Front struts went in like 10k miles ago. The car would still seesaw a little going over these long (10 feet?) speed bumps around neighborhood. Just put new shocks in the rear and rides a lot nicer now.
But the job is harder than the front in my opinion. Here is what I ran into.
1. Volvo's directions (http://www.volvoxc.com/resources/how...rear-shock.pdf) calls for removing a screw+washer under the floor hatch for V70. This applies to V70XC as well. Here is what mine looked like
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2. The mud guards on my car is different than VADIS. Mine is a single piece and looked like this
DSCF4086
Mine was held on by a metal clip and a pushed in plastic push pin type fitting. The fitting is one of those that has a center pin to expand it. I pushed my center pin in and the fitting seem to break. I noticed one of the center pins had a piece of plastic tube hanging below it. I'm guessing the right procedure is to pull it out.
I couldn't get mine to fit back in correctly due to the broken fitting so used a zip tie instead. I thought about getting some fittings to to repair it but you don't want to plug up that hole on the bottom since water drains out of there. Just a single long zip tie that goes into the hole and exit the brake rotor side of the control arm.
3. VADIS calls for retaining straps, pretty useless. These straps can't generate enough force to get the control arm low enough during reassembly. However, straps are good for lower the control arm just enough to allow the strut+spring assembly to move in and out of the car easily. But if you have a friend + crow bar... much quicker.
4. Before you disassemble the shock+spring assembly. You need to make some alignment marks before disassembling. There are 3 basic pieces: The aluminum housing on top, the rubber seat, and the spring itself. Make sure you find/place a mark to make sure they are lined up the same way and reassembling. This is necessary to make sure the bottom of the shock has the hole oriented correctly to put back in the control arm. Here is a picture for reference. Generally, you can see clear lines where rubber seat is clean (under the the aluminum housing) and dirty (exposed). But probably good to mark all these 3 pieces with chalk like the direction says.
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5. VADIS calls for a special tool to take out the center nut on the strut. I did it this way instead. A strap wrench would probably be nicer to my socket But hey, it was late and I was doing this the second time because didn't tighten the nut enough the first time and got lots of funky rear end noises.
When you reassemble the strut, make sure you feel the upper plastic housing on the strut to make sure it is nice and firm. My was loose by maybe 1mm an the rear end sounds noisy driving around.
6. Connecting the bottom of the strut to the control arm. This is a major pain of this job. I used a crow bar and experimented with all kinds of leveraged points but it takes a lot of muscle. The strut also won't cooperate as it is under tension. I think the best trick is probably
- Use a crow bar. You can try the leverage points I used. Using the spring as leverage point is nice... it has the effect of pulling the strut assembly upwards.
- Have a helper to push down on the crow bar while you work the strut to fit it onto the control arm.
DSCF4088
Thats all and will be submitting the VADIS direction for this job soon.
UPDATE: A follow web forum member sent me this pic of his nifty trick to use car's jack to keep the rear control arm down to give plenty of room to work with.
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