What does you 700/900 mean to you?

[Laird Scooby]

I think in some ways you've just described the whole "old Volvo" ethos Paul. Older ones are terrific value for money and with the correct care and attention will go on for inter-galactic mileages.
When you say maybe not the best car, if you mean Volvos in general the oler ones are probably the best load-luggers ever but IMHO the newer "curvier" ones just don't have the capacity for big stuff. That said, although most of them are reasonably quick, there's not many that will win any races. Go for the newer, curvier ones and you get things like the T5R which does win races. Then you have a trade-off between load-lugging and performance. But you're getting into the realms of the current generation of cars that have highly tuned, multi-valve, turbocharged engines - and that's just the diesels!

I always maintain people buy Volvos for a reason and that reason varies from person to person. I think most would say the reason they bought their Volvo is it's the best car for the use they wanted to put it to, whatever the original reason for buying it was. That's certainly why i bought mine - i needed an estate car to transport my dog to the fields where i could let him off the lead for a walk/run. It also had to be reliable, comfortable and have a good heater. Fuel economy wasn't the main consideration as only doing 6 miles a day round trip meant any car would struggle to achieve anything much over 20mpg.
Lastly whatever i bought had to be cheap to insure and maintain. My 740 beat all other contenders hands down on that score!

[TurnipSpeed]

Hi Laird Scooby,I will rethink that remark about what is the "best" car , as the "best" car is whatever suits your needs at the time!
So,my Volvo is the best car at this time for all the many reasons other owners have given .
Real pride in ownership is lost on many people , who have lost the simple pleasures of owning something just because it's fun.
Cheers,Paul.

[Laird Scooby]

Originally Posted by TurnipSpeed

Hi Laird Scooby,I will rethink that remark about what is the "best" car , as the "best" car is whatever suits your needs at the time!
So,my Volvo is the best car at this time for all the many reasons other owners have given .
Real pride in ownership is lost on many people , who have lost the simple pleasures of owning something just because it's fun.
Cheers,Paul.

Glad i made you think Paul - only to make you think a bit deeper about why you like/love your Volvo!
You're spot on about real pride in ownership and again, that can mean many things to many people, sometimes many things to just one person! Not as crazy as it sounds - i also have a 1994 Rover 827 Sterling (possibly the last saloon Sterling on the road from that year) and i'm proud when it's all bright and shiny, polished etc. On the other hand, i'm also proud when my Volvo is covered in mud from the fields. Simple reason is, the Volvo is doing what it was bought for and has the mud to prove it! That said, i'm just as proud when the Volvo is clean except the mud hides the peeling lacquer on the front wing!

[stephend]

A friend of mine has a C-Max, which lost most of its gears just before Christmas. She took it in to the stealer to have it fixed under warranty, and I followed her in the 740 with a tow-rope at the ready, just in case. There was something perversely satisfying about dumping the C-Max amid the rows of shining new Fords, and gliding away in the trusty 23-year-old Volvo... which I had ostentatiously parked right in front of the main entrance, just to make the point...

[Laird Scooby]

Thanks for giving me a good laugh - i had begun to lose faith in my 740 and although the evidence was in front of me, i needed a laugh to help me re-examine it. Now my faith in Volvo is restored but not in mechanics who pretend they know about Volvos! Still finding stupid bits of maintenance or just complete lack of maintenance on mine but just needed reminding how bad most other newer cars are!

[stephend]

Perhaps the prequel will restore your faith in garages a little, then. First port of call with the stricken C-Max was the local village garage, where my friends get their cars serviced, as do I. The nice man at the garage looked over the C-Max, and said what he thought was likely to be wrong. But he went on: "You've got a 3-year warranty on this, haven't you? What you should do is take it back to [name of main dealer] and make them sort it out. I can fix it for you, but you don't want to be paying for this."

Incidentally, my friend got to the local garage before I did. When I pulled up, the nice man, who knows The Tank well, took one look and said, "What are you doing here? Shouldn't be anything wrong with yours!" He looked mighty relieved when I told him that The Tank was there as support vehicle!

ps the C-Max broke down again last week, and had to have its software reprogrammed, or something. My friends have fallen right out of love with it...

[Laird Scooby]

Village garages like that are the ones that are usually fairly good, certainly in terms of not taking on work that is guaranteed elsewhere. A lot of warranties provide for the nearest available garage to do the work then re-imburse them but if it's a main-stealer warranty then usually it has to be at least a similar (in the C-Max case, Ford) garage, if not the supplying garage that does the work to qualify.

I'm fairly sure the "mechanic" that worked on my beast before i owned it was a one man band, possibly even mobile type mechanic. I have various hand-written receipts with very sketchy details about what work was carried out, when, no contact numbers etc.
I seem to remember you made some useful comments on my thread when i had the suspect head gasket failure a few months back. The spanner monkey that did that was the same one that had looked after it for the previous owner during the time he owned it. You probably don't remember the details but it turned out the head bolts hadn't been tightened properly. I've since found that it is a replacement head and the do-nut managed to swap the heater hoses round - this resulted in a poor, near non-existent heat output which has been horrible recently! I found this more or less by accident as i was checking to see if the matrix was blocked by removing a hose and then squeezing the bottom hose. The flow was the wrong way round - instead of pumping into the top and out through the bottom, it was pumping in the bottom and not quite out the top as the pump won't deliver enough of a head of pressure to do that! Swapped them round and now can't hold my hand near a vent for more than a few seconds as the heater works at last!

So you see, with that little lot and something i found last night, i don't have a lot of faith in most mechanics! I know the distributor cap tends to get ignored on the 740 for access reasons but this has been ignored far too long :



Yes, that is water sitting inside the cap between the terminals! The numpty had managed to break the mount for the LT connector wires allowing water ingress, along with oil, grease etc! The cap and cover were both covered inside and out with dirt, oil and grease too! Going to do a temporary repair with silicone sealant to the connector plug and repair it properly in the warmer and hopefully drier weather!

As for your friends, can't you find them a nice 7/900 that doesn't have black boxes and software updates just to be able to run? Might be nice having a new reg plate but i prefer reliability and comfort! Besides, however much it cost would pay for an amazing amount of fuel, even at the current astronomical prices!

[stephend]

Mmm, I can see where you're coming from here...!

If it's any help, my friendly local village garage is George Nice and Sons in Waterbeach. They're only 5 minutes stroll from Waterbeach station, so not as out in the sticks as it sounds.

http://www.gniceandsons.co.uk

My friends did have the option to buy a 740 but chose not to - so I bought it.

[Husqyman]

I needed a second car and the 940 gle est (B200ft) was in a local dealers as a trade in. 132000 4 owners for £700 no contest against what else was available locally. I had a 265 glt est in 1990 great car shame about the renault v6. and my Dad had a 122S when he worked in Zambia in the 70s.

[Laird Scooby]

Originally Posted by stephend

Mmm, I can see where you're coming from here...!

If it's any help, my friendly local village garage is George Nice and Sons in Waterbeach. They're only 5 minutes stroll from Waterbeach station, so not as out in the sticks as it sounds.

http://www.gniceandsons.co.uk

My friends did have the option to buy a 740 but chose not to - so I bought it.

Just to add insult to injury so to speak and to prove i'm not infallible, i seem to have dislodged the breather pipe from the oil separator - or at least that's my guess! Since swapping the coolant hoses round on the heater (and checking the stub on the head wasn't blocked with crud), it's developed a nice little party trick of losing oil at an alarming rate, like a litre every 30-40 miles or so! Thought at first i had just run low so topped up with a litre last night. Did a 25 mile round trip today and as i returned to my village (just up the railway line from the one you mention), the oil light started flickering on and off again. "Curses and naughty words" says I - or something like that! Thought about it while eating my dinner and come to the conclusion i must have knocked the breather pipe off the oil separator as that's the only thing near that would lose the oil at the rate it's going. I hope!!! Yet another job for tomorrow now as if trying to sort the sticky front calipers on my other car as well as various things round the house that have to be done, thankfully only once in a Blue moon!
Pardon the puns here (my other car is a Rover Sterling) but the 740 is doing sterling service as a pantechnicon at the moment, once the house things are sorted it can have a rest but i definitely need it running for at least another 2 weeks! By then, the house duties will be done, and the Rover should have a fresh MoT so i can rest the 740 a while to give it a really thorough check over - reckon it needs it with all the stupid problems i've had with it!

I've been past G Nice & Sons more times than i care to remember so definitely know where they are! Went out with a girl who said she was related to them a few years back but she pronounced her surname "Niece" although it's spelled Nice Whether she was or wasn't i never found out.