Well, as most of you know, I just bought this car yesterday and am quite happy with it... BUT today i noticed that the odometer is not working!

Now, I have all work receipts from the original owner (except for a one year gap during 1997) and the odometer readings and service performed seem to imply that the odometer is reading the correct (or very close to correct) milage. The PO is an older lady and it is not improbable to believe the milage on the car.

The interior of the car is quite clean and no wear on steering wheel pedals, seats, etc.

I ran a carfax on it before buying it but in Florida odometer readings are not recorded!

oh well I guess it is too late now... but I just wanted to know if broken odometers were common in this car and if so... is there any specific point (milage) at which they have been more prone to failure.

Thanks,

Worried new owner

Broken odometers are common. My '86 went out first at 140k. I replaced the notorious dime sized gear with a spare and went another 25k miles before breaking teeth again. What I noticed was that both times the thing stopped working was at a point where I reset the trip odometer. In fiddling with the mechanism on my workbench the second time, I noticed that when you press the trip reset button, the gear train gets a jolt. This jolt looked like it would be enough to strip those little teeth off. In late 2000, I sent the speedo to Overseas Speedo in Austin, TX (did a great job) and got fixed for $100. When I reassembled, I didn't put the trip reset button in. I can live with just the odometer and 10k miles later, I have had no problems.

It sounds like you got a good car and if the mileage is off, I wouldn't expect it to be far off.

Broken odometers do seem to be a common problem. Although I have 266K with no problems so far (knock on wood.) I picked up an extra speedo for another problem (messed up my cruise control - long story) and have kept it in case little plastic gear does break. You can get them for as little as $10 at junkyard (or off eBay for a little more $$) if you want to tackle repair yourself. Or pay $100-150 at a speedo shop...

You're correct about Florida not having mileage checks. I wouldn't worry too much about the odometer reading since you have a majority of the maintenance receipts. If the previous owner is an older lady, then you got a great deal, unless she drove like a bat-out-of-hell after church on Sunday. :-) Btw, I picked up my '89 240 from an elderly woman back in 1995, and it only had 42k on it.

About the odometer, there's a plastic gear with little "teeth" that are known to break off. Once a tooth breaks off, the odometer usually gets stuck and stops both the trip odometer and actual mileage. So, to answer your initial question, yes, these are quite common.

On my '89 240, the odometer broke at around 89,000. I lived with it for about 1.5 years and then decided to spend $120 to get it fixed. After I got mine fixed, it worked for 5,000 miles, then broke again. Got it fixed again (under warranty), it lasted another 1,500 miles, and then it broke for the third (and final time) last week. I got my money back, and I'm choosing to live with it or until I find a reasonable alternative.

There are shops that specialize in repairing these things. I guess I either have real bad luck or the shop couldn't get it right the first/second time around.

One thing that you may want to do with the maintenance records, is set up a simple spreadsheet in Excel. List the date, odometer reading, repair, shop, cost, etc., and then sort by date. This way, you should be able to estimate the mileage and find out how often she used the car, etc., not to mention how much was spent each year in maintenance, and how much you can expect to pay a month in repair costs.

Enjoy your "new" 240!

Regards,

Eric Staufer,

'89 244DL 113k

http://grove.ufl.edu/~estaufer/volvo.htm