2004 V50 2.0D S help! - electrics?

[willvo]

Help!

I am being tortured this past couple of months. Had to have this 2004 2.0D S V50 recovered 6 times by AA – have only one recovery left on my contract this year!

Symptoms: initially dash would go down and electric windows stopped working. Then, next time the car was stopped she would not start. No cranking, no attempt to crank. Just nothing. Sometimes when you turned the key all that would happen is that the wipers would come on voluntarily!

Volvo got the car and reported they had fixed it, but within a few days the same symptons had returned. I paid £178 for them having cable-tied a bunch of wires where the diagnostic plugs in. Gave me the car back and told me there had been numerous faults stored – I had not been servicimng the car with Volvo in the two years of ownership, just local mechanic but no problems until now. When these symptoms came back the radio was often affected as well and would function improperly or not at all.

Local Volvo seemed quite stumped as they have had it back a few times – though they have not actually charged any labour for subsequent attempts to sort it – nor did they charge me for the changed ignition switch – so I am not complaining about their treatment of me just baffled they cannot sort the car. They thought the dash and windows and non-starting were separate issues but the symptoms returned seemingly all at the same time. Back to Volvo. They changed the ignition switch to see if the non-starting was a fault of the switch and not related to the other issues. This didn’t solve the problem the non-start returned.

Then last time a new symptom appeared where the car would start but wouldn’t take any throttle load and idled only for a few seconds and then cut-out. I am not sure if this is related to the other symptoms through some kind of ECM problem or something else. Going to get the fuel filter changed because they said the fuel pressure in the car was low. They have kind of washed their hands of me because either they are stumped or the only remedy is to start firing a lot of money at the car which I don’t have (certainly not for a trial and error approach). They said the dash problem is definitely a DIM (? Is that right) unit which would be £700 or thereabouts IIRC, though the dash is currently working properly at the moment.

Can anybody (I am appealing to the intelligence and experience of those on here) suggest an alternative for this range of symptoms because I am a little worried that Volvo couldn’t fix it themselves and I have the car back, working now, but for how long. Love this car otherwise, but cannot go on with a ‘lottery’ car. Every time you go somewhere you don’t know whether you are going to drive home or walk!

[Clan]

It sounds like communication problems rather than actual component failures , I would carefully check the wiring loom in the engine bay , especialy behind the left headlight after taking the headlight out . The loom can rub on the sharp edge of the chassis and on the air conditioning pipes , also around the gearbox it can rub through ( take the air filter box out ) ... just moving the loom an inch to a different position can cure it ..if you cant find the actual oint of the trouble .

[Falmouthboy]

To be honest you are 'between a rock and a hard place'. You could spend £1000s on labour and new modules and find yourself no further forward. Dealers these days are so reliant on computer based diagnostics that if the computer doesn't tell them what's wrong it's all down to trial and error.

It may be worth asking locally if there is a good independent car electrical specialist, but failing that, I would cut your losses and put the £ you could throw at the car with no successful outcome into a reliable replacement.

[helmutderhaas]

This happened to me also, would be driving along and car would go completely dead.

Turned out to be the loom where it plugs into the fuse box in the cabin.

A tie wrap securing it to the socket cured the problem.

[jeffmasson]

Plus one for fuse box in passenger compartment under glove box. Not hat fault myself but read about 20 plus thread with same symptoms as yours. Can get kicked by passenger and it is removed every service to change cabin air filter.