It is good news and bad news.
The clutch asssembly (friction components) look good at 125K miles. The bad news is that I suspect few will ever get to that mileage before the clutch actuation system fails, i.e., the slave cylinder! Looking at the disc, I suspect it would have gone another 75K miles, for a total of 200K miles!
I don't baby my car, nor do I abuse it. A good portion of the time it is fully loaded as it is our touring vehicle. Last major road trip was up to Alaska and back for a 10K mile ride. Lots of trips to The City (San Franciso), an area not easy on clutches. Of course mileage is a very poor indicator of clutch wear since it really relates to the number of starts from a stop, and overall driving technique.
Clearly no one can expect a slave cylinder to last forever, none have on my other cars using hydraulic actuated clutches, however due to the Volvo design, time and money get multiplied by 10. It is strictly a hydraulic failure, as the actual throw out bearing was still in good shape.
Common sense is to replace it all while in there, but this design, coupled with those that may actually WEAR out a clutch, make it very likely you will be facing this at some point.
Come to think of it, has any one actually WORN OUT a clutch? I suspect some of the 1/4 mile gang may have, but from my reading it is virtually all slave cylinder failure.
The clutch asssembly (friction components) look good at 125K miles. The bad news is that I suspect few will ever get to that mileage before the clutch actuation system fails, i.e., the slave cylinder! Looking at the disc, I suspect it would have gone another 75K miles, for a total of 200K miles!
I don't baby my car, nor do I abuse it. A good portion of the time it is fully loaded as it is our touring vehicle. Last major road trip was up to Alaska and back for a 10K mile ride. Lots of trips to The City (San Franciso), an area not easy on clutches. Of course mileage is a very poor indicator of clutch wear since it really relates to the number of starts from a stop, and overall driving technique.
Clearly no one can expect a slave cylinder to last forever, none have on my other cars using hydraulic actuated clutches, however due to the Volvo design, time and money get multiplied by 10. It is strictly a hydraulic failure, as the actual throw out bearing was still in good shape.
Common sense is to replace it all while in there, but this design, coupled with those that may actually WEAR out a clutch, make it very likely you will be facing this at some point.
Come to think of it, has any one actually WORN OUT a clutch? I suspect some of the 1/4 mile gang may have, but from my reading it is virtually all slave cylinder failure.

