A neighbor and I enjoyed looking at new cars together a couple years ago. Shortly after I purchased my S80 T6, he came home with a new BMW 5 series. We've always had a good natured rivalry about such matters, so of course we're always swapping stories of who made the best car purchase.

He's never rubbed it in as my S80 was flatbedded away five times over the course of the past two years, or acknowledged the fact that I've been in loaners or rentals 19 days this year and 31 days last year. He finally cracked however this weekend during a joint holiday shopping trip in my car. As we stopped for gas, we both got out of the S80, carrying on our conversation while filling the tank. As I opened the fuel filler door, the door fell off in my hands, and my neighbor just lost it. He had almost regained his composure as we got into the car to leave, and as he shut the car door, the dome lamp housing fell off and hit him on the head, sending him into new convulsions.

At 63K my S80 continues to shed parts with abandon. Disheartened is far too polite a description of my response. The door window scrape moldings have now all crazed and oxidized to a greyish-white color. The corrugated conduit covering the wiring underhood has vaporized and turned to powder. I'm fearful that the same fate will befall the insulation covering the wires now. (For those of us who had owned mid-eighties Volvo's where the insulation on all of the wires underhood fell off the copper, you know what I'm talking about). It's good to see that Volvo learns from it's mistakes.

I bought a new fuel filler door hinge at my Volvo dealer today and noted that the new hinge is a different part number. The old hinge was P/N 9203098-2 (molded into the face of the part). The new hinge is part number 9483545. Whatever design/material change prompted the part number revision is not readily apparent looking at the two parts, however if your car is fitted with the old part number, it might be wise to change it out before you fall prey to having the fuel filler door fall off in your hands some day soon. I was actually surprised to find that my dealer had the hinge assembly in stock, since I've never managed to need anything that he had in stock in the past. I asked him if he sold a lot of these hinges, and he said he never has fewer than 20 in stock, and frequently runs out of stock at this inventory level.