General: Hope to Buy an S40 Tomorrow

[liamandagnieszka]

Hi Folks,

Please bare with me on this as I need to seek your advice. Long story short I don't drive myself (living & working in Dublin, need to work on it I know) and 2 years ago I bought my lady a Mk II Micra to get to work and back. We talked for a while about what we wanted and what fitted the bill and arrived at the idea that a Mk II S40 would be brilliant.

So, I've decided to settle on a 1.8 petrol model as she doesn't drive far enough to warrant a diesel. The car I hope to see tomorrow has had 2 owners from new, less than 90,000km on the clock, is a 2005 model and has a full service history with what looks like servicing at every 20,000km. It looks like it has had its last service around 1000km ago and it was NCT'd (MOT equivalent) last month until 2015.

All in all it looks to be exactly what we're after. My question though is this, what should I be looking out for? Are there any known issues I should be aware of? I'm afraid I'm not as car savvy as I'd like to be, the Micra being my first ever purchase and that's pretty much bulletproof.

All help/advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Daim]

Important for the 1.8:

- service history must be complete
- good oil must be used
- check for a good cold and warm start
- check for a good idle

Get the car up to a running temperature and take it for a spin. Whilst driving at ~80 km/h, press the clutch, take the gear out, and let off the gas. If the rev counter is going up and down, then the car has the standard 1.8 fault (which is the throttle body clogging up). It can be sorted but can also be a pain in the arse.

Otherwise:

- check steering doesn't make any grinding noises
- check the wheel bearings don't make noises (if a noise is quieter in a left curve but louder in a right curve, it may have worn wheel bearings)
- check that the aircon works properly (cool down as low as possible and check the if left and right are evenly cold)

[Welton]

Listen out for knocks/clonks from the suspension as you go over bumps etc. these cars can suffer wear in the front wishbones - the car might feel strange to like it's trying to pull at the steering wheel slightly (again, the wishbones) Volvo would want maybe £500.00 to replace these but independents using aftermarket parts could do it for maybe £250.00 max.

Check the tyres for uneven wear at the edges (especially the inside edge which can be difficult to see) this would indicate the suspension is out of alignment and may need some work.

Check that the air conditioning works as this is a common failure, press the A/C 'on' button and listen for a distinct 'Click' from the engine bay - this click should then repeat at approx 15 second intervals and also check that the temperature from the air vents is cold - it should be between 5 and 8 deg C on maximum cooling.

Check the carpets for signs of water, especially if the car has a sunroof, but to be fair the S40 is not really known to leak water but worth looking.

Edit - just noticed Daim's reply but may as well post this even if it repeats.

[Welton]

Also, if you like the car, check it has 2 x Keys - a new spare key will cost in excess of £200.00 as it needs 'programming' to the car.

[Daim]

And if only ONE key is kept, check the car settings! It will tell you how many keys are encoded to the car. If the number differs from the number of keys the seller has, be very careful! You don't know WHERE the other key is and who has it! There have been enough cars stolen due to owners not handing out all the keys...

[Welton]

We should add that to check the car settings you need to scroll through the various menus on the central display of the dash console.

[liamandagnieszka]

Wow- thanks for all the brilliant replies, I really appreciate it.

Just back from a test drive today. The car seems spot on but when up to speed on the motorway there was quite a bit of vibration. The missus was driving, I was in the rear seat and could even feel it.

Any ideas of possible causes?

Otherwise it seemed good, air con works fine, two keys, no damp. tread on tires was fine etc. Just the vibration was a concern.


EDIT- Looking around it could be any number of things such as:

Wheel weights
Tyre bubbles
Wheel balance/tracking
CV Axles

It could be something minor, it could be something major. I'm unsure if it's worth buying the car then. Or should I just have the mechanic check it out and go with their decision.

[Daim]

CVs normally hold for ever on the 1.8. Will simply be a wheel out of balance...

[Welton]

These cars are *very* sensitive to tyre shape and wheel balancing. I've had lots of trouble getting mine vibration-free. Basically I had an out of shape tyre or two (did not rotate evenly) and I've also had an inner track rod fail which caused vibration (quite a cheap fix though).

You may even have a damaged alloy wheel, sometimes if you hit a big pot-hole the inside edge of the wheel gets bent and causes lots of vibration and a flat-spot on the tyre itself. You can only really see this by spinning the wheel and watching it like a hawk. It can be things like this that force owners into getting rid of the car early as they may have been quoted a new wheel plus the tyre and facing a bill of about £350.00 or more.

If you can I'd insist that the wheels are inspected for damage and have something factored into the deal for sorting it out. That said you may try looking at another car and find the air con doesn't work! it's all about weighing up the pros and cons.......