XC60 D5 AWD 2009 - smoke from under bonnet!

[JGEM]

I was sitting in traffic today and saw smoke coming out from under my bonnet on the drivers side - yikes! I parked up and had a look and the smoke appeared to be coming from the vicinity of the power steering pump pulley / belt

When I restarted the car the problem appeared to have gone away but I did notice a brief belt chirp noise which i have never experienced before.

When I got the car home and had a much more careful look the problem seems to be a small oil leak from the rear hose coming out of the power steering pump where the rubber hose transitions to metal pipe that goes into the pump. I assume this is the high pressure hose as it goes from the pump back to the steering rack. (The front hose on the pump is the low pressure feed from the power steering reservoir.)

The leak is not massive, more of a seepage. (Power steering reservoir level is still very close to maximum) but I can see a very small amount of evidence of the oil leak on the power steering belt.

I need to stop the leak ASAP so will probably have to buy a new hose from the Volvo dealer. (a cheaper part from overseas would be weeks away) If the power steering belt is no good (continues giving the odd chirp) I will change the belt later.

[alf27]

Maybe cheaper to ask a local specialist co like Pirtek or any local plant machinery repairers.

[JGEM]

OK, I've done some more checking and scrutiny and realised that my AC compressor pulley is loose and it is wobbling slightly. I suspect the bearing is shot.

The AC compressor has a stretch belt that runs to the power steering pump pulley which is a double pulley that is shared with the auxiliary belt on the outside pulley and the stretch belt on the inside pulley

Initially I suspected a leak in the power steering hose had caused the belt slip as there was some oil on the hose near the power steering pump and above where the stretch belt is, but after cleaning everything up and doing a few thousand km there is no sign of oil leakage from the power steering hose.

I'm getting a car AC place to check my AC system and in particular the function of the compressor. If the compressor is OK then I will just replace the pulley / clutch assembly. Any problems with the compressor then i will replace that as a complete unit with a new pulley/clutch


Question: has anyone replaced the just the AC pulley / clutch assembly on an XC60? Was it possible to remove the AC compressor pulley with the AC compressor in place ? Looks like very little room for a puller..

Any tips for replacing the stretch belt ? Neither the AC pulley or the power steering pulley look able to be rotated directly to help feed the belt onto the pulleys (no big centre nut) so I believe it will be necessary to fit the auxiliary belt and then rotate the crankshaft using a 30mm socket and bar and the auxiliary belt will then rotate the power steering pulley and I can get the stretch belt onto the pulley that way.

I can find a few videos on the internet showing how to replace the auxiliary belt and tensioner, but none showing the power steering / AC compressor stretch belt replacement which is surprising.

[Tannaton]

With regard to the bearing - if the pulley has play then you should remove the belt immediately.

One some Volvo models (mostly P2's) it's relatively easy to remove the clutch pulley without removing the compressor (i.e. de-gassing the system) - on the XC60 you may be able to point the compressor downwards sufficiently to do that once you have removed the belt and undone the retaining bolts.

If the bearing hasn't siezed and damaged the spigot - it's easy to change it. You need to remove the little lugs that hold the bearing into the clutch pulley using a dremel or similar - then you can press the bearing out - it's possible to do this using a good vice and different size sockets. When pressing make sure you support the pulley via the central spigot using a socket or similar and not the pulley outer edge or by using piece of wood otherwise the pulley clutch face will be distorted and it will likely not work.

The bearing you will need I think is this : https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Compresso...72.m2749.l2649

[JGEM]

I decided to get a car AC specialist to have a look at things and it turned out that the pulley bearing was OK and the wobble was in the compressor shaft itself.

Got the compressor replaced today and had the stretch belt, auxiliary belt and tensioner replaced at the same time. Things are a lot quieter under the bonnet now!

The AC specialist did the job for half the price the Volvo dealer quoted. He had just done a major AC refurbish on another XC60 the previous week.

The hard thing about owning an 11 year old car with highish mileage is that major repairs like this end up costing a reasonable chunk of the vehicles market value. In this case my AC repair was approx 25% of my cars market value!