A friend asked me if I knew anything about Volvo XC90 V8s. He had been thinking about a used BMW X5, but he has owned a few Volvos and discovered these. I didn't even know that they existed. What do we know about them?
A friend asked me if I knew anything about Volvo XC90 V8s. He had been thinking about a used BMW X5, but he has owned a few Volvos and discovered these. I didn't even know that they existed. What do we know about them?
My sister had one. It was ok. No real problems. She is not one to maintain a car and it made it to 160k with out any major repairs.
From the research I did a while back on those, if you can live with the fuel consumption, the V8 is the best model of XC90 to get. It is preferable to the T6 in part due to the different transmission that seems more reliable and sturdy.
And the rest is the same as all other XC90, meaning rapid wear of the tires and brakes, a few electrical glitches here and there, but nothing specific. Some mention of the Hadldex center diff causing problems, but that seems more related to a lack of maintenance.
No personnal experience.
I suspect the X5 will be a much better drive, as far as actually driving it goes. For long term ownership experience, I couldn't hazard a guess.
I think the V8 is a direct descendant of the Yamaha/ Taurus SHO V8. It came from a time when Ford owned Volvo as part of the PAG.
In reply to pinchvalve:
You are correct sir. It is a 4.4l Yamaha designed beast that has been installed in one of the Nobles.
The only problem I've ever heard of with the engine is some sort of balance shaft bearing issue. They have a sealed bearing that fails, or something like that. Its something that is cheap to fix before it breaks, but is an engine killer after the fact.
They are pretty nice to drive. Very good power, and they make the good V8 noises you want.
I asked about these here (the V8s) last year when we were shopping for a big SUV. One of the members here who is a Volvo tech emailed me offline and essentially said "run away. run away fast" among other things. Other research I did on them showed a less than stellar general opinion of the drivetrain reliability. And they are seriously dirt-cheap on craigslist (and KBB and Edmunds), which kind of reinforces the idea that high-mileage examples may be a ticking time bomb.
All that said, I have no personal experience with them - that's just my perception.
In reply to irish44j:
Engine donor! Quads4rods (I think) makes a bellhousing to make these RWD assuming that they still have the old 3.4l pattern.
Yamaha V8 in these? I wonder if any new cars run Yamaha engines like that.
In reply to kanaric:
None
The balance shaft thing is supposedly only an issue on '05 before a certain build date. Basically if the motor gets powerwashed, water can pool on top of the engine in a place where it can leak down into the sealed bearing of the counterbalance shaft before it dries. From what I understand, the dealership cleaning the car for sale is a common trigger for the issue. I don't think it is a cheap thing to take care of preemptively, since it's the labor of getting to the balance shaft (head removal, etc) once it fails that leads to the high repair cost. Maybe there is a fix to keep water from getting in there in the first place though.
the only time water should get up there normally is when driving.. and then the heat of the engine should steam the water off. Even taking the car to a carwash should see most if not all of the water steamed off by the time you get it home.
My Father has the I6 FWD version of the XC90.. one headlight is out and we cannot figure out why.. it simply has no power
Hmmm, why does a v8 need a counterbalance shaft?
In reply to dculberson:
Since it is 60 degree instead of 90, it might. I would imagine that it would run without it though, since a lot of 4 cylinders will, albeit with more vibes.
It's a 60 degree V8, dimensionally based on the Duratec V6, so it's not surprising that it required a little balancing help. Their failure was placing the rear balance shaft bearing on the outside of the engine instead of inside the oil bath like the front one that never fails. Later cars had a weep hole to allow water to drain from the area, and those don't experience the bearing failures. I think adding the weep hole is part of the repair process for failed bearings, but It doesn't sound like that's possible as a preemptive measure.
mad_machine wrote: My Father has the I6 FWD version of the XC90.. one headlight is out and we cannot figure out why.. it simply has no power
Bad relay on the circuit board in the Central Electronics Module, most likely.
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