Have the car up again today - going for the following:

cabin filter (http://www.volvospeed.com/pollenfliter.php)

fuel filter (http://volvospeed.com/Repair/fuelfilter.php)

oil & filter change

driver's side seat back cable replacement (http://www.volvospeed.com/Repair/seatcable1.php)

and the Electrical portion of the ignitian switch (ww.volvospeed.com/Repair/ignit_switch.php)

thanks to VS for clueing me into the last one -- my wife had been calling me telling me that the headlights weren't working and i was getting pretty frustrated with her to be honest (hon, turn the switch off the parking lights setting!). we'd had all the problems, difficulty getting it into park, ABS & TRACS lights - seatbelt lights, and headlight issues. well - sure enough on the way to Maine the instrument panel lights went out -- was a bit hard in the snow trying to drive and check the gas gauge w/ a flashlight.

hope this part will solve all of that - and also alow me to get my key out of the ignition which sticks, but i didn't see mentioned on any of the pages, so am keeping my fingers crossed that it goes away too.

Car is running well since last entry - did have some knocking on the way back from up north a few weeks ago, but that only lasted for about half the trip - was it too much boost?? not sure - i have a blue BC switch in ther and need to get it set - think the thing is totally open right now and if i am not careful i'll push it past 20, especially when the pod doesn't have any light to it! so now i need to find a parkinglot in brooklyn that i can open it up in and set the Boost Controller.

Still getting tons of blue smoke on startup tho (usually only the first one of the day tho) i've been reading a bit about the list of things this could be and am rightly concerned that this will an expensive one to deal with - hope i can tough it out a while longer without doing any real damage tho. any thoughts?

looking forward to pulling and clearing codes one of these days too . . . and kinda scared! hoping i get nulls.

Still have no idea why my cargo area light won't come on either, has me totally confounded. Other than that - baby is running real sweet, and i've been putting her to work too.

will need to post some shots, just been too damn busy.