Hi just bought a 1983 242 automatic with 200k miles, was driving it to work this week always started fine and drove great. On the way home from work today on the freeway I lost power and couldnt accelerate, engine was bogging down. pulled into a parking lot foot barely on the pedal barely any power and as I pulled into a parking spot it died. Tried to start and cranks and cranks. Fuel pump checked and kicks on, has spark, and timing belt is good. LAMBDA light is on but would the 02 cause this? Only had it for a couple days and was planning on changing it.

 

a bad O2 sensor will NOT cause any starting or stalling problems, it will at worse cause the engine to burn a bit more gas than absolutely needed. and flunk a smog test.

you need to see if you have A) fuel delivery and B) spark. it takes both of those to run. lots of threads on here with suggestions how to test both of those.

 

So the fuel pump under the car was really loud my friend said (he owned it before me for a little while) and now we cant hear it at all?

 

hmmmm. these cars have two fuel pumps, a transfer pump inside the gas tank, and a main pump under the car. if the in-tank transfer pump is dead, the car will run OK as long as it has at least 1/3rd tank of gas, but the main pump will be noisy because its struggling, and this strain will cause the main fuel pump to fail prematurely.

there's some tests you can do at the fuse panel with a paperclip that will let you run each fuel pump seperately when the car is off so you can listen to see if its running, see... In the Tank - 240 Volvo Tank Pump and Sender for details on this.

 

I had a similar issue to this with an 850 a few years back. On that engine the main crank pulley (the one that drives all the other belts) is made of two parts, an inner and outer pulley that have a thick rubber thing in between them. I don't know why or how, but on that engine the rubber had deteriorated until the outer pulley was NOT turning as fast as the inner pulley and so all the belts were running slower for it. A/C, power steering, brakes, alternator, nothing that worked off the engine worked and the dash was lit up like a Christmas tree. If you have other systems not working look for the common denominator.

 

thats a 'harmonic damper', I believe the B230's have one, too, on the main crankshaft pulley.

 

No dash lights on and none popped up when I was limping to the parking lot. Think im gonna change the main fuel pump next weekend. I believe the pre pump has been dead and killed the main overtime (Friend said it was loud all the time when he was driving it) wouldnt doubt its the original.

 

Pull the fuel pump relay and check to see if it is burnt.

 

the paperclip test I linked on the cleanflametrap site bypasses the relay... if the pumps fail that test, they are bad pumps. if they pass that test, then its time to look into the relay.

 

That's what it's called, harmonic damper, thanks! Sounds much better than "big two part pulley on the engine"