141,000 Miles

Had a bad day. It was my father-in-law's funeral, so it was really not a good day...

As for the car...well, I had to drive a few people home, which involved a round trip of about 100 miles.

Firstly, on the side a well known, busy dual carriage way (the A1) I got a flat tyre, in the rear nearside. Odd, but there we are. The hole was easy to spot and fortunately in the main section of the tread so it was repairable. So half the journey was spent driving on the space saver.

Later in the journey, I had suspicions something wasn't right under the bonnet. I could feel vibrations from the engine (only slight) that weren't normally there, plus it was making a bit of a noise. Very subtle, but not normally there. Then suddenly there was a funny noise from the engine bay, front right area, and a dipped head light bulb blew.



So I pulled over to investigate as now driving it was making a definitely much more noticable noise from the ancilliray belt area. Looking at the belt as it was running, there seemed to be a lot of play and it was bouncing around a lot. I firstly suspected the tensioner or idler had gone.

Not having time to sort it myself, I booked it into a garage (Watford based Volvo specialist Darryl Motors) and they quickly diagnosed a cracked alternator pulley. Fortunately, this is a replacable part, not requiring a whole new alternator.

Whilst it was in the garage, I got them to replace the two front upper spring seats. These had been making a horrible rubbery mushy sound for a while and the top mounts were protruding a bit into the engine bay through the turrets. I had already bought the parts. This made a nice difference.

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I also had to replace the rear wiper washer nozzle (the little plastic bit that the water actually exits from) as it had been knocked off in the car wash. Also the plastic snap-on cover was damaged so that was replaced too.