Volvo's just seem prone to noisy front ends. My 850 has a similar probem. No creaks, though, just banging over bumps. The creaks are probably bad mounts. A couple of other things to look at are spring seats and sway bar end links. Once spring arrives in New England (maybe July :), I'll get under it and take a good look. My car has only 102K so if the sway bar end links are bad, I'm going to replace those (cheap) and do the struts later.

BTW - My 240 had a nice, quiet front end when I first got it and it gradually got very noisy. Did the rack, tie rod ends and ball joints over time. Still noisy. I know it's the struts making noise, but I'm not spending the money to replace them on an 18 year old car with 278k!

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93 850GLT 100k ( my new daily driver - former little old lady's car :) 90 244DL 278k

I shopped around in Minnesota and got $975 - $1200 in quotes to replace the front struts (OEM). This was for my V70, BTW.
So I went to Sears and bought a spring compressor tool. 2 hours to do the right front and 1 hour to do the left front (gets easier with practice). I replaced the strut and all of the hardware on top of the strut. I went with Koni sports for $150 (splurge), and the other parts were around $150. I also got IPD end links.
So it cost me around $400 in parts, including the spring compressor. Then $100 to get the wheels aligned. A very happy camper :)

Klaus
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The 164 has a new home, all I am left with are a 95 854T and a 98 V70R :)

My car recently hit 145,000 with all the same issues.

There are a half-dozen major wear parts on each side of the front suspension: outer tie rod, control arm, swaybar link, strut, spring seat and strut mount.

I decided to replace them all, and I am glad I did.

Of course, I have the benefit of doing it all myself and saving a lot of money--I spent about $1,500 in parts and alignment (including rebuilt calipers and new rotors).

Why am I glad I did it all?

Because as I pulled everything apart to replace the one thing that I thought had gone bad, I found that most everything else was on its way out. The point is that you may replace those strut mounts and not long from now other parts of your suspension are going to need attention. Over the course of the next 50,000 miles your going to spend more money on front suspension work and tires (from alignment issues) than if you just did everything at once.

Everything now feels really solid, tight; the brakes are great again. As far as I am concerned, I am driving a new car.

For those of us who are do it yourselfers, I would recommend doing your entire suspension at once. I'm not the fastest guy in the world, so it took me a full weekend to complete this work, but the results are great.

I would also recommend using Volvo brand suspension components. Aftermarket components seem to have only half the lifespan of the Volvo parts.

I replaced my "strut caps" about 6 months ago. Like your 850, my 1995 850 was making a lot of strange, clunky noises from the front suspension. After the caps were replaced plus all the additional hardware associated with them, all the bad noises stopped. What was happening was that the struts were bouncing around and not firmly seated. It was not just the caps but also some helper springs that needed to be installed. I cannot remember what the dealer charged, as I just held my nose and signed the credit card slip.