I spoke to Bill Casey at Volvo yesterday, and he asked me not to drive my car until they can check it out. So, yesterday afternoon, a flat bed tow truck pulled up and took my car away. This time they brought it to Volvo of LA (16 miles away), not Rusnak Volvo in Pasadena (3.5 miles away). Apparently, the field engineer from Volvo is tied up at Volvo of LA for a few weeks, and since he wants to do the work, the car had to come to him. I am eagerly awaiting his diagnosis.
RusmackedVolvo 
This is turning into a Volvo marketing nightmare.
On one side, they’ve done a fantastic job turning a negative into a positive by really taking care of you. Now that they’ve given all they’ve got (spending thousands repairing your car), the car still falls apart. They can’t give you a new car to shut you up or else everyone else would cry about their car.
Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place.
So… what are you renting this time?
I feel for you!
Let’s hope the field engineer and the new dealer have what it takes to get this job done. I really feel you were getting substandard work at Rusnak.
Good on Bill Casey for stepping up again.
Aren’t you glad you didn’t agree to shut your site down!?
My cross country hopes your cross country comes out of this okay!
Your car lasting only 26 days after putting all that money into it is just plain WRONG! Volvo should, in all good faith, present you with the keys to a BRAND NEW Volvo Cross Country, AND an apology for your inconvenience. Keep up the fight Viking!
PS–VOLVO should also pay any rental car fees this time, not you!
This is why you were right not to cave in to taking your site down.
And this is also why the best “make good” option for Volvo all along was to give you maximum blue book (as if the car had minimum miles and was otherwise cherry) on your old car as a trade-in on a new Volvo, sold at invoice, and sent the old one to the scrap heap.
It’s hard to see what could have gone wrong with the repair; Rusnak at this point had every reason to do good work and Volvo had every incentive to make sure they did.
I think it’s quite reasonable to start to assume that Rusnak was not capable of a proper repair.
I think you’re always in tenuous territory when you start pulling the block and head sections apart. This engine had a history of coolant leaks and it seems pretty likely that there was some warping in there. Not to mention that there are a lot of seals and gaskets that need to be renewed when putting things back together again. It’s not hard for me to understand that there are any number of ways a person could mess this type of job (ie: big) up by getting some torque values off or cutting corners by not replacing this seal or that washer etc.
Manufacturers build their engines in clean, specialized facilities for a good reason.
I agree with you – She should have been offered a ridiculous deal on a new car from the beginning. I think it would have been acceptable to offer to completely replace the engine and transmission with new ones too. This piecemeal stuff is just not an efficient approach with large ongoing problems like this.
We’d all love to hear how things are going Freya.
Hi Freya,
I have been following your story for a while and was so happy when I heard your Volvo was back and safe and running in your hands. However, now that I have read this it makes me really sad. I have an 07′ VW Rabbit and I love it. I haven’t had any problems with it at all so, I can’t imagine how you feel about your Volvo. My grandparents live in the Big Bear mountains and they were considering a AWD wagon because they needed one. We looked at everything available from a VW Passat Wagon with 4motion to a Volvo XC70 AWD to a Subaru Forester and Subaru Outback. I’m really glad that you started this blog to tell people about your journey with your Volvo. This blog stopped us from making a big mistake from buying a Volvo XC70. My grandparents are now proud owners of a Subaru Outback and they love it. I am really wondering why your volvo has given you all of these problems. I really hope all Volvos aren’t this way.
Freya, it’s been over a month! Please update us!:)