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I'm having a number of cooling system issues with my 1996 960.
First, the coolant was slowly disappearing, there were no apparent leaks, this went on for a few months. Then heater hose blew. A week later my wife took the car to Las Vegas on a very hot day and called me on the way to say that the temperature gauge was erratic, bouncing between 1/2 to full redline. She pulled over, everything seemed fine and she topped off the coolant level and continued on the trip without incident, other than the gauge flipping out sometimes. When she got back I replaced the coolant cap and thermostat and watched the temp gauge when I drove. The gauge seemed slow to get moving at all and never went above 1/2. Within a few days, the side of the radiator blew out. After researching the Volvo radiators I decided to put in an all metal one. After a few weeks of searching, I got the ONLY all metal one I could find and it was a tight squeeze to get it in. I had to slightly hammer the little 1/8" inch flange along the lower sides to get it to fit, I also had to trim the plastic fan shroud for the slightly wider radiator. I was concerned that anything rubbing on the radiator might wear a hole in the soft metal. The next week I decided to check out the car before heading out on a weekend trip and noticed coolant on one side of the radiator. It turns out that about six inches of the welded seam was leaking, BUT, it was not leaking anywhere near where I bent the flange. My guess is that the radiator was defective but since I "modified" it I decided to just eat my losses and put in an OEM Nissans plastic/aluminum radiator. It took a few weeks to get it and went in without incident.
A few days later, on a cold morning, the car wouldn't start. After researching on the volvo boards I found out how to get it started and decided to do an "Abe Crombie tune-up" to clean off the valve stems. The Tune-up calls for driving in Low at 55 MHP and 4500 RMP for 5 minutes. Well, I don't know about anyone else's 960, but in low drive, my car goes about 35 MPH at 4500 RPM. So, I did this, while carefully watching the temperature gauge to make sure the car didn't overheat at this low speed with the lower airflow. After about 4 minutes... the car overheated. The temperature gauge never went above 1/2 way.
Today, I disconnected the temperature sender and hooked it up to an ohm meter, I also shunted the wire going to the gauge with a 1k resistor. I then started the Volvo and measured the resitance while taking temperature readings off of the thermostat housing. The temp sender has a fairly linear reading but is off about a factor of 5 from what's in the Chilton manual. I then hooked up a variable resistor to the gauge wires and could get the gauge to move in the lower 1/2 range, but never above.
Ok, so here are my questions:
Does it make sense that the car would overheat driving at 35MPH and 4500 RPM?
Does anyone know what the specific readings should be for the temp sender? Is the Chilton manual correct? Do all the 199x's Volvos use the same temperature sender?
Does it sound like the temperature gauge is bad, too.
Can one Volvo have so many cooling problems in just a few months???
I'm starting to regret buying my first used Volvo. HELP!!!
Fletch
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