Hi all-
I am curious.. where did volvo put the outside temp sense so that it reads a 'true' outside, ambient temp. Seems like this would be a problem since if you put it close to the ground it gets heated by aspault; under metal, gets heated by metal; close to the engine, heated by the engine. Where can you put a sensor that it is not heated by metal, asphault or the engine?

another question.. has anyone actually measured to see how accurate the sensors are? I have always been skeptical of this or any temp measurement on a car for the reasons above, but have never actually measured it.

Dan

The readings you get will be off by a bit because the sensor is not meant to measure "true outside, ambient temp.". It is positioned close to the ground (as others have mentioned) in order to measure the temperature just above the pavement. If it reads a temperature within a few degrees of freezing, the little snowflake symbol will light up on your dash to remind you that the pavement is cold enough to cause ice formation, even if the air is not. Just another Volvo safety feature for those of us in northern climes.

Koz.

Mine seems very accurate. It even seems very close even
after parking in the sun all day (after a minute of driving it often
drops by only 2 or 3 degrees over the value listed when the car was
started). Much better then sensors I've seen in other cars. I
believe there are actually two sensors mounted very close to one
another at the location described in the previous post.

Low in the front airdam, driver's side near the center of the car. It is fairly reliable after the car has been moving a couple minutes as it averages temperature samples. If you're idling with the a/c on, in a parking lot in Mid-July, you will get wildly elevated readings. Once you're moving again, after 2-3 minutes you'll find the readings pretty darn close to what the news station is reporting as the local temperature.
--
(98 S70 T5SE misc mods - mostly lighting - and red calipers) (92 940GLE)