I picked up a 1983 245 with 150000 mi last month. always started and ran O.K. seemed strong but maybe a bit "off". I haven't been driving it as I have been looking into the typical volvo quirks. (tailgate harness, flame trap, etc.) always started and ran O.K. until yesterday. was pulling it out of the garage and it died, and wouldn't restart. I pushed it back into the garage and started troubleshooting. pulled #1 plug and no spark. took a look at the battery connections and fender ground, all dirty so I cleaned them up. reconnected everything and grabbed my test light. with key in run position, the main fuel pump and something under the intake (idle control?)kept clicking on and off, very weird. when testing for power at the coil with the test light, whenever I touched the probe to the coil connection marked 1 , it energizes the fuel pump. turned key and it fired right up. ran better than ever! I assumed it was just bad ground. went out a few times over the course of the day and it fired right up and ran well each time. today it's worse than it was before. when I turn the key to run position, shouldn't I hear the main pump start up? I'm going to sort out the fuse box tomorrow, and clean up the rest of the grounds under the hood. is there anything I should look for in particular? Thanks, Steve

 

Hi Steve, I went thru a good bit of this a couple months ago w/ my 80. Even tho I'm pulling the motor I wanted to get everything running before the swap. I found corrosion to be a big issue at the fuse panel. Not only where the fuses attach but behind where the wiring attaches to the board. Additionally, every single ground wire had more issues than I liked...so it was rather tedious but after a day of tracking everything down, it ran like a champ. Hopefully, your issues will be as simple.