Engine: D52447: Swirl arm

[coughlanc]

Hi all.
My 2010 XC90 D5 185 has thrown on an engine service light. Vida helped me diagnose it as a swirl flap linkage arm. It is still attached to the actuator but come off of the swirl flap ball. The swirl flap arm (on the cylinder head) seems to free moving (not excessive though).
Is this just a straight forward arm replacement as found from Volvo? Thanks

[4x4]

A new arm is the first port of call, sometimes you can be lucky and get away with just an arm, but most likely it will be the ball that is worn and a new arm will fall off again. Volvo do a repair kit Click which is an inexpensive option if the swirl flaps are still in good order

The arm was off my car when I purchased it and the dealer could not do the repair for a couple of weeks due to the christmas holidays and as I needed to go up the the highlands I did a quick fix repair...

…. Swirl Flaps... arm off and ball worn. Read loads about this and was expecting it so no surprise there. My problem is I'm heading to the Highlands for Christmas so I need things working without any problems or I could be stranded in the middle of nowhere. As they cant look at the car until the 27th I decided to do one of the mods I saw online. The ball on the swirl flap was so worn that the arm just kept falling off so I cut a chamfer in the arm using a 3/8" forstner and epoxied a 4mm O ring onto the arm. I wasn't sure if it would work and thought that the car might throw up some fault codes if it did work. However I went for a drive and when I returned and lifted the bonnet the arm was still in place and attached and the car ran perfectly without throwing any faults.

The car did almost 1000 miles with this mod and ran perfectly, I feel it would last a while before it came off again and well worth the effort

[gmonag]

This is a well known problem. The underlying cause is that the actuator performs a calibration movement at each power-on and drives the arm to the limits of movement. The actuator is really quite powerfull and eventually the ball joints fail.
Fitting a stop, to limit the movement without straining the arm, is a good permanent fix - there is a thread on this subject. The Volvo repair kit will reinforce the joint, but the underlying cause is still there.

[Faybo73]

Hi

Went through simular on my 185. At first replaced swirl arm linkage as snapped with all same symptoms. Over time started dropping in and out of limp mode. My local indi reset a few times then it stuck in limp mode too long to often. They pulled the car in for diagnosis and good thing they did. They did a smoke leak test and found that the main seal around the linkage rod into the head for the swirl arm was leaking. This caused a loss of boost pressure. At the same time further digging found out my turbo actuator was nearly seized adding to all this and finally the boost sensor on the intercooler outfield pipe had failed. So replaced the swirl flap system and bloody glad I took the plunge as the swirl arm it's self had started to fall apart. One disk dissappeard and the bushes holding the arm alk worn oval. Literally flapping in the wind. Luckily for me only had to replace one injector as they are known to seize in on this job.

So my advice is get it all thoroughly checked out. I was replacing the broken arms thinking that was the main culprit via the stepper motor and worn ball end but turned out more than that.

My car drives like new now. Better throttle response especially at part throttle mid revs and is much smoother. I have had my car seven years and thought that's how they were but it's now better than before. Worth the money.

[Mattyelder]

Hi

I noticed the swirl arm was hanging freely in my XC90 D5 200. I reattached it and several drives later the engine light has now come on. Would this have anything to do with me reattaching the SA?

Thanks

[galloot633]

I approached the problem differently, rather than adding a stop to the motor arm i made a link rod that extends as the flap arm reaches the end of its travel, i made this as just a test, using an arm that had pulled off, this has been on my car for 6 years, no problems
Dave
https://www.volvoforums.org.uk/showt...oot633&page=13

[foeism]

Checked mine yesterday afternoon.
And guess what?

Yep, it was missing from where it should be attached, but found the arm under the engine cover!?

I’ve had the car since Aug 2020 and never noticed anything different in terms of performance, no loss of power, no fault codes and never went into limp mode.
MPG, well it’s a 2.4ltr, wasn’t expecting amazing value. So can’t say if I’ll see a better return with the arm back on. I didn’t buy a 2.4ltr to worry about that otherwise I’d bought a smaller engine.

I’m going to try the o ring method first, see how that goes, then Dave’s method with the spring. Can’t go wrong with 6yrs and still going strong.