Too late for me; maybe not too late for you.

My ’98 V70 T5-M is now in my indie shop having the evaporator replaced. This is major surgery. My technician has field stripped the front of the cabin as well as a good bit of the engine compartment. It looks like a terrorist bomb went off in there. No one wants to go through this, if it is at all preventable. And the word from my tech is that it may have been preventable.

He showed me the failed evaporator. Apparently some leaf detritus had collected on the cooling fins which led to moisture retention which led to corrosion and metal failure. Leaf material is not supposed to get that far into the system. And then he showed me the cabin (pollen) filter housing. There is a rubber sealer around the filter opening. He found a portion of that sealer folded under the filter. This permitted the entry of leaf material. He explained that the sealer should remain outside the filter to seal it from such entries of foreign matter. Seems like a simple thing … but it probably led to a premature evaporator failure and will end up costing me a ton of $$$.

For the record, I have never changed this filter myself; it has always been done by my indie shop, but by a different technician. From now on, I think I will do it personally. Too much is at stake.

On the plus side, the degree of removals has permitted the repair a number of small “gremlins” which I could not previously get at, and which were not worth that level of removal. Also, since the entire dash must be removed, including the instrument cluster, this is a good time to relamp. I know, facia and instrument cluster removal are not that difficult, but why not take advantage of the opportunity?



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Dave in Virginia