Well, with the brake lines gone on the Olds I needed something to drive and ended up getting a 1998 Volvo V70 XC which is their awd-turbo package of that year. So far I seem to like it, but it's needed way more work than I expected it to. It rode great and was a very smooth riding car; yet the front driver's wheel bearing was totally shot. You really would never have known from driving it around. At low speeds there was a slight vibration to the steering wheel but no other symptoms. Yet on a lift the wheel had so much play in it that it looked like it was about to fall off. The car pulls to the right pretty bad. Alignment shop couldn't find anything wrong with the alignment but found that the boots on the front axles were all badly cracked so I had to have those replaced. $1200 later the car still pulls to the right, just as bad. But the vibration in the steering wheel is gone. ABS/Tracs computer is on its way out. Apparently every volvo of these years has a bad abs/tracs computer because whoever they outsourced them to didn't know how to solder pcbs and the components literally shake themselves off the pcb! Amazingly, despite this part having a 100% failure rate and a 100% failure rate on all the replacement units it has never been recalled [you can look up the nsta database yourself and see 90% of the complaints are for this computer]. Volvo wants $700-800 to replace them with another unit that is just as likely to fail, but some enthusiasts online will rebuild them for a hundred or so and include a lifetime warranty on the repair. But seriously: if this were an American car company with an abs computer that fails in almost every case, it would be all over the news & recalled in a ny minute. :banghead3: The radio worked fine, but the tape and cd part both were not working. So I pulled the radio, which on these cars simply pulls out by two little pop-out handles on the front of the radio. The reason why it's so easy is because the radio will not work after loosing electricity unless a security number is punched in. So if a thief stole it, they'd not be able to use it. Getting that number from the dealer requires the vin of the car the radio was installed in by the factory. Upon removing the radio I found I must not have a factory amp since nothing was plugged into that connector on the radio. But I did find a cable going to the "CD" connector which implies there is a multiple-disk changer somewhere in my car. I cannot find it. I have looked under the seats, the floor in the cargo area, inside the dash; hell even the engine compartment. So It is a mystery. So I replaced it with one of those 2-din chinese no-brand radio-gps-tv tuner units that they sell on ebay. It seems to be a 400mhz computer with windows ce embedded installed into it. They seem to sell several different models of these but the information they give on them in the listings is not complete so it is hard to compare them. As far as I can tell there are some changes between them such as different gui's, different features [some do not have gps or do not have a tv tuner]. The internal memory is so tiny it might as well not exist. The gps maps are stored on a sd card in one slot, and then there is a slot next to it for an sd card full of music, videos, or pictures. I do not know what the maximum drive capacity is for these cards. They said in the listing 4gb but I find that mos devices that use sd cards or micro sd cards are being sold by people who have no idea what the top-limit of the device is. I have had phones, gps units, cameras that all took several times more drive capacity than the owners manual advertised. Anyhow; the Chinese radio part of the radio is brilliant. I have never had a car radio that was so good at receiving distant stations that it could be used for FM and AM dxing. The only thing I don't like about it is that they do not give you a metal sleeve to mount in the dash, and the front panel is not detachable [some of the listings say otherwise but that is inaccurate! Only the outer bezel is removable]. The cd part seems to work ok and the gps works good enough but I still need to go through the settings and change some things [by default it displays km's and km/hr which is worthless in the US]. The tv tuner would need an antenna [not included] and a digital converter [not included] to use in the US. I don't have the reverse or parking wires hooked up right now so the video part I have yet to test. The sound quality is reasonable with 4x50 watt channels. Getting an amp would be overkill without replacing the speakers and the stock speakers are all such odd sizes that I'd have to build my own enclosure and take up space in the back which I don't want to do. I ordered a 3-gauge pillar pod for it from ipd. Seems to be a perfect fit & color but I probably won't put it in until spring. I am not a big fan of the tan color volvo uses in practically every car they make. The grayish black option is far more aesthetically pleasing but it is extremely uncommon. Given how hard it would be to get a complete set of interior in another color I am just going to leave it as it is.
What she doesn't mention is the 2 day long adventure we had to go through to get this car. One guy on craigslist offered a Volvo 850R. We thought cool an R model. He rolls up in a standard 960 and without the title. Then says ok i'll have to go get it be back in 15-20 min. We waited longer and thought maybe it was time to just leave. The next day we went to look at in NJ, btw the previous day was in DC. SO we get to the dealer and it was sold the day before. They didn't take the ad down. So we took rt 46 all the way back to Pa looking for cars all the way. We lucked out finding this one. Got it for way cheaper than they normally go for.
Thats a nice wagon when you get it sorted out. The cd's go in the deck one after another. About 4 of my buddies have these. On a side note of cost. You have to buy 4 tires at a time otherwise it screws with the AWD. Good Luck !
They vary in price between 200-300. They are not all the same, but the chinese don't seem to use model numbers or brands on any of them so they are very hard to distinglish between. Some don't have the tv tuner. Some don't have the gps. Some have different gui's. Some have different processors; different versions of windows ce; different amounts of memory. I have yet to figure out how to put POI's into the GPS software since there is no way to access the internal memory by USB with a computer. I got the SD card function for music working yesterday. Works fine but the gui for that task alone cannot handle English text and the song titles & artists & albums all look like jibberish until you start playing one which is when the correct information shows in the id3 tag scrolling-bar at the top. There is no m3u support. I do not know if another playlist format will work [???]. Which means if you're going to store mp3s on an sd card in this radio you're best off picking individual songs you like instead of albums because you'd never be able to find a specific album at ease while driving. When I had albums on there it kept wanting to play Laibach before anyone else. I can't tell if there is a randomizer option, but it seems to by default play all of one artist then all of the next artist and so on. I need to remove the radio again and ground the parking light wire so video will work. Actually, I don't intend to ever use it to watch dvds or avis or anything like that but I want to get rid of the nag screen that tells me to "park" every time I cycle through different programs on the unit. I backed up the gps memory card the unit came with and have started to delete non-english voices from it that I won't be using. We'll see if it still works that way or if I'll have to clone the backup onto the card later.
You'd need a harness adapter that plugs into your car like the stock radio would. You then have to cut off one of the connectors that comes with the radio and use those wires to match up with the adapter. Most of the time aftermarket radios and harness adapters are consistent in what each color means. The adapters usually even have the information inked onto each wire. The radio does come with a wire-diagram on the top of the unit & in the owners manual [it's about the only thing the manual is good for]. The gps antenna has to go somewhere where it can get a decent antenna like on the dash. You then have to find a way to run the wire for it to the back of the radio where it screws on. No tv antenna is included; not that the tuner will work in the US without a converter since its analog only and we're all digital now. The TV antenna would have to go outside on the car somewhere while the gps antenna can just sit on the dash. No metal sleeve is included for mounting the radio. Usually aftermarket radios slide into a metal sleeve and that sleeve gets attached to the dash bezel. You're on your own for finding a way to secure the radio in the dash. They do give you a removable black plastic bezel which wasn't on mine when I took the picture [that's why you can see a gap around it]. This makes it look nicer if you file it to fit in your dash hole but it is worthless for helping to hold it in. On volvos only: since the radio slides into the dash opening on two tabs, you're going to have to file those down to get the radio to fit in the dash. You do not have to file them all the way off. I haven't tested it but I suspect the stock radio could slide back in after the little bit required is filed off. It's really hard plastic though so you'll need an aggressive file and some time to do it.
