Mark: Hi, Mark, Top Local Lead Generation and we’re here with Mr. Bernie Pawlik on a beautiful morning here in Vancouver, how’re you doing Bernie?
Bernie: I’m doing really well, it is a beautiful morning too.
Mark: So Pawlik Automotive, 16 time winners of Best Automotive Repair in Vancouver, you’re going to tell us a story about a 2006 Volvo XC70. What was going on with this Volvo?
Bernie: Well, this Volvo came to us because he had some vibrations when he was driving and some noises. So we looked at the car’s diagnosis and found some of this engine mounts were worn.
Mark: So is that a common thing finding engine mounts worn?
Bernie: It is fairly common, just trying to think frequency, we don’t do a lot of engine mounts these days, the quality of the engine mounts is a lot better than it used to be 20 to 30 years ago, especially on Volvos. I remember Volvo engine mounts used to break a lot on the older 240 boxy kind of cars, we used to replace them quite frequently, but newer vintage models are a lot more reliable and we replace them from time to time.
Mark: So is that a large job, it that an expensive job?
Bernie: It can be. It’s getting to be a more expensive job, the parts themselves are quite a bit more expensive than they once were. Engine mounts are actually quite high tech. We had some engine mounts on a Nissan that we did once that actually had an electrical wire connected to them, I have no idea, it wasn’t just a ground wire there was some sort of sensor in the engine mount. A lot of them are oil filled, they’re hydraulic mounts so the oil cushions the vibration of the engine. But the whole idea of an engine mount is to take the, you have to mount the engine and transmission obviously to the vehicle, you want to cushion the vibration. Just actually a little aside on racing cars you can get solid steel engine mounts. I remember when I was interested in drag racing, they used to have those and I mean it’d basically mounts your engine with a steel piece of metal straight to the frame, so every little shake in the engine is felt through the vehicle which is probably fun when you’re doing a 1/4 mile strip, but day to day driving no so much fun. Anyways, modern engine mounts a lot of them are oil filled to take the shakes and vibrations from the engine and transmission out of the equation. As far as cost, yeah, I’d say it can be expensive these days because of the technology of engine mounts and also just to get them in and out can be very difficult on many cars because of the tight engine compartment designs. This Volvo today, is an all wheel drive as well so it makes for a little more time consuming job.
Mark: So you found, you kind of covered this already but are Volvo’s engine mounts pretty good these days?
Bernie: Yes they are. This Volvo, I can’t remember the kilometres, it’s an ’06 so it’s about a 10 year old car, in the older Volvo’s the mounts would break more frequently. I’ll just share a couple pictures here of the engine mounts so you can get an idea of what they look like. So these are actually the three mounts that we replaced, on your left side you see two mounts that look similar, they’re round, these are the main engine mounts - one sits are the front of the engine and the other one sits at the rear. You’ll also notice if you look at the one on the left, there is a wire that’s wrapped around the mount and that’s actually a safety piece in case the rubber breaks. On this mount actually, it was kind of torquing fully to those wire safety mounts so the actual mounts were broken themselves. On the right hand side, that’s the upper torque bracket and these break on Volvos a lot on front wheel Volvos and rear, I mean all wheel drive Volvos, these torque mounts break frequently and we replace these a lot. That keeps the engine from twisting back and forth and, yeah, those are the mounts and I will get back to us, somehow here. So where were we with the questions? You were saying Volvo mounts fail - yeah.
Mark: So Volvo has had a pretty good reputation for tough and safe, reliable cars, how does this XC70 stack up?
Bernie: It’s pretty good. The one thing I will say about a lot of Volvos is that they have transmission problems and they can be very expensive and actually, this particular car we’re working on, we actually did a transmission replacement a couple months ago. It’s a very pricy job on many of these cars, so that’s probably the biggest downside on this sort of vintage of Volvos, transmission problems and it seems to happen to pretty much all of them. So that’s not such good news if you own this kind of car but overall the engines are very reliable. They do have timing belts that need to be replaced and that’s not very frequent, that’s about 160,000 kms interval but it is an expensive job because it’s a pretty high tech engine so it’s time consuming, quite a few parts involved. But overall, they’re good cars, very solid, they drive really nice, they are safe and I’d say they’re good. Pretty much average with a lot of other cars, except for the transmissions.
Mark: So if you’re looking for service for your Volvo or any other make or model of car pretty much, the guys to call are Pawlik Automotive in Vancouver. You can reach them at 604-327-7112 or check out their website pawlikautomotive.com - tons and tons of information on there, the best in the world. Thanks Bernie
Bernie: Thanks Mark.
