We have a '93 940 Turbo Wagon and a '90 240DL wagon. We need to sell one. The one we keep will be my wife's urban gardening car. She's chosen the 240DL.

I am totally about presenting my sales in a completely transparent and honest fashion. I don't want to pass on any misery that's not known about before the buyer plunks down the cashola.

The main problem with this 940T is and always has been is that it has this intermittent problem of not accelerating when the gas pedal is depressed. Pull over, turn off the car for 5 seconds and restart: no problem for 50-1000 miles. Totally random. I was set to and did, indeed, mention this as being one of the issues when I put the car up for sale on the Classifieds.

But just before putting up the ad, my mechanic called and told me that the reason the "Check Engine" had lit up (and I had brought the car in) was because of a bad turbo. $700 job including labor.

I added that to the Classified ad and adjusted the price accordingly.

My next door neighbor is a retired airline mechanic. He’s owned and repaired his own Volvos for decades. He ended up getting a Subaru Forester recently because he was tired of crawling under that Volvo chassis…but he sure loves my 940T and 240DL wagons (I do the crawling, now). He's had many 240s and a '93 740 turbo wagon.

He was gone on a vacation when I first heard about the turbo “problem” on the 940, though he knew I was going to sell it. When he returned, I told him about this new development. He’s shown me most of what I know on my Volvos. We’ve done a lot of work together on both (and my older ’68 240DL wagon, since departed). He said he’d never noticed any smoke coming from the tailpipe of the 940T and asked if he could “take a look”. He wasn’t satisfied with the diagnosis.

Here’s what we did:

Action: Removed turbo air inlet hose. Checked the play and rotation (lateral and back/forth play) of the turbine (intake) wheel.

Result: everything is dry as a bone. Hose, housing, and turbine. No oil. And the wheel is moving smoothly with no play or rotation.

Action: Checked for scraping, resistance, or noise when turning that wheel. Looked for any oil or chipping of the wheel or housing.

Result: The wheel moves freely with no scraping, resistance, or noise. No oil or chipping.

Action: Checked for smoke from exhaust.

Result: We let it run for 5 minutes and then revved it to 2500 rpm for a full minute as well as gunning it. There was no evidence of smoke anywhere through the entire process.

I'm wondering if there's anything he may have missed? As I said: I don't want to mislead anyone.

I'll be checking with my mechanic...but am not sure I'll believe him. I've known my friend and neighbor for 20 years. He knows his stuff and I trust him.

Thanks for your time.