My '99 C70 has approximately 70,000 miles on it and the heater core has cracked. This has led to antifreeze leaking in, burning off, and coming into the cabin. Obviously, my driving around breathing the noxious fumes (windows open) and periodically dusting off the inside of the windshield to keep the film that forms off of it is not a pleasant state of affairs. Has anybody else experienced this problem? Volvo quoted me 1100 dollars to fix it (250 for the part plus 12 hours of labor), does this seem right? Thanks for the help.

Sincerely,

Bret M. Binder

Bret,

I'm not at all familiar with a 99 C70 but I consider myself an advanced backyard machanic. The heater core job on my 850 was ridiculously easy. A used core cost me $90. The whole thing took me about an hour. An invaluable resource is http://www.alldatadiy.com. For $25, you get a year of use of the dealer books and technical bulletins on-line. You could buy a subsicrpition and check it out yourself to see how hard it really is. There plenty of illustrations, pix, time estimates, part numbers, and special tool call outs. They will have just about everything you will need to know for your car (also preventative repairs they issue in bulletins to the dealers!). It has been a very well spent $25 for me. Good Luck.

X

I appreciate everybody's replies... I will try talking to another Volvo dealership and see what they say. VCNA has yet to call me back though it sounded like they might pick up part of the tab. From what they told me, the whole dash has to come out of the car in order to access the heater core. Perhaps it changed from the 850 to the C70 but it seems like a poor design if that is the case. I have neither the knowledge nor the tools to do repairs myself but I might have to check out the dealer books as there is only one way to learn I guess. Anyway, thanks to everybody for their replies and I'll post what happens when i get this whole mess resolved.

-Bret

Sounds to me like your dealership is in the mood for raping your wallet. Hell no should it take 12 hours of labour to do. On average, it usually takes, real time, 3 hours from start to finish. So even if they are being pricks, at the most, they could bring that up to 4 hours, and probably, the real VCNA prescribed amount of time should be less then 3 if it takes them 3 on this particular job.

Whoever quoted you that labor's on crack! Try 2.6 hours. An AC evaportator job's yet another story.

The heater core is easy to replace w/o removing the dash. There's about 4 screws that hold a plastic housing to the underside of the heater box and once removed (after first removing the firewall connector and pipes), the unit comes out. I've done it several times and I also work at a dealer. Our newest Motor labor time guide says 2.6 hours to replace the heater core but depending on if a "lake" of coolant exists under the floor carpeting/padding and needs to be also removed from your interior, the overall labor could be more. Removing all the coolant under that matting can be far worse of a job to do it right than by merely replacing the heater core as I once had one where the seats needed removal, then all the carpeting and mats had to be replaced as a carpet cleaning place said that they couldn't properly remove the coolant completely. That car was under warranty however so it was done at no expence to the customer.

May I ask what dealership? I will take the info you just gave me to my dealer (Jim Wynn VW/Volvo in Norristown, PA) and see what they say. THanks for the help.

Sincerely,

Bret M. Binder

PS THe coolant leak isn't a problem as there has been almost no leakage of the coolant whatsoever...

It's buried in the dash with the AC evaporator. Do you have any good indy Volvo shops nearby? You might want to consider having them replace the evaporator and the dash bulbs while they're in there (if they're not going to triple charge you for the labor -I've heard of that happening, too!)

-Groundhog