Is there a good commercial gauge set up to tap into the fuel rail or have you used a home made gauge with a T fitting?

 

Volvo Special Tool Designs

 

Great info.

Thank you.

George

 

It turns out that Autozone and O'Reilly loan a pretty complete fuel pressure test kit for free.

 

There is a thread on Matthewsvolvosite.com that is dedicated to this "normal" problem the these cars experience. I have this problem too. Just in initial stages of trying to find the problem. Thought it was the new defective battery i just put in then moved to alternator but both check out ok. reading through the thread http://www.matthewsvolvosite.com/for...pic.php?t=3484 I'm checking off the items mentioned. first easy one was to unplug the Maf. Car now works for me. There is still a little dip in rpm when first starting but otherwise stable. so now my next step is to clean the sensor. Hopefully that would be it as I don't want to put any more money into this piece of junk. Good think car only cost me $1400 so far (bought it at CL for $900)

 

except, that thread is talking about the 850, which is a COMPLETELY different front wheel drive car with a COMPLETELY different 5 cylinder alloy block engine, that has completely different Motronic engine management.


that said, if your car runs without your MAF plugged in, its a pretty good sign you have a bad MAF. with it unplugged, the car is in 'limp home' mode.

 

After all of this time, I eventually got the 1983 Volvo DL wagon repaired. Interestingly, it cost more to repair it than I could have sold it for but it is my first new car.

The fuel tank fuel pump was hanging by the wires. The frame fuel pump was not totally perfect. But after those repairs, it still stalled after a 10-15 minutes. The final fix was a shorted distributer cap and rotor.

The other "incidental" repairs were shock, struts, some front end covers, new front brakes and rotors smoothed out.

Thank you for all of the help