Car Fix DIY Videos

http://www.pawlikautomotive.com 604-327-7112

Hi, it’s Mark Bossert from Top Local Lead Generation. We’re here with Mr. Bernie Pawlik, he’s the owner of Pawlik Automotive, it’s been voted twelve times as the best Auto Service & Auto Repair place in Vancouver by his customers; pretty amazing strategy, pretty amazing results, pretty amazing mechanic, quite honestly and how are you doing this morning Bernie?

Bernie: Doing really well, just want to add to that we just won our fifth Air Care Quality Care Award not that matter so much anymore since air care’s gone in a couple weeks but it’s nice having that recognition for quality repairs that we’ve done in the past, just something to add to our list,

Mark: Absolutely. Well as I think it’s just a recognition of the quality of service that you guys offer and are so passionate about.

Bernie: Absolutely and I will say that my name’s on the certificate, but it’s my team in the back that does most of the work these days so I have to give them the credit, I feel a little guilty my name’s on it but, anyways we’re all a team so it’s good.

Mark: Awesome. So we’re going to talk about Volvo’s. Volvo’s are you know, they’ve got this big Swedish rap, there’re the big strapping blond guy that says we’re durable, we’re super safe; do they really live up to those kind of claims?

Bernie: Yes, well I’ve worked on Volvo’s for many years in our shop. We work on lots of them, we’ve worked on them since the boxy cars in the past to the new sleek round look that Volvo has. Durability has always been a strong point with Volvo’s but you know like any other car you have to maintain it to make sure it stays durable so they don’t just last on their own. It’s a commitment of the owner as well as the build of the car. Interestingly enough that the vehicle with the most mileage record, most driven record is a Volvo and I was just looking at it this morning, the owner’s got over three million miles on this vehicle. I think it’s a 1965 p 1800 model which is kind of a cool sporty car. Three million miles, apparently drives 85 to a hundred miles a year, so this guy loves driving and obviously he loves the car and he takes care of it so it shows you what you can do if you take care of your car.
As far as safety, the Volvo has always had a reputation for safety, they’ve been an innovator in a lot of safety features, I think the 3 point seat belt, shoulder belt which we all take for granted was a Volvo innovation. That being said vehicle safety standards are really high these days so I don’t know if Volvo really has that edge that they used to but they certainly still build safe cars.

Mark: So how are they to work on?

Bernie: Volvo’s have always been a bit unique, in over the past decades, couple decades they’ve become even more complex. Up until the early nineteen nineties all Volvos were rear wheel drive, then they went to the 850 model and that was a front wheel drive and they basically switched over to front wheel drive and then followed with all-wheel drive which is easy to add onto a front wheel drive model. So they’ve gone with that configuration, so they’re way more complex to fix and a few more things tend to go wrong with them because of that. We made all the investments in equipment to fix them and there are some unique pieces of equipment that are needed. We made all the investment so we can service all the newest of Volvo’s.

The older rear wheel drive model Volvo’s were really reliable but they did require frequent service. Things like the timing belts only lasted you less than a hundred thousand kilometers, the drive belts would get noisy and creaky. They had some strange ways of mounting some of the accessories and the bushings would wear out. Also the 140 and 240 series Volvo’s had a real interesting brake design, really safe; what they did they had a four piston brake caliper instead of having one brake line to each caliper they actually split the caliper in half, the brake system was split so if you were to blow a brake line on one of these Volvos which didn’t happen very often but if you did you’d still have half of both your front brakes and one rear brake operating which is outstanding. Actually I owned a Volvo once where that happened and they almost brake as well with half the brake system as it did on the whole brake system so it was pretty awesome. Unfortunately it costs a lot more money to fix that than your average brake system but again there’s the safety aspect.
Volvo dropped the system when they introduced the 740 models; I guess they felt, they didn’t think it was necessary.