Unless your live far from an Autozone or have plans to enhance performance. You really don't need your own OBDII reader. Autozone will read your codes for free. The guy pulling the code may be clueless but you get a print out of the code so you can easily diagnose about anything that can go wrong. Here technology is very very good.

I have a car chip and it has been a nice toy for pulling trip info off my cars and for diagnosing problems off my sister-in-law's 96 Ranger.

The Haynes Manual is nice but my gripe is that the edition that covers our cars tries to be too much for too many years and models. It covers early 90s 240/740/9XX/S90 as well as 850/S70/V70. Good to have all the torque specs on hand though.

mormit
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02 S40 now my daily! :), 98 V70 T5 new wife mobile-very nice!, 85 245DL 275,000mi V15cam It takes a licking and keeps on ticking

Some good information here, well moderated, only occasional barrages from a few of the "entitled" members (go easy). http://www.matthewsvolvosite.com/repairs.php#fwd
Between Brickboard, Bay 13 and this there's a ton of good information.
That said, there seems to be feeding frenzies on certain issues so be carefull not to get drawn into vodoo science.

The Haynes manual for the 850 should be added to you bookshelf. The x70 series cars share a great deal of mechanics with the 850's and I find it very useful on our '98's
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Mike Sullivan '07 XC70, '95 855T (100k), '95 855 NA (148k). Past Volvo's: '85 744 (256k), '86 245 (165k), '86 245 (195k), '88 745 (208k), '91 745 (196k), '93 965 (147k) , '98 V70XC (98k).

Congratulations, sounds like a good get. I don't think you'll be disappointed.

I picked up a VADIS CD off of eBay for around $50 for my 2000 V70. It is not very intuitive to use, but once you get it figured out it's a heck of a bargain. Much better than any Haynes manual could pretend to be (after all it's what the dealer service department uses). Plus it covers all models for a range of years in case you have another or decide to get another Volvo in that range. Of course, the first place I go is to search this message board or the one at Volvospeed. Their Bay 13 is a great resource with good instructions and pictures for commmon repairs on 850s. There are other helpful sites, but I don't have the time to all of them. Maybe someone else can recommend their favorites.

You can pick up a couple of different Eqqus Innova scanners at Wal-mart for about $70 and $98. Both models will reset the codes. I think their web site is canobd2.com or somthing like that if you want to study up on them. Actron is another popular brand you can get at Auto Parts stores (pricier though). Or if it's not too inconvenient, you can drive by an Advanced Auto or an AutoZone and they will read your codes for you. They won't reset the codes any more, but the last couple of times I was at the neighborhood Advanced Auto, they just handed me the scanner and I read and reset the codes myself. Also, I haven't tried it yet but Klaus recently posted a link to instructions for building a $5 reader and reset rig that gives Volvo codes which the OBDII scanners won't do.

If you just google obd2 or obdii, you will find numerous sites with complete codes listings.

Best of luck,

Calvin (2000 V70 SE 88K)
Previous 240, 245, 760, 940, 850 Turbo