We have 5 volvos so I'll probably be asking a lot of questions here. My 1979 240 had been running great for about a year after we bought it and I was surprised how good it ran for only $250. It then got taken off the road aout 10 months into its life at my house but I would still go out every week and make sure it started and ran fine. For awhile it did. But then one day I went to start it and it took about two minutes for it to run. Then for the first five minutes after that it would idle but would not have good throttle response and would act lean. It did this through the whole winter and in the spring I decided that it was the cold-start injector and replaced it with another one that came off a parts car we have. After everything was back together, I went to start it and it was the same hard starting as before. The car starts fine after being warm though and runs great too. My thought is that it could be thethermal time switchbut I'm not sure and don't want to pull the intake manifold to get to it if I don't have to. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

I know our cars are very different, so take this with a grain of salt. But if it ran fine in the summer months I would think everythings okay. I would think to check the smaller items: oil viscosity, moisture in the gas, state of charge on the battery.

Do you keep a trickle charge on it, or is that the reason you start it once a week?
Did you add Heat-like products to the gas to absorb moisture?
Also when oil is cold its thick. It may just be more than your crankshaft would like.
Sounds to me it could be any of these, since once its warmed up the problem seems to go away. But those are things I would look at.

 

It starts hard in the warm weather too. I started it once a week to keep the battery charged and to keep things moving. And even in the winter it turns over nice and fast with a charged battery so I don't think it's a thick oil problem either. Thethermal time switchsounds like it's the only possible problem. But I'm not sure.

 

Anyone else know what it might be? I would really like to get the car back on the road soon and having it starting hard is a real stress on the battery so it would probably kill a few of them pretty fast.