XC70: General Instrument Upgrade?

[Robert2]

The speedo and instrumentation is rather drab in my 2012 XC70. Is it possible to upgrade? Your knowledge and experience is welcome!

[Tatsfield]

+1 The speedo dial is not easy to read. Later models had large digital readouts which you could see at a glance, which is what you are supposed to be able to do with vehicle instrumentation, not peer intently at it at 70 mph to see if you are exceeding the speed limit when your eyes should be on the road!

I notice that you can put up a kph digital readout but is there a way of having it read as mph?

[Sasha94]

I imagine with VIDA coding you could change the kph speedo for an MPH one as I believe all cars have to have both readings so a car with a kph analogue dial would have an MPH digi speedo. I know it works on VAG cars anyway.

I used to like the instrument cluster on my XC70, much classier than the mini V's but it did annoy me you lost out on the temperature gauge!

There isn't a way to change the cluster at all that I'm aware of. If it bothers you that much I suppose you could upgrade to a 14MY car with a TFT display.

[apersson850]

I know that cars delivered in the UK and the US, one of the few places where speed is mainly given in miles/hour, also have a km/h readout in the trip computer. But cars sold with km/h main speedometers don't have mi/h as a secondary unit.
Perhaps in Canada, since they have the US as their only border country. But not in Sweden, for example, where there are only countries with km/h nearby.

[Tatsfield]

Dual speed indication is only a legal necessity in the UK. This is usually achieved with two sets of numerals around the dial, mph in the dominant and kph as a secondary. I am aware that is why my XC70 has the digital kph optional feature. In other mph countries, there is no such secondary requirement. Cars in the USA and Japan certainly don't have optional kph scales. I can't remember whether Canadian cars which are kph have an optional secondary mph scale to allow them to drive in the US. I was just hoping that there might be some way of persuading the XC70 to display the secondary kph digital scale in mph so that I could actually use it as the primary! My daughter's Jeep Grande Comanche in the USA has optional large digital MPH display in addition to its smaller standard mph display. I just hoped that someone might know if this was possible in the UK on my Volvo

[Simon Jones]

On my XC70, the speedo needle doesn't light up (I assume this is normal) which makes it a bit tricky to read. One option is a heads up display like this to give you a digital display projected onto the windscreen: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/5-5-Univer...YAAOSwB09YLxYW

[Tatsfield]

I've bought one of those and it was unsatisfactory. They all seem to be a "one-size-fits-all" device which just doesn't throw an adequate image onto the windscreen, much of the data selection for display doesn't help (gear change points make no sense on an auto), the size of the speed display is not configurable and finally it failed after about 2 months. It's a great idea to extract data from the OBD2 socket but these off the shelf Chinese devices are just not good enough. If I could obtain one that just threw a large as poissible speed onto the screen it would be worth trying it again but I'm not holding out much hope.

[Robert2]

I'd love to be able to swap over for an R type panel. Might ask the techs in the dealership, some make Spock seem as if he needs to bone up a bit....

[apersson850]

It's quite common to find US cars with both mi/h and km/h scales. Sometimes both are visible, sometimes you switch the only one speedometer between the two units.

[Toronto XC70 T6]

Speaking from personal experience, the Canadian Volvos do not have a secondary MPH scale on the speedometer. This was also my experience with my 2000 V70. When I moved to the USA, I had to have my instrument cluster replaced with an American version to register the V70.