Heater Matrix

Hi folks

Just bought my first T5 1995 850GLT Est 108,000 one owner, full volvo history paid £3000. Basically a happy man and I haven,t smiled so much when leaving traffic lights for ages. Anyway other than the usual discs pads and a couple of bushes needing replaced there is one slight concern.

The air con doesn,t cool the car (surprise surprise!!) but when I turn on the heater I get a very faint mist appearing through the air vents then the car slowly mists up over about 10 -15 mins. The air recirc is off. Could it be a very slight matrix leek or is this connected to the air con. I dont seem to be losing any coolant though.

cheers
ekw

[Simon Linton]

Air con is the Achilles heel of the 850 series - find a local air con specialist who know the model or wait for posts which will tell you member's experiences.

Problems can vary from simple gas loss due to lack of use, which will often require new hoses as well as a re-gas, to the dreaded evaporator failure which is a near £1000 fix due to the amount of dash that needs to be taken out and replaced.

I had a similar problem with mist coming from the vents, although the air con still worked. I was going down to Italy and had experienced a small loss of coolant, a pressure test prior to my holiday said the cooling system was fine... Anyway this turned out to be a faulty heater matrix, think it was around £400 to fix. Are you front foot wells wet as well? This has been a real pain as the coolant stained my previously pristine carpets to a fetching shade of green!

Thanks for the replies guys. No the footwells seem to be bone dry I feel that it is a slight leek and the sort of thing that Radweld may take care of. Trouble is, as we all know, this is a shorterm fix and as I intend to keep the car for a bit it may involve a new matrix then. So is this a dash removal job as well?

[liuleichan]

>Thanks for the replies guys. No the footwells seem to be
>bone dry I feel that it is a slight leek and the sort of
>thing that Radweld may take care of.

I wouldn't use radweld - I honestly think you may court worse problems in the long run.

>Trouble is, as we all
>know, this is a shorterm fix and as I intend to keep the car
>for a bit it may involve a new matrix then.

Don't use radweld, then, if you are going to keep the car for a while, and are going to have a new heater matrix fitted.

And it very much sounds like that's what the problem is. I had it in my S70, and didn't have any apparent leaks in the interior (ie no damp footwells). Just the mist from the vents, that got worse over time, when any heat setting was selected. The air con worked fine at the time, and needed almost constant use, towards the end of the problem - as I said, it got worse over time.

>So is this a
>dash removal job as well?

I'm not sure the whole dash needs to come out, for the matrix to be replaced, but it's still a fair amount of work, from what I gather. I had it done at a dealers, and it wasn't a cheap job - nearly £600. Around 50/50 in terms of parts and labour expense.

I did negotiate (after the event) some contribution from Volvo for this repair, as although it occurred just outside of the warranty period for my S70, I successfully argued that the matrix failed due to corrosion (the dealers diagnosis), and as the car had always been services as per the Volvo schedule, by Volvo dealers, it wasn't a maintenance or neglect issue - merely a component failure.

I got a free service out of it, which I was reasonably happy with - equated to about 50% of the cost of the repair.

Lei Chan

Thanks guys for the info this really is very supportive forum. Looks like a new matrix, so of to get a Haynes manual. Thanks again

[Chris_Rogers]

I would be inclined to replace the a/c evaporator as well if you're going to this much trouble, it's in the same box as the heater matrix. Having the a/c working makes the car much more pleasent to drive and will add value when you come to sell.

Also fit the cabin air filter kit, it will prolong the life of these two components.

Thanks Simon, Chris and Lei for the help. Guess what I,ll be doing next weekend.