Gulp.....HOW MUCH???
 

Opted out of the company car scheme in 2001 and thought "If I'm buying my own car, I want one that'll be good for 8-10 years. 'cos I don't do much mileage working from home and I don't want to take the hit on PXing low mileage cars every few years".

So I got a Volvo C70 convertible, it was my first convertible and also my first automatic. Stylish enough and goes alright in a kind of "arm on the sill cruiser" type of way, which is all I want from a car 'cos I've got a Ducati to go fast on. And it's a Volvo right? Built like tanks, should last forever if looked after right and take 50,000 miles before it's run in properly...well that's the popular opinion.

So 8 years and 50,000 miles later (told you I didn't do much mileage) it's failed it's MOT for the first time. Why?

"Needs two new front discs sir, and the pads, well past their service limits, and the rear discs and pads are in the same state, and one of the rear coil springs is broken. The power steering pump is leaking so the steering could suddenly lose all assistance, very dangerous if you're in mid corner sir, Oh and we've found a small bulge on the inside of one of the rear tyres. And the cause of the occasional poor starting turns out to be the antenna ring on the immobiliser - you don't need that for it's MOT though sir"

So how much is that little lot going to cost me then?

Front Discs and Pads fitted: 266.00
Rear Discs and Pads fitted: 243.00
Power steering pump fitted: 505.88
Rear Coil Spring fitted: 107.00
Antenna Ring fitted: 112.00
New rear tyre: 125.00
Plus the MOT and service

Total £1471.00 :o :o :o

All this on a car that only gets driven to a customer visit in Slough once a week plus a few weekend trips to the shops. Average of 6250 miles a year, and quite a bit of the total mileage was down to some very occasional holiday trips to Ireland and Devon. Nearly all the driving I do is on the motorway where I hardly ever touch the brakes except on the slip roads and if the traffic comes to a complete halt, the rest of the time I try to anticipate the traffic conditions so that I don't have to be on and off the anchors all the time, and how the feck does a coil spring break when all it does is plough up and down the motorway with only me in it, especially when I've never clogged this car - just wafted around in cruise mode.

I've had 'lesser' cars like Peugeots that I've thrashed mercilessly bouncing of the rev limiter around potholed old A roads, slamming on the brakes and doing high mileage - the last Peugeot had 168,000 miles on it after 3 years and it never cost me this much in it's life - and I never wore the discs out.

I think there's more than a bit of **** taking going on here - Dealers can't flog new cars to anyone at the moment, so just look for service customers to give a good shafting to.

Rant Over.

Mrs Jools needs a mobility scooter these days anyway, and you can't get one of those in the back of a convertible or into her Smart, so I was going to take the car with the top down on a nice sunny day to a dealer with a Grand Espace worth around the same as the Volvo and see if I could persuade them to just do a straight swap....just wish I'd done it last month :(

I've move from getting my MOT at a place I've used for 15 years it seems every time I took it in there was all ways a wheel bearing or some thing needed doing. Two years ago it was the same ,wheel bearing on the outside needs changing. Took it to some one else and it passed and has done for the last two years. Ford Motor Co wanted £1100 to replace the clutch mass fly wheel assembly after the Focus had only done 46,000 miles, seem a weakness on the design according to some meccanics. Ford Motor Co are making a killing replacing the same unit on the TRANSIT Van after the same mileage. I had a good independant meccanic do the job for under £800 including a full service. Very suprised about the Volvo though.4D

ouch.

i've had worse, the last service on my 748S was £1600!

Seat quoted me £660 to supply and fit front discs and pads on my Cupra R, i had them done for £220 by a local independent specialist suppying original parts. suggest you bin the main dealer and find a decent local chap more in need of the work.

good luck.

Can't explain the rear spring though

just think of all the dosh you've made in mileage claims and car allowance!! should soften the blow ;)

maybe try one of the swedish car parts specialists

Speaking from experience, Volvos are not that reliable and the dealers are expensive! BUT our 13 year old 940 turbo has now done 150,000 miles and still mostly still drives like a car only a few years old (even the air con still works). Parts are fairly cheap via eBay and via Motor Factors and when you dismantle Volvos they go back together again without things breaking. You're handy with the spanners so why not go the DIY route? New disks all round and pads should be only £50-£100 and an hour or two to fit. Power steering pump only slightly more. All the money you save can then be poured into the 888!!

Keith

i was just thinking that it wasnt too bad for a car thats five years old, however, £125 for the tyre sounds pricey

People at work have started using a moble mechanic, his rates are minuscule compared with local garages and he has a place to take cars if the job is too big to do on the drive.

My X5's last service cost £475 thats the most expensive its cost so far and its done 50K

Wouldn't trust some car dealers any further than I could throw them. It's a regular occurence to get a job list as long as yer arm when a car has gone in for attention.

They look at you as if you are some kind of loon when you decline their kind offer to fix all yer car's faults, or are crazy enough to tell em that you are more than capable of undoing a few bolts to fit yer own discs or that you are quite happy to take the car away with its worn out sliding spline sproggle gromits:D

I'd guess main dealer rates are around £100 and hour for Volvo if you include the VAT.

I've not see a power steering pump itself leak, more often than not its the pipes that have rotted or fractured.

The other way of looking at it though is that you should have year of trouble free motoring, some cars lose £1500 or more a month in depreciation:o :eek:

Ray.

cost per mile = still cheaper than your average Italian TRACTOR!!!

LOL

Lol!

I take it you've not had a quote for 4 new tyres for your X5 yet then?

Just make sure you're sitting down when you do it!

We had an oil service done on ours last week, along with a new cv gaitor fitted; £205 all in! Not bad when that includes 9 litres of oil!
It was the cost of having 4 new tyres that was the shocker...

Jools,

Get a second opinion/quote, just to be on the safe side.

Know how you feel, my last 'service' was over twice that number, then on top of that there was the new roof and the respray at £8k (although £6k was on insurance and loss of no claims). I have only done 6000miles in two years, plus the whopping depreciation and I wonder why I have a car at all

DIY has to be your answer Jools.

Same happens on bikes though. On my 748 service they said I needed rear pads....funny that.....I NEVER used the back brake!!!

WeeJohnyB

You can do most of that yourself with your eyes closed! EBC discs are £39 each for a C70, pads £110 for a full set. Include fluids and that's saved you £240. A recon power-steering pump (from a reputable source) should be sub-£150 and fitting is (usually) pretty simple. Leave the spring, get a tyre from someone with real prices and you should get change from a grand even with the dealer doing the service. Bit of graft, I know, but you'll feel better for doing it. :D

Good luck,
Ali

Front Discs and Pads fitted: 266.00
Rear Discs and Pads fitted: 243.00
Power steering pump fitted: 505.88
Rear Coil Spring fitted: 107.00
Antenna Ring fitted: 112.00
New rear tyre: 125.00

Jools because you never used the car much probably caused the disc's and pads to wear quicker than normal because of the disc's rusting up badly between use. My wifes TT had only 19,000 in three years and required new front disc's and pads. I picked these up off ebay for a song including the pads. Then spent and evening changing them.

Nothing "lesser" about the good old Peugeot Jools, I've run them for the past 15 years and had very little go wrong with them. Great VFM motors IMHO, maybe not "sexy" but then neither is a whacking great service bill and expensive spare parts.

Hope you get the old Ovlov sorted.

Yeah, got it sorted in the end by the simple expedient of paying the money. looked at doing it all myself and the prospect of doing the work wasn't the issue, just too busy to do it and needed the car again for a trip to a customers today, so I couldn't take the chance on it not being ready - can't really take a customer to lunch in Mrs Jools Smart Car.

I've been wondering how the hell a coil spring got broken - since driving it a few miles I've even started to think it could've been like that from new 'cos the car handles better than ever. It's a convertible, so I expected it to handle like a wobbly jelly, particularly because the C70 was supposed to be one of the more wobbly convertibles around, but it actually handles better and is less wobbly than it's evver been.

Anyway, dosh has been spent. I wouldn't be quite so ****ed if it hadn't wiped out the savings I've been putting by for the 'new' Ducati fund

At least you've got it fixed now.

My alternator went at the weekend and drained the battery by the time I nursed it home. The dashboard looked like Blackpool illuminations with warning lights flashing all over the place. Had to get the AA out to give it enough charge to allow me to drive to the garage today. Only just made it, poor thing. Also noticed an oil leak, can't see where it's coming from.

WeeJohnyB

I had a similar situation with the X5 not so long ago. When I was changing the brake pads (£18 for a front set off ebay! bargain!) I noticed that one of the CV gaiters was split. Actually, you couldn't miss it as there was grease everywhere!

So I set about getting the parts and managed to bag the replacement kit off ebay for a measly £6 inc postage. It was a new gaiter, clips and even a bag of grease to fill it with.

Then I sat down to read the instructions on how to change the gaiter... the site reckoned 4 hours to do it and it involved all sorts of fiddly things like removing a drive shaft, splitting a ball joint, removing odd sized nuts that I would need to buy new sockets for...

In the end I took it to the local BMW specialist and got them to change it when it was having an oil service. Considering he'd quoted me £75 to fit the new gaiter, I was quite pleased when the bill for that and the service came in at £205.

Sometimes it's just not worth doing it yourself!

"I've been wondering how the hell a coil spring got broken"

It's our wonderful roads Jools, I had to have the n/s front replaced a while ago:mad:

:roll: Flog it Jools and get yourself a Moggie traverler , you could buy one for less than £1600 and fix it yourself . Adjust the points on a saturday picnic on a sunday.No worries about speeding fines, 50 mph life in the slow lane.:lol:
It won't depreicate. I can see you now , window down smoking a pipe, socks inside your sandles and a beard. oh you already have one:lol: magic

:lol: :lol: Ya bastid :lol: :lol:

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: