I bought my third $500 Volvo 850 on Sunday, a 1994, and drove it home today.  I reactivated the old DGF plates.  We still have the DPY plates, and if I had thought of it I could have put the DPY plates on the Pathfinder and the DGF plates on the old 850.  Since 2001, we have had three 240s, three 850s, two minivans and the Pathfinder.  We’ve pretty much driven them until they got too rusty to pass inspection.

The new car has a blown wheel bearing and couple small problems, like the shift/brake interconnect isn’t working, and the left turn signal doesn’t work quite right.

But it is not rusty, and has only about 140K miles!  My old Volvo, the 96, has 260K+.  Both of these cars have defunct odometers, these cars are notorious for having odo gear shear.

I told my mom when she came to visit that I liked having a high mileage rusty old crate because I didn’t have to worry about it.  I don’t care if it gets scratched, I don’t have to be nice to it and just drive it without a care.  Well, this new car is nice and in good shape, so now I do have to care about it.  If I am good to it, this car could last for years and years.

There is blowback, valve guides are probably burnt. So there’s that.

But it is very different from the 96.  The 96 850 Volvo has worn out rear axle bushings and the front right has no sway bar links, so going over even small bumps and holes makes a huge noise.  This car has great bushings, and it is really quiet – other than the bearing grinding.  I bought a bearing already today, and I can swap that in over the next few days.

I am going to sell the 96.  I’ll put it on Craigslist for an ironic $500, but I’ll accept $200 as a parts car.  There’s a long list of things wrong with it, but it is inspected until Feb…