[JGEM]

I have an intermittent whine which I have lived with on my 2009 XC60 D5 for the last 12 months ( I bought it at 74,000 km mileage and have put on an extra 20,000km approx in the last 12 months)

As I described in an earlier post, the whining is a bit turbine like and reminds me of the noises you here in big aircraft before landing when various hydraulic motors make noises

Anyway, after reading your post I did a couple of short trips this morning and on the second one the familiar whining noise started up. As an experiment I turned off the AC and the noise ceased. I turned the AC on and off a few more times and was able to stop / restart the noise.

Being Australia, the AC gets a reasonable amount of use - I actually have it set to auto all year.

My car has had the 90,000km service done recently and as part of this I got a new auxiliary belt and tensioner fitted by the Volvo dealer. Due to the nature of the problem I'm not entirely convinced it is related to belts, pulleys or the AC clutch. The noise varies with engine speed but is not a rotational type sound.

We are not alone with this AC noise problem! The problem seems to be intermittent, transient and does not affect the functioning of the AC so whilst irritating is very much a problem that can be lived with - especially for those of us outside any warranty period and forced to spend our own hard earned dollars to resolve...

I did a Google search for volvo xc60 air conditioning compressor noise and found a few posts from other people with very similar problems

Reading some of the articles indicates that the culprit might be an expansion valve in the AC system rather than the compressor, Volvo service campaign 253 in the US related to this

Bulletin Number: SC-253 Bulletin Date: 08-02-2012
Component:
353600 equipment:air conditioner
Summary
Volvo: see document search button for owner letter. when a/c system is operational, there would be a grinding or growling type of noise due to an incorrect adjustment specification of the thermal expansion valve (txv).

The thermal expansion valve appears to cost less than $100, but I suspect that removing / replacing possibly requires a full system regas so replacing this part may require several hundreds or more of expenditure

I am now motivated to do some research / costing and will report back what I discover.

Talking of air conditioning we had to recently do a full system replacement for our 35 year old household ducted AC system. When you get 40 deg C plus days such a system is a necessity for heat sensitive Celtic types like my wife. Spending $$$ fixed that particular heat related whining!