It's a '94 T5 Volvo 850. A friend parked it up last night, and now it won't start. It cranks ok, and he can smell petrol at the exhaust, but doesn't fire.
Any common problems he can look at in the morning, before I have to go out to him with a trailer? He had a new cap, arm, and leads fitted a couple of weeks ago as part of a service.
Edited by Dynamic Dave on 03/12/2007 at 00:30
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Ignition amplifier? Damp in the cap?
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As well as those already suggested, I think they have crankshaft sensors that can die, but then there should be no fuel at all and there is, so it might not be the sensor. The ECU thinks there should be a spark and there is not (as there is fuel), so that supports the idea s that the ignition module might be OK and the fault is the cap, which has recently been replaced/worked on. I would start there. The old thing about pulling the HT lead to the distributor from the coil and holding them against some metal is not advisable apparently, but maybe if you are stuck and its an emergency you could do it with thick rubber gloves
Edited by Dynamic Dave on 09/03/2008 at 13:37
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If it's anything like the more mundane 850 I was working on a couple of weeks ago, the routing for the coil king lead is quite constrained - there's not much free lead to accomodate engine movement. If it has been routed a little tightly, I could well imagine it being pulled out of the distributor cap - especially if there's also a loose engine mounting, allowing the engine to move a bit more than usual.
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NC
On a 3-month old post; will we ever know....?
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Well, I arranged a garage to visit her to save me having to tow it all the way to Goteborg, and when he got there it started!
Instead of getting it looked at she just carried on driving it. Needless to say, a week later it wouldn't start again, so she left it a while then it fired. She still hasn't had it looked at. So now if it doesn't run, she works the webasto engine pre-heater for an hour, and then it starts ok. So I guess it's just damp somewhere.
She's going to be well and truly stranded one day, but doesn't seem too concerned. Ha, you can't help some people.
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It was flooded. I've attended a few of these. It started because you left it alone for a while and the plugs had dried out in that time. Flooding is most commonly caused when you start the engine from cold, and switch it off again after a very brief period of time, such as moving the car off the drive to wash it, or something like that. Every petrol engined fuel injection car will flood if you do this, but some are much worse than others. To prevent it from flooding make sure that you allow the engine to warm up every time you start it from cold before you switch off.....
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Our 2000 V70 (same car with a different bumper and dashboard) has this problem, it sounds like a turbine. The trick is, if you battery has enough juice, to put the accelorator to the floor and crank the engine. and keep doing it for about 1-1 1/2 minutes, and it will suddenly fire up. Keep it at about 2500rpm so it can't stall for a couple of minutes, and then let it settle in a nice long ride about town:)
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you should only crank a modern car for a max of 10 seconds
otherwise you will stuff the battery plates and the starter motor could catch fire
:-)
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