Evening All,
Just thought I'd post up a little warning for anyone who may own a T5 & hasn't changed the oil filter housing yet. If your car is over 7Ok & is on the original then you may want to invest in the £160 part & and save yourself a fortune in preventative maintenance.
My wife has a 08 C70 T5 SE on 78k with a full Volvo service history. A couple of weeks ago it threw an engine warning light whilst we were driving along a dual carriageway 20miles from home. Pulled in, engine running fine, but squealing like a stuck pig. Assumed it was a bearing on one of the auxiliaries. Contacted my local indie who assured me it was more likely to be a hole in the oil filter housing as they act as the PCV on these cars & are a known weak spot ( was news to me at the time). We drove it home gently, as advised, and parked it up. However when I went out that evening to check the engine number to order the correct part I noticed some fresh oil welling up from under the cam cover plastic above the intake manifold on the LHS of th engine as you look at it. Quick phone call to another well known specialist and turns out it's "foooked"
We now know that it blew out the cam seal on the inlet side due to the head over pressuring under boost due to the hole in the oil filter housing. Oil on belts.
Cue car transporter & pleading phonecall to specialist to get car booked in & fixed as my wife needed it the following week for work.
So that's £1300 quid I could have done without spending just after Christmas (had the block shimmed, new cam & aux belt & as many seals etc plus gearbox flush for the ****atronic .....anything I could think of to avoid delving into the engine bay agin for a while!!) Dread to think what a main dealer would have charged.
All done & driving lovely again. But what a palaver.
Was just a heads up really, in case anyone like me had no idea these were a common (ish) failure and a potentially painful one if you get unlucky. Couldn't find a similar thread on search function - if there is one, apologies.
All the best, Morgan