Volvo S60 needs new tires, brakes, and rotors at 8k miles

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Hi,

I’m in my first 36/12 new car lease with a 2019 Volvo S60 T5.

I’m at only 8k miles and in need of new front tires, brakes and rotors. This is shocking to me as I wasn’t expecting to need any of the above until near the end of my lease.

I do live in NYC so I do mostly city driving but this still seems to be excessive wear. It’s not like this is the first car I’ve ever owned, and I’ve only ever changed things like brakes and tires at normalish intervals like 30k or every 3 years or so, not 8k…

Is this just a problem with Volvo’s? I’ve read similar things on other forums with Volvos but haven’t seen similar issues with BMW’s or Mercedes.

Volvo is blaming me and saying I’m just driving the car REALLY hard. But it’s not like this is a sports car and my driving habits are the same as they’ve always been. I do have a heavy foot at times, but I can’t even find cases of tires and brakes wearing out this fast on BMW’s with way more power than my car. And I know how BMW drivers drive, they make me look like a grandma (last car was a Prius BTW). I test drove a BMW 540 and that thing knocked my socks off and put my butt in my seat, lol.

Could I really be driving the car that hard? Why isn’t this an issue with BMW’s? I’m starting to feel like I should’ve got a different car. I’m not looking forward to 4 sets of tires, brakes and rotors before my lease is up…

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Get a second opinion.

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Did you rotate tires at 3K/6K? It’s FWD, so yeah. Was it a loaner? I have 5K on mine and everything looks good so far.

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Even if it was a loaner, there should not be that much maintenance needed at 8K miles. Mine is a loaner as well (now close to your mileage) and am not experiencing any of this stuff.

Did you get this information from a dealer?

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I’m at the dealer and I would agree that the sound sounded like brake pads scraping the rotors. So the pads are definitely gone and hit the rotors… I just never imagined that the incessant squealing from the brakes around 5k was from the brakes being low already. I thought it was just a problem with some Volvos and squeaking brakes that I’ve read about.

I haven’t rotated the tires because Volvo said I didn’t need to, and so I figured I would wait until the 10k service and do it then. Previously I bought my tires from Costco and they had me rotating every 7.5k for the warranty on them, so I figured 10k service would be fine. But they didn’t even make it to that…

Now they’re telling me I need new rear brakes before those hit the rotors and ruin them too. I have about only another 1k on the rear before the inside hits the rotors. They’re showing me pictures and video too.

It’s not a loaner BTW. The service guy said it’s a really powerful car and this can happen when you’re launching it, LOL. I don’t even know how to launch a car and wouldn’t want to risk damaging the car by doing something stupid like that. Also it’s the T5 which is the slowest one. It definitely has turbo lag, if I put my foot down trying to get across an intersection it doesn’t start to really pick up until I’m already across the intersection…

I’m baffled, I’m trying to figure this out. The service guy also mentioned the brakes are “comfort” and can wear really fast. Is this part of the trick? Get me into the lease for cheap then charge out the butt for irregular maintenance?

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The newer volvos do seem to like to go through brakes, particularly in the rear when the propilot is used a lot (as it supposedly only brakes with the rear wheels).

The fact that you’ve killed the front and rear brakes AND tires sounds a lot more like driver behavior. If it was just the tires, I could get behind it being an alignment issue or something like that. Just brakes could be explained in other ways too, but all 3? That’s a new one.

Out of curiosity, what kind of fuel economy do you get?

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I do get terrible gas mileage, like 15 mpg, and I do mostly stop and go driving. I’m a property inspector and drive to multiple houses a day but will generally leave the car running while I’m there though as my wife is in the car and I’m only at each property for a minute. My driving habits could be likened to that of a taxi driver.

However, this has been my job for quite some time and my tires and brakes all seemed to last a normal amount of time. With the Prius I changed the tires and brakes once in 50k and I bought it with 100k. And my Acura before that same thing. Always getting terrible mpg, I got 38 mpg in the 2011 Prius and 11 mpg in the 2000 Acura RL.

Are luxury vehicles just not cut out for this type of driving? IDK, I just had to shell out $1300 at the dealership and that’s not including tires, which I’ll probably just get at Costco as I’ve been previously getting them there and never had issues with excessive premature wear.

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I would probably have got a 2nd opinion on this as it does seem ridiculously soon to be switching all these things out. A T5 at 250bhp has fairly decent power but it’s hardly a sports car.

But I will say that you can’t really compare to the Prius which has regen braking - saving a LOT of wear. Given your driving style this may not have been the best choice in hindsight, just get a Lexus hybrid next time :wink:

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So tires wearing down, new brakes, and horrible gas mileage…

Either you have both an alignment issue and all 4 of your brakes aren’t fully releasing or you drive a lot more aggressively than you think you do.

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No one here knows how the vehicle has been driven and no one can inspect the brakes over the internet.

This is the type of thing you frequently see when at the track. I’ve seen front rotors and pads be destroyed in less than a half hour on the track, soooo…

I would first check caliper/slider pin freedom. IF the front calipers are not seized…with all 3 variables (tires, brakes, rotors) being heavily worn, I would also suspect very aggressive driving. I’ve ridden with many people who SLAM their brakes 50 feet before every red light and never coast or ease into the brakes even if the red light has been visible for hundreds of yards. None of these types of drivers realize that they do it. It’s nauseating and pointless. If you know what I’m talking about, perhaps you are not one of them :slight_smile:

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I was mostly talking about tires. But I did have to replace warped rotors on my XC90 loaner with 5.5K miles on it right after I picked it up. Depends how long the car was sitting on the lot.

@Anthony_Serianni - you should still rotate even though Volvo doesn’t require, especially FWD. Even AWD drives as FWD most of the time.

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some has been doing fwd burnouts, that’s odd or the dealer put on used wheels and brakes when they sold you the car which both are hard to believe

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It’s funny because I heavily considered the Lexus hybrid because of my job. I switched to the Prius originally because the savings in gas paid for the car lol.

I only wanted out of the Prius because of the terrible blind spots caused by the A-pillars. I couldn’t see around the already blind corners here in NYC and felt unsafe with such large forward blind spots. All the standard safety features plus price sold me on the S60.

I don’t hurry to red lights for obvious reasons, but I do hurry to stop signs as I can depart as soon as I come to a complete stop. I’m one of the few people I see come to a complete stop in NYC and with a stop sign at EVERY intersection I can understand why most people don’t. Maybe they know they’ll save their tires and brakes by not stopping lol.

With a speed limit of 25 everywhere here I would say the Prius had much more oomph in that speed range. I never felt like it was lacking or lagging when going across intersections. I feel like this car is much slower in most of my typical driving scenarios. I did constantly drive the Prius in Power mode to make it accelerate better.

But again I bought tires only once in 50k with the Prius. Probably got the car with used tires on it. Put new tires on it and sold it with 30k on the new tires and they still had tread. Basically the same scenario with the Acura, also only replacing the front brakes not rears, and only once on both, not knowing how much pad was left on either. With the same job and driving habits.

Before this car I would’ve thought it unfathomable to have tires or brakes last less than 20k unless you were doing constant burnouts. I had a Firebird too and that’s a sports car and didn’t eat tires or brakes either, granted I didn’t have this job then but still drove the same otherwise.

Also I have my wife in the car and she wouldn’t tolerate such extreme driving habits. She does tell me to slow down sometimes though, lol. But exactly I can’t get away with being overly aggressive. What about all the people I see around Jamaica doing burnouts and speeding and driving crazy? Are they buying new tires and brakes even sooner than me? Wouldn’t think I’m driving it harder than them, and I wouldn’t think they were doing burnouts in it before I bought it, I got the car up in Glen Cove.

I would think the guy servicing the car would’ve checked the calipers and pins. It would be tough for me to check them myself in NYC not having a garage.

What’s weird is this wasn’t an issue with my previous cars. Same job, same driving, everything lasted as long as one would expect.

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They do it in stolen cars.

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Alas, a Toyota and an Acura aren’t the best comparators for European (semi) Luxury Sports Sedans unfortunately.

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A Prius with regenative braking isn’t going to go through brakes as nearly as often as even a normal car because it won’t use them near as much (vehicle is generally slower through eddy current braking) and the tires are going to be thin walled, low wear ice skates meant to minimize rolling resistance above all else.

Is your S60 an R design? I wonder if it has a stickier than normal compound on it.

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What is the wear rating on the tires? That can help decipher quite a bit.

If it’s < 200 they’re gonna wear out super fast. Volvos seem to devour brakes regardless, based on lots of interweb reading.

:bat:

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I’m sorry to hear that, because that’s a ton of money into basically a new car. Still, you are wizard when it comes to deals (Volvos among many other makes), so I’m sure the numbers were still in your favor even with some early maintenance.

Maybe it’s because I am located where there is less snow/ice, but I checked my rotors before leaving the dealer and didn’t see any corrosion. Tires also seemed fine, but OE tires always seem to wear out at about 20,000 miles for me, so it seems like I am going
to be in the market for tires soon.

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I didn’t pay for new rotors. They replaced it for free :slightly_smiling_face:
My wife didn’t want to test drive XC90 after driving XC60, she had enough car shopping for one day. I convinced her, but I didn’t even get a change to drive it myself until a week later. That’s when I noticed problem with the brakes.
Will see about tires and pads, but we don’t drive a lot

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Fortunately the expense was only time, though that is a valuable resource in itself!

Though this may be off topic from the subject of the thread, would you have any advice for tires on lease turn in for Volvo? More specifically, do they have to be the same exact tire or can I turn in the vehicle with tires of a similar specification (speed rating, season rating, etc.)?

I am happy to start a new thread for the purposes of keeping the form organized.