I was thinking for while if I want to open my own thread or not. Today I decided to give it a shot so here we go:
My name is Tamas. Living in Ireland near Cork.
A friend of mine got me into Volvo's, back in 2010. He was an enthusiast, who owned several Volvo's - S70 2.0T, S70 T5, P1 V70 R and 05' V70R GT - before switched over to Porsche.
So, the time came when I needed a car and he convinced me to get the Swedish brick instead of a fancy German.
Himself, Ray my good friend and trusted mechanic, and myself, drove to the other side of the country to buy my first Volvo, a 03' S60 2.0T from a dealer with 91k miles on the clock.
5 years & 100k miles later - still a happy friendship with my daily S60 - two of us again, drove up to the North to check out the only available Irish plate VR for sale, a late 04 GT.
At this point, I'd like to mention few things:
1st: I loved my S60, but always wanted a manual P2 VR.
2nd: Not much of a choice here in Ireland, as R's are very-very rare. Few S60R's were listed however not a single P2 V70 R. I know only 1 besides mine.
3rd: The alternative way to source an R is to get it from the UK, pay the customs duty, new road worthiness test and so on, in a nutshell going down on that road is PITA.
So I decided to take look on this GT with 75k miles on the clock and 1 previous owner.
The body seen better days for sure, few scratches here and there, interior also wasn't perfect, but overall not that bad for a 10 year old car.
Engine was running fine, everything was working as should.
I said to myself: now or never.... took the leap and bough the car in May'15.
The new fRiendship took a bad turn at the 2nd wk of ownership. Heard a loud bang while drove the car on the way home, dash-lights turned into a christmas three, car in limp mode and half of the electrical functions missing. Long story short: the CEM module was toasted. Most likely it was overheated due to the bad design affecting the 03-04s. At the end it had to replaced by the dealership. Luckily I had discount and thanks to my loyalty to the dealership - past 5 years - got a considerable discount on the labour and sw load too. Obviously this incident took out 'some' money from my pocket which was there to put the car back to stage 0 as fast as I can.
Next, completed the big service in Sep 2015, as I do not trust any stamped history. All fluids, transmission drain and fill, coolant flush, all filters, spark plugs, T-belt, water pump, brake pads and 4 new tyres.
During this service the garage discovered, wrong spark plugs have been used, t-belt wasn't replaced against the stamped history, nor the water pump.
So, when I got the car back, it was completely different and better for sure.
Since then the below have been replaced THANKS to my good friend Raimund (Ray) who helped me a lot!
He has 25+ years of experience as an ex rally lead/head mechanic and respected rally car builder. (mostly Honda's), so he definitely knows his ways around cars
- Rear passenger side wheel bearing together with the hand brake pads, both sides.
- Handbrake cable and handbrake mod (star adjusters)
- Front shock absorbers - Bilstein B6
- Complete front suspension rebuild - Lemforder and original Volvo parts (tie rods, ball joints, control arms, stabiliser, strut bearing etc)
- Rear toe bars - OEM
- Lemforder stabiliser rods front and rear
- Drive shaft seal
- Angle gear seal
- 3 times gearbox drain and fill, using Valvoline Max Life ATF
- Fuel Pump, fuel pressure sensor, fuel pump gaskets and plastic lock units
- PCV and one way vacuum line, inc one way valves
- TCV - first OEM then the grey Pierburg, TCV/vacuum hoses.
- Upgraded to Jetex Air filter - thanks Lee!
- do88 intake and lower intercooler pipes
- Forge CBV with green spring
- Software load/update by Volvo
- Exhaust trim replacement (cfwerks)
- Center console CF wrap and lid fix
- Replaced few interior parts which were broken/scratched
- Leather interior clean and treatment
- Parrot Asteriod Mini install
and possibly few more which I cannot recall.
I'm planning the following jobs to be completed:
- Coils and spark Plugs at 100k (just passed 99k) and standard service
- Strut bar Conversion kit upgrade - ordered
- Propshaft refurb
- Angle gear collar-sleeve replacement
- Shimming the block
- Coolant flush
- Brake fluid flush, new rotors + pads (front & rear)
- Bilstein B6 rears
- 05 center console upgrade - I have it already, need to source brushed aluminium gearbox trim and same cupholder box.
- Rear windows tint
- Alloys refurb
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