2000 – 2005 Volvo V70 Serpentine Belt Surprise

I may not be very experienced with Volvos so far, but I found this to be an interesting bit about them.

1. Symptom
My friend, the guy going down to Italy yada yada, besides remarking on his hand brake going kaboom in Florence, also noticed the car making funny squeaky sounds when driving through the rain or when being turned on in the morning.

2. Diagnosis
Being a typical noise, the first thing I wanted to check was the serpentine belt. Surprisingly, the belt seemed inverted. After a few look ups on the interwebs, it turned out it was mismatched. The V70 requires one of these:

A few Volvos use double sided serpentine belts. The previous owner of this car had a regular single sided one installed (not in the pictures). The obvious risk is getting too little power to such things as the A/C compressor or the steering pump, potentially damaging them over time. So make sure, if you swap your old belt out for a new one, in this case, get one like this:

http://c1552172.r72.cf0.rackcdn.com/141312_x800.jpg