The driver's power door lock on my 1999 V70 became balky last winter. When the weather warmed up, the lock worked fine, but with cold weather coming, I decided to grab one at a wrecking yard & change it out.

One thing you should know about door lock replacement. The manual doesn't say so, but you must remove the outer handle. You do not need to remove the large panel on the inside of the door that holds the window motor, etc, even though it seems like you do.

Volvo door panels in 1999 were assembled with the use of a large amount of green glue. The glue is both literally green in color and environmentally friendly. Apparently, the property of adhesion is not an environmentally friendly quality. Every single item that was glued to the door panel came off either before or during removal of the door panel (3 plastic brackets that hold clips, a spacer on the top, and the entire inner panel).

After replacing & testing the door lock, I set about to repairing the door panel with some Earth-hating adhesives. The plastic trim brackets were re-mounted using a resin & hardener epoxy + clamps. Re-attaching the inner door panel to the outer door panel presented a bigger challenge. Not only did I not have anywhere near enough epoxy to do this job, the odds of a disastrous spill or drip were immense. Although I had my doubts, I decided to try 3M Super 77 spray adhesive, since I still had most of a can of this left over from a headliner replacement project on my 740. I masked off the vinyl parts of the panels and had a dropcloth under the pieces to be sprayed. After spraying both pieces, I immediately removed the masking tape & paper. Since the tack time is 10 seconds to 30 minutes, and it takes more than 10 seconds to remove the masking, the parts were ready for immediate assembly. (Pre-fit the pieces before you start masking and spraying, so that you will know exactly where and how to put them together, because you probably only get one chance to get it right, once the glue is on.) After putting the pieces together, I made sure to press them together in all the places where there was glue. The parts were then left overnight (12 hours). The result seemed to be a strong bond - much stronger than I had expected from a spray adhesive, but I did not try pulling them apart to see just how strong. I did all this inside, since adhesives seem to work better and faster in warmer temperatures.

A word on panel mounting clips. There are two red clips, all the rest are white. I could not figure out why there are 2 kinds. The only difference I could see was that the red ones are made of a harder plastic and absolutely are going to break when you try to get them out. To replace these 2, I had to make do with what I could get on a Sunday, which was Dorman Body-Tite #45478 (for GM & Chrysler), which required removing some of the plastic material on the head slot, with an Exact-O knife, to get them to fit onto the panel cut-outs. If you have a few days to spare, take one of your clips to an automotive paint store or auto body supply company, and have them order you in a box of clips. I have found that a box of 25 clips purchased that way is cheaper than buying 2 or 3 at the dealer. My local shop doesn't stock any. They have a display board of samples + a catalog, and they special order them. It usually takes 2 days. (This is also where I bought the 3M adhesive.)