Alex, the most frequent cause of the squeeling brakes on Volvos are after-market pads. Go and buy yourself a set of Volvo pads at the dealer (or from volvoparts.com, where they cost less) and you will get better performance and no noise. If you would like to give your break grease a try before you get the Volvo pads, go ahead. You put that stuff (it is silicone break pad grease) on the back of the pad, in other words between the caliper and the pad. This may or may not work. I've been reading this board for almost 3 years and 95% of all squeeling is due to after-market pads. Most people put them on to reduce black dust accumulating on the wheels, but get terrible squeeling. If your rotors are due for changing, DO NOT turn them, replace them with the Volvo ones as well. The brake systems in these cars are really sensitive to aftermarket parts and few people have good luck with aftermarket stuff. Volvo brake parts just work with no hassle.

Good luck.
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Vladimir. 1998 S70. Base, 5-speed manual.

Bay13 is a great place to start
http://www.volvospeed.com/maintence.htm

Ozbrick has the following brakes tips:
http://au.geocities.com/ozbrick850/brakes.html

One basic question: did you install new rotors?
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(98 S70 T5SE misc mods, mostly lighting) (92 940GLE)

Hello,

Here is what you can do but first you should determine if the Brake Calipers are working correctly. I had a Jeep several years' back that had the piston in the brake caliper jamming when the brake pedal was pushed. That is the caliper piston was putting pressure on the pad on only one side due to the fact that the other side of the piston was sticking to the wall of the caliper. This was causing only ½ of the brake pad to come in contact with the rotor. When this occurred the squealing was out of this world!

The best way to determine if the calipers are working correctly is to take a piece of Emery Cloth (Cloth based sandpaper) and rough up both rotors. Do both the inside and outside. When you have completed this drive the car for about 100miles and then re-check the rotors for wear. If the calipers are working correctly you should have no (or a little trace) trace of the roughness cause from the Emery Cloth. However, if you still have some of the roughness caused by the Emery Cloth on only a small part of the rotor then you could have a caliper that has a sticky piston or a rotor that has a need to be turned. If this is the case replace or rebuild the caliper and/or turn or replace the rotors.

If your calipers/rotors are ok then you can to do the following;

1) Make sure there are shims between the pads and the caliper. If not then install the shims. A shim is a thin piece of sheet metal coated with high temperature paint that helps in reducing brake squeal (dampen the pad vibration). Some after market brake pads assume that you will reuse the shims that were on the car. So you could be missing the shims. I replace my pads with after market pads and the pads came with no shims! So I reused the shims that Volvo installed.
2) There is a after market rubber like compound in a tube that you can buy and apply to the back of the brake pad that will dampen the vibration of the pad (stop the squeal). Get some of this stuff and apply only to the part of the back part of the pad that is visibly to the eye. Do not apply this stuff on the braking surface of the pad (you will destroy the pad). And do not apply this stuff between the pad backing and the caliper. To do so will cause the pad to hit the rotor crocked and cause squealing and or uneven brake pad wear.

Good Luck,

Steven---

Well,you`re not the only person with that problem.I had it last year.All you have to do is this:1.treat your discs at a brake mechanic(or buy a new one);2.DO NOT BUY a new brake pads before than you treat your discs because it will be the same;3.when you treat discs(or buy new one)then replace brake pads;4.WARNNING:YOU NEED TO DO THIS AT THE SAME TIME.WHEN YOU TREAT DISCS YOU`LL NEED TO BUY A NEW BRAKE PADS.It`s much,much cheaper to treat them than buying new one.I`ve done this and my problems are gone.1997 850,good luck!!!