Top 5 Problems Volvo S40 Sedan 2nd Generation 2005-12

Hey, friends, it's Len here from 1A Auto. Today in the studio, I have a Second-Generation Volvo S40. I wanna go over some of the top common problems. So let's get into it.

The first thing we're gonna do is get under the hood and we're gonna talk about the fuel rail pressure sensor. That's gonna be located on the front of your engine right on the fuel rail. Now, the job of the fuel rail pressure sensor essentially is to talk to the vehicle's computer and let it know exactly how much fuel pressure is inside the rail at all times. That's gonna, of course, help with the engine's fuel management system. And if you have an issue with it, you're gonna notice runnability issues, such as lack of power coming from your engine, especially under acceleration. You might also notice stalling conditions. This is typically gonna be as you start up the car, it's gonna seem like it kind of wants to stumble a little bit, or even when you come to a red light and you come to a stop. Other than that, you might notice increased fuel consumption. Essentially, the car just seems like it's burning through all that gas, and you're stopping at almost every gas station along the way to get to where you need to be. Aside from that, you're probably gonna notice a check engine light that comes on the dash, and it's gonna tell you that you got something going on, you're gonna wanna check that out.

So, let's talk about fixes for this. Obviously, you're gonna wanna diagnose to see what's going on. If you've got access to a scanner that can be able to graph things, such as maybe fuel pressure inside your system, you're gonna wanna make sure that you have the proper amount of fuel pressure under idle, and, of course, under acceleration or under load. You can typically also do that if you happen to have a fuel gauge that looks like this. You would just come over to the driver side of the fuel rail right here, you can connect this in and then you can run the car. If it looks like the fuel pressure is exactly where it needs to be, or at least up to spec, but for some reason, you still have the check engine light that comes onto your dash saying that you're having an issue with fuel pressure, essentially that's gonna tell you that you're having an issue with that sensor itself. If that's the case, go ahead and replace it.

Now we're gonna move along to talking about motor mounts. Motor mounts on your vehicle are gonna be very important. They're essentially what keeps your motor from falling out of the car, but also makes it so it's not necessarily bolted directly to the body of the car as well. Now the location of the engine mounts is gonna be basically in between the engine and the body, or subframe of the car itself. The engine mounts are gonna have two metal parts, and then, of course, a rubber part in between the two. The rubber part is generally the part that ends up going bad. The reason for that is because rubber breaks down over time due to the ozone or anything the like, especially the heat that comes from the engine. When this happens, the rubber starts to crack a little bit or even worse, it cracks so much that it breaks apart. At that point, the two metal pieces can just kind of move around like this because the rubber isn't doing its job. Once that happens, you're gonna start feeling vibrations coming from inside of your passenger compartment. That's when you're gonna know something's going on. Other than that, some other symptoms that you might happen to feel aside from the vibration inside the passenger compartment might typically be a clunk noise that he typically feel from behind the dash or around the firewall area. The reason for that is because you go out and you step on the gas, the power from the engine and transmission is getting forced to the actual wheels, and, of course, that's gonna make everything shift a little bit. The rubber mounts are supposed to prevent it from shifting too much. But if the mounts are bad, the engine is gonna be able to rock around like a maniac. If it rocks around too much, it could potentially hit up against the firewall, boom, boom every time you go ahead and try to accelerate, especially under heavy acceleration.

So, let's say your car is having some of these symptoms, you wanna try to diagnose it and fix it yourself, obviously. You're gonna want two people for this. One person is gonna stand outside of the car on either side, never in front of it. They're gonna essentially be looking at the engine and you wanna try to look at the motor mounts and see if there's any movement. We have one of the motor mounts right here on the passenger side. This is gonna be the one that we're gonna physically be able to see. Aside from that, we're pretty much gonna be watching the engine to see exactly how much it moves.

The second person is gonna be sitting inside of the actual passenger compartment itself. They're gonna have the car running and in gear, one foot on the brake and getting ready to hit one foot on the gas. When the person outside the car is ready and in a safe position, not in front of it, the person inside the car is gonna go ahead and jam on that gas and then release it, jam on it and then release it, okay? We wanna watch and see exactly how much that engine rocks, then do the same exact thing in reverse. Of course, you wanna make sure that the car is not moving in any direction and you're as safe as possible the entire way. If you see that the engine's rocking around like a maniac, obviously, your engine mounts are no good. You wanna, of course, inspect the mounts, as well as you, start to look at them. Inspect the rubber areas, make sure that they're not dry, rotted, cracked, or damaged in any way. If you find that you have one mountain, that's no good, it really only makes sense to replace them all at the same time.

Now, for our third problem, we're gonna talk about headliner issues. Obviously, this is gonna be located inside the passenger compartment of your car. And if you asked me, it's a safety issue. Now for symptoms for this, you can pretty much tell exactly what's going on. The headliner is falling down from the ceiling of the car. Aside from it just falling down, if you shake it around, you can see that all the stuff on the inside right here tends to fall out. The reason why that's happening is, of course, it's breaking down over time and it's not holding on the way that it should. Why do I say it's a safety issue? Can you even see me back here?

Now, obviously, this is something that you're gonna wanna fix, not only because it's a cosmetic type of issue, but also, like I said, because it is technically a safety issue. If you're driving down the road and you're looking in your rearview mirror because you need to see what's going on, if this thing is hanging down and obstructing your view, obviously, that's gonna be unsafe. So, of course, I'd wanna make sure that I take care of it.

Now, to fix this, of course, you could pay somebody a ton of money to replace the entire headliner. They're gonna make sure that they replace the insulator up along the top and, of course, it's gonna come with a fabric as well. The fabric just pretty much makes it look pretty. For me personally, if you just get some of that spray adhesive, typically you can just go ahead and spray it all up along that top part, and then just push the rest of the fabric up along it. It might not look too pretty, but more than likely it should stick, and it should stick for a pretty long time. Aside from that, if you wanted to, you could try to use some tacks or something the like, but the only problem with that is, of course, if it did end up coming loose, it could potentially fling those tacks out, and, of course, nobody wants tacks flying around while they're driving in their car.

So, now let's lift up the car so we can talk about rear calipers. Let's go ahead and get the wheel out of the way. Now that exposes your rear caliper. Now, what's the purpose of a rear caliper? Obviously, it's to help stabilize the vehicle in braking situations. If you only had front calipers to try to stop the car, you're more than likely gonna have skid-out type of situations. Now, the caliper itself works hydraulically overall. So, essentially every time you go ahead and step on that brake pedal, it's gonna push fluid all the way down to this brake caliper, it's gonna squeeze the piston in, that's gonna, of course, apply pressure from the pads on the rotor, cause friction, and then, of course, that's what's gonna help slow down the car.

So, now I have a caliper in my hand. No, it's not the one for this car, but it is one that I can show you. This area right along here is the piston. I step on the brake, it forces this piston out, squeezes the pads up against the rotor. If the piston itself doesn't decide that it wants to do its job anymore, maybe because it's frozen or something the like, essentially you're gonna notice some symptoms such as maybe your rotor looks like this. If for some reason the piston is stuck, it's not gonna be able to squeeze the pads up against the rotor, and you're gonna see a whole bunch of rust or the like on the rotor itself. If you were to look at any of your other brakes, more than likely they're gonna look fine. If one of your rotors looks like this, well, that's telling you that you're having an issue with the caliper.

A couple of other symptoms that you might happen to have if you're having an issue with one of your calipers might be a brake pull. You go and you step on the brake, but you feel as though the car just wants to sway in one direction or even the other. Something else that you might happen to notice if the piston is stuck in the outward position, essentially squeezing the pads up against the rotor, you're gonna have a funny smell coming from one of the wheels or the other. Essentially, what that means is that it's just constantly applying friction to the actual rotor in the pads, and it's starting to burn it up a little bit.

For the rear calipers on this particular car, they're actually a twist-type piston. So, essentially to push in the piston, you can't just grab it and squeeze it right in with some pliers or anything the like. Essentially, what you'd have to do is try to press this in and twist it at the same time. If while twisting and trying to press it in, it doesn't wanna move, you have to replace the caliper.

So, let's talk about some fixes for this. If you happen to find that just one of your wheels looks like this, but all the rest of your brakes look great, like I said, typically that comes down to a caliper issue. You wanna make sure you check those sliders. If the caliper can't slide around like it's supposed to, of course, it's not gonna be able to function properly. But more than likely, that's not gonna actually hang up the caliper to this point. Overall, if you have one caliper that's not functioning properly, it makes sense to just go ahead and replace it. When you replace it, more than likely you're probably gonna wanna replace the brakes at the same time. If you're replacing the brakes on one side, you do both sides at the same time. And, of course, you'd wanna make sure that you properly bleed your system.

Now, for our fifth problem, we're gonna talk about front axle issues. Now, the axles on this, of course, have CV joints. And those CV joints have to have boots over them. The reason for that is because they need to hold the grease in and the debris out. Now you're probably wondering what a CV joint is. Essentially, CV stands for constant velocity joint. Now, if you were to look at this axle right down here, you can tell that it has a whole bunch of bearings inside there. And the way that this works is essentially any way that I'm turning the wheel, it's gonna be able to spin at the exact same speed. So, it really doesn't matter if I'm turning left, right, or even going straight, the wheel is gonna be spinning at the speed that it needs to. Now, thinking about how fast this is spinning while you're driving down the road, you can imagine what's going on inside this joint. It's gonna be causing a lot of friction. So, you're gonna wanna make sure that you have grease in there. The grease is gonna help with friction, but it's also gonna help with heat dissipation overall. If this didn't have a boot on it, you can imagine all the dirt or debris that might be making its way inside here. So, of course, they put a nice boot over it to help protect it from any of that.

Now, of course, if your boot looked like this, or it was ripped in any way, you'd wanna go ahead and replace it. Sometimes people will try to only replace the boot, you can typically do that, but overall, it really only makes sense to replace the axle because if one boot is ripped, more than likely the other one is not too far behind.

Some of the things that you might happen to find if you're having an issue with one of your axles might be a clicking, especially when you're turning and especially under acceleration. Other than that, you might happen to find that you have a greasy mess that's just getting sprayed all over the inside of your fender well. Overall aside from that, you're probably really not gonna notice too much in exception of if it's really bad and it's starting to bind. If that's the case, when you're turning, you're probably gonna feel your steering wheel trying to do this.

Now, if you're having any of these symptoms, obviously, you're gonna wanna diagnose and fix the issue. Overall, it could be a safety issue because if the axle's binding in any way, it could potentially drive you right off the road. What I would wanna do is, of course, take it for a road test, see what I feel going on. After that, I wanna get it on the lift or at least on a jack and climb underneath. I'm gonna inspect both of my CV boots right along here. You have one on the outside, and then if you were to follow up closer to where the transmission is, you're gonna have a second CV boot. If either of those are torn, it only makes sense to go ahead and replace the axle. What you're probably gonna notice though is when you replace the axle and you're gonna be taking apart a whole bunch of the front end. So, of course, you could potentially damage the tie rod or the ball joints, or anything the like. Overall, you wanna make sure that you replace the axle and then, of course, make sure that you get yourself a four-wheel alignment.

Okay, friends, so that's pretty much what I've got for you for some of the common problems that we've come to find on this Second-Generation Volvo S40. Overall, Volvos are very safe and reliable cars. This car is a great car. Every car has its problems though, so I just kind of wanna talk to you about a couple of them. I hope you liked the video, I hope you learned a little something. If you did, go ahead and smash on the like button for me, it would mean the world. While you're at it, go ahead and subscribe and ring the bell that way there you can be kept up with all of our latest content. Thanks.