Hi folks, I have a 2006 S60R that's recently had coolant problems and I'm hoping to get your thoughts.

When I first got the car about 9 months ago, my mechanic noticed the expansion tank was getting ready to crack so I replaced it (OEM). Then about 3 months ago, the hose blew off the top of my radiator at which point I discovered the neck had apparently long since broken off so there were no longer ribs keeping the hose from slipping off - it was only getting like 3/4" purchase. This happened road-side so I did my best to get the hose back on, but it happened again a few days later and I realized I'd need a better solution. I then undertook to "repair" the neck by following the writeup here. It seemed to work for a while, but I occasionally noticed a small drip coming from my fix - usually after a long highway drive. I would top off the tank every time the "coolant low" message came on (usually a quart or less) but very shortly thereafter one of the main hoses running into the firewall blew out hard and left me stranded in the middle of nowhere. My mechanic replaced both of those hoses with OEMs I got from FCPEuro. The day after he replaced them I went for a drive and after a while, developed a leak at one of the clamps he had put on (he had done a pressure test before sending me on my way). So he tightened down the clamp and that fixed the leak. However, I'm still losing coolant - and I no longer see it dripping from my radiator neck fix (although I felt like I may have smelled it today, even thought I couldn't see anything). I added coolant twice today (not much, maybe a half quart each time.

Some additional details that may be of use:

* When I open the expansion tank when the engine is hot, coolant immediately rushes back in and brings the level up quite a bit. Is this normal?

* Ever since I purchased the car 9 months ago, it's stumbled a little when I first start it, which clears after maybe 15-30 seconds. My mechanic's assumption was it probably needs coils... but could this be a cracked cylinder?

* I'm not seeing any white smoke coming out of the tailpipe.

* When the coolant hose blew out and left me stranded, it happened right after I floored it to make a pass on the highway.

Am I screwed?

 

I can’t speak to your specifics, but I would start looking at the cylinders. In the 2009-era AMGs, the 5.5l had faulty cylinder head bolts that stretched over time and would cause coolant leaking into the chamber. This caused some known engine failures. I caught mine in time; got low coolant warnings, no leaks found. Finally found something on the interweb and notified the dealer. They had to drop the engine and examine the cylinders, which thankfully were OK. New bolts placed, $6600 picked up by MB out of warranty (probably should have been a recall, but would have caused ++ embarrassment).
Good luck.

 

If you do have a cracked cylinder - combustion gasses will be getting into the cooling system.

Have you used a combustion leak detector on your cooling system? That would give you a definitive answer.

 

Thanks for everyone's input. I just did a block test and it came back positive for a leak - presumably the cylinder. Is it pretty certain at this point that it's the cylinder and not a head gasket or something else? I'm out in Hawaii on the Big Island (not Oahu), so my resources are VERY limited out here - especially since I spent every last penny buying this car 9 months ago. So now I'm trying to figure out what's next.

Shipping a full engine out here is going to be something like $3K+, and considering my engine only has 87K miles on it - the idea of putting up $3K for a replacement engine with 100K+ miles on it (not to mention labor costs) seems out of the question - who's to say this doesn't happen again a week after I install the replacement? I've done a lot of reading on this problem and it sure seems like Volvo really screwed a lot of people with this janky design. Pretty frustrating.

So as I see it, the other options include sleeving with Darton, which seems like will cost a small fortune as well - not to mention I'm not confident there's anyone out here who can actually do that machine work.

Next up I guess is finding a replacement block, but the only ones I see on eBay are all cracked and would need to be sleeved anyway. But supposing I found a good block (not sure where), I could shim it before re-installing and hope for the best. Still quite expensive to get it all the way out here to the middle of the Pacific, then have it and the head surfaced, reassembled, etc.

And someone mentioned just replacing my engine with a 2.4 T5 engine so I don't have to worry about this stupid issue again. From what I understood from the post, the 2.4 mates right up with everything and is essentially plug-and-play - but I don't know if this is true, or if it's more complicated than that. I'm fine losing a little HP for a lot more reliability, but not if it's going to be a major challenge to do the swap.

Am I missing any other options here? I'd really love any suggestions anyone has.

In the meantime, I guess I'll be adding coolant every 30 minutes until I can figure out what to do...

Thanks again for any help anyone can offer... this has been extremely stressful and anxiety-inducing. Super, super bummed... 😢

EDIT: The bottom several posts here are of interest: https://www.volvoforums.org.uk/archi.../t-213638.html - It sounds like the 2.4 swap requires a software change - not sure how hard this is. And finally, someone said they shimmed AFTER a crack and it "resolved the problem. Is this really possible? Looking at how the engine is designed, I could see how this might actually work since shimming forces the sidewall of the cylinder into place leaving no room for movement... but maybe that's a pipe dream and he just got lucky. Probably also highly dependent on the specific damage...

 

So sorry, unfortunately now you know why the car was for sale.

 

Perhaps - although it wasn't sucking down coolant until just a few weeks ago, so I suspect the previous owner didn't know. But I could be wrong. Nevertheless, now I have to figure out what to do...

 

I guess I'm still wondering a few things. For one, it would be nice to know if I'm dealing with a head gasket, head, or cracked cylinder. And from what I can tell, there's not really a way to determine this without pulling the head. Does that sound accurate?

Also, it's interesting to note that every picture I've seen of a cracked cylinder shows the crack at the very top, where that stupid perforation was cut by Volvo - where shims would go. Call me crazy, but it seems like if the motor was shimmed - even after a crack - that would essentially force the metal back into place (albeit imperfectly), and prevent it from blowing back out. It seems like this is a potential option for a repair - granted, an imperfect, but substantially less expensive one that the alternatives. Just thinking out loud here...