Volvo 480 Club Europe

Thanks guys. Sorry for the confusion. I was trying to differentiate between the the lock you put the key in and the part that closes the door. Anyway, Jim is looking after me very well. I love the internet because it is no longer a problem owning a rare car. I can get the mechanical bits that are th...

Can anyone tell me if the door latches on the 480 are the same as a 440? Mine appears to have broken and the door won't stay closed.

Hi guys. I know I have been away from this site for quite a while, but I still have the 480 Turbo and until recently it has been in regular use. It is off the road at the moment because it got vandalised by an angry, drunken idiot when my son had it parked outside a friend's place recently. The guy ...

Thanks for that guys. Our 440 has manual knobs for the air conditioner controls, so I don't think I will need to fit a vacuum set up. The 440s over here don't have things like the info centre and stuff although they are all 2 litre and many, like ours, are GLT models. If I do go ahead and do the job...

I have been absent from this site for a while, but not from 480 ownership. The car has been laid up for the summer because it is not air conditioned and we have had record breaking heatwaves in South Australia with temperatures up to 46 degrees celsius! My wife was driving the car on her daily commu...

It's official, after over 2 months over here and soon to return, I have not seen a single 480 over here around Melbourne and other parts of Victoria. That's because they were never exported to Australia. My Turbo lived in Melbourne, undriven, for a few months during 2005 after being imported from t...

glasgowjim wrote:Ps still got the info centre non functional but it is defo a wiring / connection thing.
still I dont care fitted an auxiliary petrol guage so thats all I need .

How did you go about fitting the petrol guage and where did you put it?

We, (my wife, two kids and I ), drove our Italian 480 Turbo 37,500 km around Italy and other parts of Europe, including climbing to the top of the Austrian Alps, the Dolomites twice, France twice, Spain and Switzerland. Some of that was in the first half of 2002 and the rest in 2005 when we went bac...

Martin, I like your avatar. Talk about "ouch"!

Just one question: Do you have to disconnect the battery before you unplug any of the computers? I want to unplug the one that controls the lights and stuff and clean the contacts because it does strange things like turning on the interior light after you have left the car for 30 minutes and the wip...

It is beyond me why people want those noisy ones on their cars. As my 14 year old son says, it makes the car sound like it is sneezing.

My exhaust guy fitted a high flow cat to my turbo and it has made a big difference to the performance. Universal cats are made here in Australia by Walker which can be fitted to most cars and they come in standard and high flow versions. I don't know if they export them. Do you have exhaust speciali...

Thanks for that link. I think it might have answered my question. Here is what autobahnstormer said: "Just repaired mine for about the fifth time, and I also noticed (or didn't) that the seats were getting warm. I flayed the seat, took the thermostats out, and now have a nice toasty warm bum when I ...

Thanks for your input. I just looked up my owners manual and it says: "Switch depressed: the seat heating comes on automatically at temperatures below 14C and cuts out at approximately 27C" That sounds like it simply switches it on and off according to the temperature in the cabin or outside, it doe...

What does the temp sensor actually do though? This doesn't quite make sense because why would the seat catch fire if you removed it? I thought it only controlled the switching on. I used to have a SAAB and you just had 3 different temp settings to choose from but they didn't switch themselves off. Y...

Does anyone know if it is possible to modify the seat heater switches so that you can switch them on whenever you want like you can in most cars? I believe they are connected to a sensor so that they only come on when the outside temperature is below a certain amount. The trouble is, here in South A...

Hi Anton, they probably a cable with all of the moving of engine bits, most likley the cable that runs from the speedo sensor up from under the engine to under the battery plate. Hope it holds up! Where exactly does the speedo sensor go and what does it look like? I would like to check mine but don...

My original Valeo alternator died the other day and the local auto electrician replaced it with a brand new Bosch one which works beautifully. He said he used to do a lot of work for a Renault dealer and they had a lot of trouble with the same Valeo units on Renault 19s and replaced them with Bosch ...

As for the car itself, An earlier car would be my preference, just so I can ditch that strangling CAT, but again, it's not essential. Cheers, Andy. I had an exhaust specialist fit a high flow cat when my old one fell apart and it is like not having one at all. It improved the performance quite a bi...

The inlet is on the pump near the oil filter. I know because I have just finished fitting a new bottom radiator hose.