I'm buying a 94 850 Volvo tomorrow for $500.00. Fair shape I'd say. The reason I'm getting it at this price is the owner went to put gas in it and then it just wouldn't start. We both looked at it; it wants to start, but hesitates. I didn't tell him I bet if we bang on the tank, or check the fuel pump relay we could get the thing running. I'm having it towed to my house and I will play around with it. He also mentioned he was going to put a different stero in it but never got that far. I also didn't tell him I bet he blew a fuse in the process of looking in dark places. Any way he just doesn't want to mess with it, but for $500 I do. What do you guys think? Marvin.

 

I wouldn't own a non turbo but what the heck. If it has good parts, you can part it out and make money. I would fix it up and sell it.

 

How many miles are on it? I had a 1995 non-turbo 850. It was very slow but also a very functional car. I sold to a guy here at work a few years back and now it has over 200,000 miles and is still running well. He takes good care of it and keeps up with the maintenance, just like I did. I can't speak for a car that might have not been maintained. I agree with rspi, there are probably at least a couple grand in parts there if nothing else...

 

You guys say a non turbo is slow. Compared to what? As long as its peppy I'm ok with that. The odometer says 171k. I will see how much it cost to get going. Yeah parting it out is not a bad idea either. At this point I'm calling it a college ride. I can tell already I will be hooked on Volvo and will be looking for a real nice one from this era. My last car was a VW Cabrio 2001 glx. This car looks to be repainted teal green. It's got the spoiler and all the stuff. How much of a difference does a 850 turbo do compared to a non turbo? Going to salvage yard soon the guys here have 2 I can pick at.

 

Also it's an automatic. The front leather seat is gone or torn and dried out. The engine and body and trunk are really clean. I can tell the first owner just drove it. What ever the deal, 500 $ is not bad. I briefly looked at what the previous tried to do, which was to install a alpine 6 disk cd changer in the trunk. He didn't make it that far. I can see the blue wire running from the passenger side towards the back; but that's is so far. I'd bet money this is where he blew a fuse and caused the car to conk out. He even gave me the cd changer as well. I think what he was saying is "here, you finish what I started. I'm not touching it. I'm content with stock. But I will trace his steps and find the fault wire. I like tinkering, but I could tell he was the kind of person who hurries, and does not think about what he is really doing. That's ok for me; it provides me with information and a high degree of certainty as to why the 850 is dead in its tracks. I really love the engineering of that large 5 cylinder motor. I shut up now; off to read prior owners manual, and service records that I got as well. I wish everybody would buy a car cover; they really save the cars!

 

Slow like a 3200 lb car with 168 hp... Its not "peppy" by any meaning of the word

 

The NA isn't bad, I've just had a taste of the turbo that will blow the doors off of most cars and has no, NO negative trade off. All cars should be turbo.

The torque is fine so the car is NOT slow, nothing like what I had in my 740 GLE which we called Grace due to it's graceful means of getting around. Most parts are the same except for the preformace parts of having a turbo. The turbo also had the OBD-II port and most of them had the trip computer.

Enjoy it, it's a nice car. I assume he was trying to install a CD changer to play CD's but you can hook up a tape adapter or mp3 adapter to the tape deck and simply bypass that old outdated technology. You can also add a power amp or replace the deck with a newer one with a CD player built in (which also sounds better).

 

Yeah thank for the feedback. Regarding the stero, I'm going to just undo the wires he put in along the passenger side rail. Might find a pinch. Regarding the running of the car, I bought some CRC MACleaner, I will blow that out. The Mass air flow boot had a bunch if cracks, so I put some high temp adhesive stuff to create a air tight boot. Temp fix only, but it might have something to do with rough start. Also took a look at the FPR fuse; just by looking at cant tell if it's bad. Don't smell bad. Anyway up in the mountains with my scooter.