My car is running SO MUCH BETTER after finding that stuck fuel injector. it actually runs pretty normal now so that was a huge relief. I was troubleshooting all sorts of things that were unrelated.

now at idle it still vibrates a bit although the idle is a lot more steady, its not serious but I want it to idle smoothly as it should.


I recently replaced the ( exterior 3 ) belts but I did seem to note some vibration coming from near the AC pump, Its a teeny bit out of alignment but not to a serious extent. I dont know why it would cause vibration. I've changed the rubber mounts lots of times in various cars to improve belt tracking, but usually that relates to the alternator being out of plumb and the belt for that running untrue.

I figured I can probably just remove the belt. Its rare that I need AC and not hard to go put the belt back on. It might improve fuel economy anyway. does anyone do this or is there some reason not to remove it?

at some point I think I backed the tailpipe into a curb a little, so maybe that put some weird stress on how it hangs. Once the weather is better I can take off the rubber hangers and see if they are pulling too hard and maybe transferring some vibration to the body, the vibration seems to sort of shake in time with the muffler system. Its not modified.

the power steering pump might be leaking a little , it's not emptying, just a bit wet . I may have a transmission leak , its a bit hard to tell but something is dripping a bit.

when we get a nice day I'll put some paper under car to see what's dripping and where.

maybe I should swap that PS pump out. If I remove the AC belt at lest Ill know that's not contributing to vibration. . I guess if I change the rack then I might need a wheel alignment? can I just change some seals in the steering rack? Ive never had one actually fail but often they seem to weep a bit. I have a spare.

I took the car in to the college mechanics shop for an oil change, figured its ok for them to do , not complicated, well they stripped the plug on the transmission oil pan thinking it was the oilpan ;-) That was an educated risk ;-)

I made a new gasket and fixed the stripped plug for them. that was a year or two and not many miles ago. I figured ok well, that at least was a tranny flush but maybe there is a lot more in the torque converter so i think it was like 2/3 of an oil change..

in my ford van I could not get the bolts out of the transmission oil pan so I drained the torque converter by removing the transmission brace and here was a plug , its in the bellhousing area. Is there a similar plug in the volvo?

what I did in my van , because the bolts in the pan were seized I stuck a small plastic tube down the dipstick and siphoned most of the oil out and then replaced it the same way. that took time to drain but I found it easy and just had to keep an eye on the siphon hose. I put never seize on the bolts I could extract but I knew if I continued I'd be fighting stripped oil pan bolts from underneath, so I stopped trying to remove those and tried to put bolt loosener and turn them a flat or two if I could without stripping them.

maybe someone used red loctite on the bolts, who knows. I had a motorcycle where someone did something like that and every bolt came out with the aluminum threads and that was a big mess to fix.


It idles about the right speed but if I take my foot off the brake it creeps forward a bit. That didn't really seem abnormal, most cars with auto trans do that, but i was wondering if the transmission is sort of trying to pull the car a bit too much and causing this vibration and maybe there is some transmission adjustment that might help it sort of disengage better when at a light. I dont know if there is a "normal" failure pattern, these volvo automatic transmissions of this era have been pretty trouble free for me. If I pop it in neutral at a light it vibrates a bit less bu the vibration is still there.

Im not familiar with adjusting an automatic transmission but i can look into the service notes about all that.
transmission shops can "flush " the transmission, I've never tried putting solvents or anything but tranny fluid in there, I dont know if I should attempt to "flush it" with something?
I don't normally have mechanics work on my cars. I could spring for a transmission flush. would they remove the oilpan?


I think if I take off the trensmission oilpan there is probably a metal screen there I can clean. maybe on the side of the overdrive. do I need a filter to do a complete job? If it's just a fine screen and I can clean that then I probably dont need to buy a new screen. maybe a pan gasket.


I was thinking that since it's winter I should perhaps just siphon off what's in the pan and renew the fluid, its a bit like doing half a job but then I dont need to crawl under the car in the snow.

i think I should change my oil , that leaky injector was flooding a cylinder and it may have been enough gas in the cylinder over repetitive run cycles, to leak down past the rings and pollute my oil. Its due anyway.

local parts stores seem to want to sell the Fram Oil filter. I think its' PH43 but I have heard from members of the Volvo club that the MANN or the Bosche is better, it was something to do with the oil draining back to the pan during shutdown time, or how quickly it regained oil pressure on startup. I can try to get the correct filter but the Fram PH43 might be ok for now, at least it should have clean oil. normally I buy a few online and get a better price than local. Are others here using the Fram PH43?


Thanks guys,
Amazonphil