Good day All,

During high school, I bought cars from my local auto auction to flip. One Saturday I had work and gave my father $750 to pick up a specific car on my behalf, a 2001 Mercury Grand Marquis. About 8hrs later, I arrived home to meet this automatic 1997 Volvo 850 Base with 72,000 original miles.

Since owning it we have never been able to get it started, I’ve since moved 600 miles away and my parents want this thing out of their garage understandably.

My question to the forum is: what can I do with this car? It may not be worth keeping financially but even if I got it running it would be a good secondary car for either myself or my parents to have around. Ideally, I’m thinking engine swap to a T5 or some similar sleeper build. I haven’t had the best luck finding a Volvo Mechanic looking to work on it in the state of Maryland.
Over the years we’ve had a few look at it, the car cranks but won’t turn over. I’ve been told to replace the distributor cap a number of times which has yet to bring a different outcome.

If anyone has been in this situation feel free to share any insight.

 

My experience with 850's is that they're very very transparent. I had no intentions of buying one, and after I cranked up the first dead one, I bought 7 for $500 each. If they have compression, everything else is cheap and easy to get to. That's my opinion. They are easy to work on.

When they won't start, assuming there is a timing belt in there working, the first thing you want to look at is the main "fuel injection relay" plug. This plug had a type of plastic internals that just dissolves with age and it'll unplug itself. it powers a couple of pins on the PCM such that you lose ignition if the relay is unplugged. You can fix that one for free, but I am not sure the 97's are quite as bad with this ailment. It's been a long time since I had a 97 so forgive me here.

After that, there is a VERY GOOD process of no-start diagnostics in the old 850 repair manual that is freely available on the uk volvo club site. https://www.volvoclub.org.uk/volvo_w...techdocs.shtml (and also see whatever else you can find there). They called it "850 ECU testing - non turbo" but the filename is just "Basic Testing" The manual they posted is not-OBDII so you have to translate some of the concepts there if you happen to proceed into the "Testing with Codes" section. Some highlights here are that it's possible to bench test the cam sensor. They frequently go bad. That you want the fuel pump to run should be obvious, and of course fuel pressure is something you can measure, and you should. I've never seen a bad crank sensor on one. Engine coolant temperature sensors are a common problem and they cause hard starting, but probably not so hard that you'd never start it.

Some other off-the-shop-manual info is that the non-turbos will run and run well with the MAF unplugged. That could be important. The cam seals are bad to walk out, which is odd. I bought a car that wouldn't run one time and the rotor button was melted because oil filled the distributor and caught on fire. So $15 fix there.

 

Thanks for the information! Funny thing is I called a shop in Frederick, MD and got similar information on checking the relay. That’ll be the first thing I check when I get in town. How realistic is it to keep the stock engine once it’s running. Should I look into motor swapping or just maintain the 70k engine?

 

Fuel injection relay and fuel pump relay

 

I couldn't say I ever saw anybody swap a motor on a $500 car with 70k miles on it. If there's some reason a person would do that, you're going to have mention what that reason might be.

 

Honestly, it’s been sitting so long I was just ready to do anything to get it back on the road. But after doing a bit of research, the feedback here and talking to 2 mechanics getting out running and funcional is my focus. I’ll look into a T5r should I feel the need for speed in the future.

For now, Working on Relays, MAF & distributor cap it is.

 

Update:

I’ve had a few days to work on the car. There isn’t any pressure in the fuel line when cranking. Accessed the fuel pump and there is nothing happening there. None available near me in Maryland until Tuesday when my part arrives. In the meantime, Is there a way to bypass the pump to make sure that’s the issue at hand?

 

Sounds like it could be a bad fuel pump relay

 

You can run it indefinitely with the relay bypassed; The downside is that it wouldn't shut off in a crash. When bypassed, it'll run any time the ignition switch is on.

PLEASE TAKE NOTE:
Up above I told you to open a certain document by name. This document tells you about bypassing the fuel pump relay. It does not show which relay is the fuel pump, you may have to google that. But it does tell you the pins and what the pressure should be.