I'll try to make a long story short. I've been shopping for a used XC90 and the local dealer let me take home a 2004 T6 (4 speed trans) with 51000 miles. I noticed what I thought was oil on the garage floor after parking it there for a few minutes. I checked all the fluids, including trans fluid and all were fine. I pulled the "belly pan" and found that there was a good amount of oil on the bottom passenger side of the engine and that it had been blown by the wind at highway speeds and streaked the underside of the vehicle all the way back to the rear axel. I did some searching on the internet to see if i could find anything about oil leaking and turned up a handfull of people with the same or similar leak but none ever stated what the problem actually was - only that they had a leak and that it was in the same area. So I took it back to them today and told them about the oil. Well, turns out it was transmission fluid. Supposedly a seal on the trans had failed. Keep in mind I checked the trans fluid a few times and it was never showed that it was low so it wasn't enough to regester as low on the dipstick but I could see how letting it go for any length of time could cause enough to leak out and cause. damage. My question is, given the other threads about oil leaking in the same area on other peoples cars, could a leaky transmission be the typical cause for the transmissions going out in these cars. Or is the transmission going for some other reason? Does anyone know any more information about why/how the transmissions are failing in these cars?

Transmissions not prone to leaking and causing failure. Angle gear or sometimes known as bevel gears are prone to leakage, but as this unit only holds .75 litres of gear fluid it is not a explaination of high levels of fluid loss.

My 2005 T6 has already had a transmission replaced at 25K miles (under warranty). The replacement transmision recently slipped gears and the dealer said that it was "older" version of the software code which caused it to happen. Has anyone else had a problem?

I just found out today that my 2004 XC90 T6 with 70,800 miles has a failed transmission. This will cost me somewhere in the ballpark of $7,000 to fix, should I chose to keep this lemon. Check on carsurvey.com and type in XC 90 and transmission. No kidding, you'll find 5 pages of people, just like us, who have experience the same problem. Can anyone say class action law suit? Is Volvo even aware the EXTENT to which this is a problem? Their cars aren't saving lives, they are draining bank accounts. This is unacceptable.