Hi,
The repairman at the local dealer told me I have no compression is #4 cyclinder and that either a burnt valve or a busted piston is to blame. UGH. I was wondering if anyone knows of any local independent garages in the NorthEast PA area who can and will fix it. The dealer wants $3k-$9k to fix it.
Thanks

I just added Long Valley Garage to the "Shops" listings. It's in western NJ, but might be close enough depending on where in NEPA you are. (I just moved away from that area and miss the shop terribly.)

ALL of this is unlikely. While ignored timing belts do break and cause head crashes with some reguarity, your complaint is uncommon.

Died? What happened? What sort of symptoms were you having? How many miles on the car?

If it's a burned valve, I'd also ask WHY that particular valve burned. If you can't answer that question, my own personal thought might be to consider replacing the engine with a used unit from a wreck (they're far cheaper than the Volvo factory rebuilds) because if you can't dermine why the valve burned you can't prevent it from happpening again.

There are Volvo shops listed in the center "features" pull-down menu above, some are in Pennsylvania. i have no specific experience with them.

While driving on the interstate, the car just started to buck and miss. It felt and sounded as if it was going to stall however I could keep it going by stepping on the gas. When I would step on the gas hard and rev the engine, it was as if the miss-fire went away. I was able to drive it to the dealer about 10 miles away. The car has 95k. The dealer is the one who told me there is no compression on #4 and it would cost 3-9k.

Thanks for the info about shops. I will look into it.

It'd be HIGHLY unlikely to be a bad piston (almost impossible, they don't just break) and even if it's a burned valve, I doubt the total parts and labor would go over $1500 at a dealership and that's on the high side, guessing. I've done cylinder head repairs before where many valves were bent after a timing belt broke and only then did the total bill, including machine shop labor go to $3K. One burned valve won't be that costly. I've never seen a broken piston, broken rings or severely damaged cylinders on ANY Volvo engine so I very much doubt that idea.
Unless it's an indy shop with actual experience with Volvo "white engines" (all aluminum), I wouldn't ever consider having anyone but an experienced dealer tech do the repairs. That engine's alot more complex than the older 4 cyl Volvo engines and requires several special tools besides real experience.
If done by someone w/o real experience, it could easily cost you alot more $$ in the long run.

I dont know a garage but if you take out the spark plug on the offending cylinder if there is oil on it it is more likly to be a piston which is more expensive to repair. good luck joe.