We purchased our 1991 745Ti off of a local Toyota dealer in July of 2000. At that time it had 96K miles. Other than weak AC it was fine and prior to purchase I was able to contact the original owner through a receipt I found in the glove box. He had always used synthetic oil and had replaced the turbocharger at some point. I paid $5400 for the car.

The car was my wife’s daily driver and our interstate flyer until recently. Piston slap was bad enough that many people mistook it as a diesel. I completed a 1600 mile trip in it in August without incident. Total mileage on the car was 253K. I had found a replacement for the car so it was time for it to move on.

I placed an ad in the local Craigslist and listed it for $900. I mentioned it had a noisy engine. I indicated that it was up to date on all maintenance and I had records from the time of our purchase. It was listed for less than 12 hours. The third caller came out, drove the car and paid cash.

We have had a lot of Volvos since 1985 when we started out with a 1976 244. This 740 wagon was perhaps the nicest one of all. In the nine years of ownership it let my wife down with no start situations only twice- both times a result of a cracked solder joint on the radio suppression relay.

I went through my maintenance records on the car and thought some might be interested in what it took to keep the car reliable and road ready in the nine years and 157K miles we drove it.

The AC was converted to 134a right after we bought it and other than an occasional top up of refrigerant it worked great without any replacement components. The troublesome relay on the control unit did require resoldering once.

An upper radiator hose was replaced as well as two different turbo hoses. The ignition switch, the speedometer, and the intank pump were replaced. One exhaust system including the converter was needed. I changed the injector seals and intake gasket when I had the intake manifold off to clean out the oil separator. I changed the fuel filter twice. The throttle body was cleaned nine times.

The heater hoses and thermostat were replaced along with the heater control valve. This car had avoided overheating when a heater hose burst due to a low coolant sensor circuit I installed. It had two radiator replacements- once because of a lousy Nissens three row. The cooling system was flushed and coolant renewed five times.

The distributor was resealed once and it had two caps and rotor replacements. It had four sets of plugs. It had one replacement battery. It had a set of alternator brushes replaced. It had one crank position sensor replacement.


The front rotors and calipers were replaced once. It had three sets of front pads and two sets of rear pads. The brake system was flushed five times. The cone bushings were replaced with poly. The ball joints were replaced twice. The rack was flushed twice.

I replaced the rear main seal and renewed the output bushing and transmission seals. I flushed the transmission five times.

The timing belt was replaced four times. The front engine seals and water pump were replaced three times and the tensioner once. The water pump seals and gaskets were replaced once and the drive belts twice.

Synthetic oil and Mann filters were changed twenty nine times.