Advise on door retaining strap issue

[MHB100]

I have one of the early V70 XC 1997 - The retaining bracket on the drivers door 'clunks' excessively - I thought it was the door bracket - but the hinge on the pillar (not the door) is itself is actually splitting from the body frame!

Has anyone come across this before? I dont have a technical manual so do not know if this bracket is somehow 'bolted' on from inside the drivers footwell or wether i just need to remove the door and make carefull use of the mig welder!

Any ideas?
Is the pillar bracket supposed to be bolted on or welded?
is there a replacement part?

Thanks Mark

[CloneMan66]

Mark,
I purchased a used 1998 V70 XC last November with this same problem. Luckily, the dealer offered to repair this as part of the purchase agreement. They had their in-house autobody shop remove the driver's door, and re-weld the door strap mount to the body pillar. This fixed the problem for about 25 days. Then that horrible "clucking" sound appeared once again.
I took the car to a local Autobody shop that specialized in Volvo repair to have them give me an estimate, which was $350 -$450 (US), depending what they found after they removed the door. Because of the price of the estimate, I returned to the dealer's service dept to complain that the repair they had made did not last. They took one look at the problem and said they'd take care of it. This time, they sent the car to an outside autobody repair center, that obviously had more experience with this type of repair. Both times, they footed the bill for the repair.
I have since found a local Volvo mechanic and talked to him about this problem. He said this does happen on a few of these cars, but not many. He recommended that I change the door strap assembly as well, as something must have been placing alot of stress on the mount that broke. So that is my task for today.
Hope this info helps.

Chris

[shaneajohnson]

There is a cheap fix for this, in which remove the door, drill two holes through the broken weld, and then bolt the door stay mount back to the A pillar. I can't recall where it is, but there is a website that has detailed instructions and pictures on how to do this. A search at brickboard.com might turn up that link. I was lucky--I found a place to repair it for $195. They re-welded it from the outside, as opposed to getting behind the A-pillar (which is what adds all the cost because the lower dash has to come out), and it seems to be holding good for now. They've done about 20 that way, with only one failure.