornwall the wife told me "fix it". Second dealer applied foot brake and said that will be rear discs, shoes and pads £380. We can do it today.

For anyone who is reading between the lines, neither of these dealers were based in Wales but both were Volvo dealers.

I thought sod this and stripped down the rear brakes myself, shoes were fine and so were the discs. I ordered the rear cables from Rufe at FRF and changed these myself, took about an hour, but there was no improvement. Bit the bullet and ordered the front cable from Rufe and replaced that. As soon as I had the pedal assembly out I could see the problem. The white inner liner was pulled through making the cable useless. With the new one you can feel the difference as you push down you meet resistance after two clicks, with the old one it was stiff right until the last two clicks and like you, you pretty much had to stand on it to get the final couple of clicks and even then it barely held the car.

If it is the front cable then the rear cables are unlikely to have been stretched so no need to replace them.

Frankly your dealer has really screwed up, allowing the car to leave them with handbrake in that condition is in-excusable, to give it a pass for an MOT is just laughable, we pay them a hefty premium so things like this don't happen.

By Jove! I think you've got it!
 

Fuzzypicture,

I would stake my name on the likelihhod that this it what has happened. It's almost identical in terms of symptoms. And, perhaps just as unhappily, the history of shelling out for pads, shoes, springs & discs in the recent past - all to no avail.

I will extract the key elements of your post into a seperate document and email it to the dealer tonight. We may not be Volvo trained master technicians but, collectively, we have amassed considerable knowledge & experience as frequent users of our XC90s. I am pretty sure that the best outcomes are when the dealers & customers work together in pursuit of solutions.

I'll keep folks updated. But big, big thank you to you.

David

I saw this post, which gives pause for thought, on the MOT testers forums.

It sounds like fuzzypicture's font cable had a faulty low friction liner. I would guess that the front cable has a tighter bend to it and is under more stress than the rears.

The cable to the rear mech on my bike has a very tight bend and I can only rely on that to work properly for 6 months. It's a very lightweight cable of course and subject to constant movement. The throttle cable on my 940 did 140,000 miles before it broke.

Roy,

Thanks for the post.

I don't think we'll want to drive our car again until the problem has been properly resolved. Especially so in view of your last post.

The dealer has lent us a courtesy car and tomorrow, Monday, we'll hope to hear more from them about what they plan to do.

I think the dealer owner, John Cleland, is determined to find out what's been happening and I am hoping that the result will be positive for us.

In the meantime, I took a few minutes tonight to extract some of the key elements from Fuzzypicture's posts and embed them in an email to the dealership. I hope that they'll consider this on Monday before attempting to diagnose the fault again.

As ever, we both appreciate your combined efforts and time. It's a good feeling when you can help another soul who is more unfortunate than you! Although my auto-technical skills aren't that hot, I do have a few small 'wins' which I've been able to help others with over the years on this forum. And if everyone does their 'personal best' then everyone benefits :)

Best wishes, David

Progress made but not yet concluded
 

Update in view of the time & effort folks have dedicated to this thread (I feel somewhat obliged).....

We've made some progress today but the whole thing has yet to be concluded. In view of how delicate these things can be we have decided to place a 'pause' on this thread for a couple of days ;)

Have a good few days. We'll be in touch later in the week once we know how the dealer decides to conclude matters.

Best wishes, David

Centre console/armrest removal.
 

Arianne, enjoy your break.
I had issues with my rear shoes once I replaced them and posted this thread about removing the centre console/arm rest to repair. Very straight forward to do.

http://www.volvoforums.org.uk/showthread.php?t=107096

Enjoy.

Thanks for the update David.

Most people here are just interested in what's caused the fault and how it can be rectified. The the liner failing in the front cable, if that's what the fault is, could have happened when it was being delivered to you and after the MOT was done.

Your dealer seems to have been reasonable and excellent in all your previous dealings so I seen no reason to supose they won't be this time.

Just remember the cost of your car new and that depreciation is because of the cost of repairs, so few hundred pounds to fix a good car is not the end of the world. ;-)

Good luck.

Roy

Any news yet - is the car fixed - what was the problem?

Issues resolved
 

Hello folks, thanks for your patience. We have concluded the matter with our Volvo dealer but we needed a few days to ensure that this post is objective, fair and dispassionate...

the parking brake now works
The breakthrough was because of Fuzzypicture's post - so a huge 'thank you' to you. It was the front section of the brake cable - the inside had torn away from the sheathing causing the problem. I took the opportunity of extracting Fuzzypicture's key information and emailed it to the dealership. The dealer was honest enough to acknowledge that this was the key piece of information. The parking brake is now a dream to use - it hasn't been this good for a very, very long time and it's a joy to have everything back to normal.

the dealership's management of the issue
Well, the initial management of the problem is already documented earlier in this thread so there's no point repeating it here. The dealer principal & owner took personal control of the matter - yes, John Cleland. That's worth acknowledging as I doubt that is common in some of the bigger city dealerships. We met with John on three occassions, having all agreed that this was best managed face2face and not by telephone, if possible. John listened carefully and gave us plenty of his time to explain what had occured at the first meeting. We then met for the second time when collecting the car following the repair - we listened to him and we received a full and comprehensive explanation. It's quite a list of events and I don't think it's prudent to list it all in detail. But the dealer was prepared to fully acknowledge that things had certainly gone wrong and I was convinced that, in John Cleland's professional opinion, the service we had experienced was not up to the minimum acceptable standard for his dealership. There were some mitigating circumstances but nothing that covers the whole sorry mess. Key points I should highlight as they're important to the dealer's reputation - they insist that the car genuinly passed its MOT. They state that the problem with the front section of the parking brake cable is so rare that it doesn't appear on the Volvo Technicians' FAQ KnowledgeBank database. Well, we think all of that is for them to deal with internally. We hear what they've said. We agreed to leave the matter of billing until the final third meeting. At that final meeting, a few days later, we discussed openly what a 'fair & equitable' deal would be on the billing and we agreed a deal between us in which the dealership took some of the financial pain and we stumped up a modest amount of cash too.

Are we happy with the outcome
I shook hands with the dealer principal at the end of all this. We're ok with the outcome. My wife & I want the relationship with our dealer to be a long term one - we live 40 miles from the next nearest Volvo dealer and, after six years of good service, it's a relationship worth saving. We also want our next car to be an XC60 and, being a bit old fashioned, our savings pot is gradually rising towards our reward! So the outcome always needed to be one that we felt was right, not opportunistic or just a short-term win.

The forum is the real winner here
Can I say a big, big 'thank you' to the forum members.

• You guys gave us the resolve to demand a better standard of service from the dealership in the first place.
• The wide variety of opinions helped us select a negotiating strategy that felt right & fair for us
• Your technical knowledge eventually pointed to the actual solution and saved us £hundreds of wasted cash while the dealer would have searched for the fault

So I think that's it. Best to move on.

Our XC90 is meant to bring us fun, a bit of excitement and safety in the Scottish Borders' snowy hills in winter plus a pan-euro cruiser to The Alps twice a year. The good news is that it's back in top form and....

We drove along the A708 past St Mary's Loch, through the 'Lost Quarter' to Moffat on Friday. And parked in Moffat high street, opposite the Moffat Ram outside one of the hotels, it looked great. So nice that, when we returned to it, a couple were giving it the glance and commenting on its ground clearance and stance. I think that's what it should be about and we're glad to leave the problems behind us now :)

David & Arianne