V70 Drain Plug -- Service Light Reset

  • Thread starter Thread starter Solid Citrizen
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Solid Citrizen

My wife took her 2000 V70 to a nearby oil change place, which lost her drain
plug. They sent a guy out NAPA to hunt one down and I -- fearing that
someone dumb enough to lose the drain plug would probably buy the wrong one
and strip the threads -- volunteered to buy one at Jacksonville, Florida's
only Volvo dealer.

The plug cost $3.25, which seemed more or less reasonable these days. The
CRUSH WASHER cost $1.73!!!! I made a big scene at (monopolist) Osteen
Volvo, telling them that crush washers for my BMW only cost 25 cents at the
BMW dealer. I pronounced (quite loudly, I might add) that this is a
powerful argument for not buying another Volvo.

I've now persuaded myself to do my wife's oil changes in my driveway. This
brings to mind a couple of questions...

1. Does the service light provide an indication of need for service, based
on algorithms in the car's computer?

2. There apparently are a sequence of button pushings that reset the
service light. What are they?

Many thanks in advance to those of you in Volvo land, who might be providing
a silver lining to this cloudy incident.
 
Okay. I tried one of the solutions noted on the group. Pressed in the odo
reset button while turning on the car. Then released the odo reset button
after the service light started blinking. No problem.
 
Volvo costs have always been a screw job. That's just a fact. Unless you
do your own work and use aftermarket parts, this isn't the car for you. Now
that Beemer isn't cheap either....
 
I find BMW parts are not altogether awful. There's plenty of aftermarket
stuff around and if you look hard enough on the Net, you can save big
dollars on parts built by Bosch and others for BMW. I also find that BMW
doesn't screw people for incidental parts. I've found that my awful
monopolist BMW dealer here in Jacksonville will GIVE me small parts like
connectors and screws. I bought a bunch of crush washers because I tend to
lose them when changing my oil and the price was insignificant.

20 years ago, I had a PV544. Volvo parts back then were quite reasonable.
Of course, because the thing was so simple and reliable, I didn't need too
many parts. Back then, Saab had the reputation for requiring intensive
maintenance with expensive parts. From what I hear, this relationship
between "Swedish" makes has been reversed.

Look, parts for everything are outrageous. I've had oriental cars and
US-made pickups and have been amazed by sky-high parts costs, but I'm going
to steer clear of someone selling products priced so criminally.
 
From what I have read Saab's have gotten a lot better, but they still can
have some problems, they are probably similar to Volvo's. I have heard from
too many people to steer clear of Saab's, even ones from the mid 90s.

My dad has said to me that for some stuff Volvo has inflated prices, but for
other stuff he has been blown away with how reasonable it has been.
 
One other aspect of Saab that leaves me cold is that the new models are
based on Opels -- as are the Catera and the Saturn L. Just noticed a mighty
strong resemblance between the Saab 93 I saw a few minutes ago and the
Saturn.
 
just remember no one died being forced to make a Volvo something the krouts
cant say about heir bmw or mercedes or porche .
 
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