Hello! I have a 1985 Volvo 245, non-turbo. When I go to start it on a cold morning, the following happens.
1. It starts fine, always on the first start
2. It runs a little rough, but stays on
3. After about 3 minutes, it shuts off. No coughing or sputtering, just off.
4. I restart it, but it continues to shut off unless I give it some gas.
5. I take off, but it still dies at every stop light, unless I can manage to hit the throttle fast enough to keep the idle up.
6. After about 5 minutes (until the engine completely warms up) it acts normal, and stops cutting off.

A few notes:
- On long trips, after the car has been driving for several hours, it occasionally loses nearly all power, where it becomes nearly impossible to even maintain 50mph. Sometimes turning the car off and back on fixes the problem, sometimes only partially, sometimes not at all. Overall, though, it tends to not do well on long trips, especially on the second day of long trips. Could vapor be forming and getting trapped?
- The Fuel Pump seems noisier than it used to be, but I am not sure if it is.
The in-tank and external pump have been replaced recently. It used to have a terrible problem where it would start randomly bucking like a bronco until I replaced the pumps. Even back then, it had this stalling problem, though.
- A lot of the wiring in the car looks rough, a few wires that are just hanging with frayed ends. What they are supposed to go to, I don't know.
- I recently replaced the spark plugs and wires
-The fuel injector wiring, in particular, looks iffy (lots of splices). Don't know if this can cause problems like this.
- I cleaned the crankcase ventilation filter

I am planning to sell the car soon, but would like to get this problem taken care of. I really can't afford to take it to a mechanic right now, so if anybody has any suggestions or ideas, they would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

The 1985 model was right in the heart of the biodegradable wiring harness years. The insulation on the wiring deteriorates over time leading to all sorts of issues. Unless your engine wiring harness has been replaced, most likely there is some sort of short in your harness causing the wierd stalling behavior due to wiring deterioration.

You could replace the harness or try to track down the specific short (very time consuming).

With regard to your main pump being noisier, I had this happen after I had replaced the in-tank pump. I checked and found that my in-tank pump wasn't running any more. I found that when I had installed it, the black plastic connector in the trunk hadn't been pushed together tightly enough causing it to lose connection. After I corrected that, the in-tank pump ran once again and my main pump was quiet.

 

Yes, I thought that possibly the in-tank pump could be the issue, but when I unplugged the wires for it, the main pump became even noisier, which I assume means that the in-tank pump was working.

 

the color codes of the original wires, along with where they are located, and we can probably figure out what they belong to.

I'd be willing to bet your problem is related to the bad wiring.