'04 S80 Awd Whine

[ziebartowner]

I recently purchased an '04 S80 AWD with 105K on it. its in nice shape and the price was right. my question is; on dry roads, its perfect, on slushy snowy roads I get a high speed whine from underneath the car that goes away when I slow down. it happens with or without the little "W" activated near the shifter. It tracks in the snow beautifuly and goes in and out of any where I've needed on snowy back roads so I know the all wheel drive works. But what is that whine? is it normal or is something not right?

All replies appreciated.

Brian

[VTT5]

Sure sounds like rain squeal -- when cold water/slush hits the lower side of the exhaust, it shrinks somewhat due to thermal expansion, causing the assembly to bow up so that the edge of the front resonator touches the drive shaft. You'll see small scoring lines on the driveshaft if you look under the car. Don't worry -- you're unlikely to have done serious damage at this point.

For the R's (not sure about base AWD), Volvo made a hack kit to try to keep the exhaust from deflecting up. A better solution is to just replace the front resonator with straight pipe. The cost is low, and it's not much louder but does give a nice growl when you open it up.