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I had mine repl right at the end of warranty. The repl lasted about 60K
mi. So, every 3 years or so, just plunk down another $200 for the new part
and an hour or so (at least this is an improvement over older Volvo models)
to replace it, right?
So I called Volvo and asked them if they could help defray the excessive
expense (since they'd repl it once to cure a problem and obviously only
treated a symptom...). I mentioned how Eunice Stern had kindly sent me a
'hybrid' pollen filter -- after the new 'std' filters proved worthless in
comparison to the original 'std' filters (which were electrostatically
charged...) -- but which proved way too restrictive for my car's motor (the
fancy filter says that the car's ECC should be adjusted by the dealer to
compensate for this but mine is noncompensatable, so the motor just had to
work harder until it failed...).
I got a call back saying that "due to the high miles on your car we cannot
cover this under warranty". Since then, while on hold on the phone to a
Volvo dealer, I heard, "Did you know that the average life of a Volvo is
more than 18 years?", so I've since called back and asked Volvo to put
their "due to the high miles" response in writing.
Bottom line: we consumers are obviously getting screwed by these cheap
expensive fan motors even more than we were by the tire fiasco, in which
Volvo wound up paying out $20+M in a class action settlement. I think
maybe it's time for all of us [experiencing any blower fan anomalies] to
call 800-458-1552 and register a complaint and ask for assistance -- if
nothing else, this will make for interesting discovery down the road in
case it ever does blossom into a class-action lawsuit.
The coolant and the ATF -- both inexpensive and easily changeable -- will
out-last the $200 blower motor!? Replacing a $200 part every 55K or so
miles? Does Volvo really want this type of publicity???? If not, then
they should -- at the very least -- quietly take care of their customers.
But if they don't..............! (Maybe I should have posted this to usenet, where it will searchable/findable forever...)
I've had mine out and tried to improve it, but it appears the squirrel
cage is permanently molded to the motor shaft, making it impossible to
disassemble the motor to service the bearing, which sounds identical to
the original failed motor's.
BTW, mine's been run with a pollen filter since day 2.
- Dave; '95 854T, 117K mi
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