Hello all, I just purchased a 1995 Volvo 960 shortly before Christmas. I used to own a 93 850and decided to go with a 960 for a long distance commuter. I needed comfort and reliability, so, I went with the 960 because it looked a little smaller than the 850, as a result I think I may have gotten a car actually worse on gas, but hey, it's a good looking vehicle. I own Alfas and I have been working on them many years, I have two V6 alfas and I am not exactly new to forums like this, but not knowing anything about Volvos and having experienced some issues, I figured this would be the better place to start as the Alfa forums have always been. The 960 had only one previous owner, I bought it at 160.000 miles, it now has almost 165000. Everything always ran great, I just swapped the air filter for a K&N and inflated the tires because I was getting barely 21Mph, now I get a little above 26! Anyways, last week I wound up in a bad snowstorm, and as here never snows, I did not have any snow tires mounted, the car went off the road into a bank of snow. A guy with a big truck pulled me out and gave me tug to a gas station nearby (approximately 900 feet) as the car was soo kaked with snow that the wind was blowing it around on the ice! I picked the car up later that evening as the roads cleared, I drove it about 20 miles on the freeway at 65-70 mph, no problem here. Next, I drove it around town for the next three days, no problem here either. Now, I must tell you that the tranny never worked in the S mode and neither in the Winter mode, it would act always as if on E, the winter mode does not switch over, and I get the upshift arrow on the dashboard, personally, I always suspected that something might have been wrong with the tranny from day 1 since at 40-45 the car would slightly jerk as if it wants to go into a different gear but it hangs on the threshold of the shifting point. Tonight I washed the mud off the car and went through a car wash and washed the undercarriage. After,on thefreeway on a trip out of town (120 miles long), 20 miles out at 70MPH the car started jerking, the engine light came on and the engine died, I slipped it into Neutral, cranked it and kept on going. The engine died another two times shortly after, I repeated the operatin, I made it through the trip but the engine lght is now on. Also, when stopping at lights, sometimes the tranny seems to be stuck in an higher gear, the car takes off really slow, I had to manually go to L and up**** her into D gradually. Some other times it shifted fine. DO any of you have any advice as to where to start here? I have the sensation something must have gotten wet, but I think that the tranny problem was a disaster awayting to happen. Thanks for any advice.

Matteo

 

Read from the link and pull and clear the codes from the engine and transmission.
http://www.troublecodes.net/Volvo/

Here is a link to the which port is for which module.

https://volvoforums.com/m_52326/tm.htm

If the tranny light was still on that explains your slow starting off. When the arrow comes on it goes into limp home mode and starts off in 3rd gear.

I would pull and clear the codes and see of they come back fast.

 

Hey, thank for the reply my friend! This morning I looked in the engine compartment and found the black and white boxes on the driver's side strutdome, I was wondering how to check for codes and this will give me some insight. I'll let you know how it goes.I went ahead and checked the transmission fluid and it looked fine, I am wondering if I should buy a newtranny computer, I read on a post that they sometimes go bad? There are plenty tested used ones around the 50 buck range. I took the car for a drive this morning and it drove fine, the check engine light is still on. I noticed that after I went trough the car wash the car started idling sort of rough, maybe some watergot some connections wet/moisture entered somewhere where it should not have had.A any rate, I will look at those links, and thank you soo much!

 

Ok, here i what the black box said...1-1-3 and on second try 1-1-5, tried four times and these were the codes subsequently. So, Injector (1-1-3) and injector number1 (1-1-5). I cleared the code and the check engine light is gone, code check afterwards is 1-1-1, I will see if it returns. I am wandering what could have caused it ( I hope I don't hve to replace the injectors here). I do detect a smell of gas sometimes, but it's not a recurring thing, also, I checked the rail and I don't see any leaks. I bought a new fuel filter for maintenance's sake a week ago before the issue showed up, I guess I'll go ahead and change it while I am at it. As far as the transmissin is concerned, the orange arrow light only comes on when I press the W mode, but the W mode button does not stay down, so, as I let go, it comes off. I still think this transmission does not shift as it should. I really wish this was a manual, I wonder if I can find a manual tranny for it and convert, do you think this would be hard to find?

Here is the code I got at A1: 1-1-4 Break in driving mode selector circuit
I will clear it and see if it returns. What does this mean, do you have any thoughts?

 

The switch for the e,s,w might be bad somewhat common problem. Also the PNP might be in its way out but see what happens.

The 113 is a vacuum leak or something like that. The 115 is an injector group code might be a bad power stage on the side of the intake manifold.

As for a Manual transmission you would have to Import everything from over seas.

There was never any Manual tranny cars brought to the U.S.

 

PNP?

 

Park Neutral Position sensor.

 

If you can smell gas, you may not have complete combustion in the chamber, thus venting gas through the exhaust. Put a timing light on each spark plug wire and see if the light comes on. If not, that spark plug wire is bad.