Brake lights

I've always kind of suspected that my brake lights weren't coming on early enough, but never really got around to doing some real testing on it; however, last week I was stopped at a traffic light with someone stopped behind me. I decided to stretch out a little bit and noticed that the car behind me just got a little redder.

I fiddled with different brake pressures and realized that I was able to stop my car without having the brake lights come on at all. Not only is this dangerous it is also annoying for other drivers.

This morning I dug around under the dash and found the brake light switch and readjusted it, so now my brake lights activate the right pressure.

Steering problem diagnosis

I finally put the car up on the jack stands this weekend to look at the steering system. I was happy to see that it wasn't the tie rods acting up because that means that I installed them correctly and that when I went for an alignment they didn't screw them up.

I had begun to suspect that one or both of the u-joints were bad. After giving steering inputs via the rotors and not finding any play I figured that both inner and outer tie rods were good along with the steering rack itself. I went from the other end of the system and provided input from the steering wheel and noticed a knocking noise that was accompanied by a hiccup in the smoothness of the rotation.

To test the u-joint I held the joint while rocking the steering wheel back and forth. This eliminated both the noise and the hiccup in rotation. I then thought about when I was experiencing the vibration and realized that it was always while I was on a straight away which makes sense because without any steering input to take up the slack in the u-joint the front wheels can do what they want.

I'll have to go to the dealer and see what a u-joint costs. I might replace them both along with the bearing just because they've all been subjected to loads that they normally wouldn't experience. It depends on the price of all of the parts.

Inspection & repair of the HVAC system

Armed with instructions from Bay 13 and my trusty toolbox I tried to figure out what made my trip out to Michigan so wonderful.



First I needed to remove this wonderful cover, behind it is a knee bolster, even more removal fun.









The glove box also needs to come out which gives us a nice internal view of the dash.










We can see that I've already removed the fan assembly (large hole) and the resistor pack (small hole). If you look closely the door in the fan hole is what controls the air recirculation.









Notice how dirty this resistor is, the fan was even worse and had almost seized up causing those pesky blown fuses and a failed resistor.









To satisfy my own curiosity I activated the recirc control and nothing happened. Turns out this little guy broke, and notice that the material has changed on the new one, guess Volvo figured something out.

Everything gets put back and closed tight.

And so ends my first fix-it-yourself experience (with this car).