My girlfriend has a 96 850gls volvo. I know nothing about these cars. Well driving the other day, it shuts off with no warning. She was able to pull over and wait a little more than a minute and it starts right up. Today, it runs for maybe a minute and shuts of wthout warning.it doesnt make any noises or anything... just shuts off.. im going to her house to try and fix it but i need an area to start. we dont have the money to take it to a mechanic and i never learned enough about volvo's when i was in school. please any help as to where to start looking will help. she just needs to get it fixed soon. thank you to anybody who can help me...


(ps... this was posted in another area but she just told me the model number)

 

The 850 is a 5 cylinder and I don't think any of them had coil packs. They do have a cover on top of the motor that covers the spark plug wires. How many valves does it have? Google photos of the 850 and 960 to make sure you have the correct model.

My guess is that she has a bad battery.

 

Never seen a battery fail while driving down the road; not saying it can't happen...

My WAG would be fuel pump; but again given the info it could be anything; you're going to need to do some diagnosis; otherwise you're just guessing...

 

Could the copper connector on the +battery terminal being corroded cause the shutdowns?

 

ignition cylinder?

 

When it dies will it crank/turn over but not restart right after it dies or is it dead as in turn key and nothing ?
When it dies have you tried to see if you have spark out of the coil and at the plugs ?
Need to try and figure out if you're dropping the ignition or if it's starved for fuel.
Did it turn on the check engine light either time while it was running or is it on now (pull codes)?

 

No code! Cranks up after about a minute but if you try it just turns over bit not start. She replaced the fuel filter amd it ran all day with no problem. I'm thinking the fuel filter was clogged or the pump is going bad. It ran good today but yesterday I couldn't hear the fuel pump prime up and it wouldnt start for about an hour. Should we go ahead and change that also? Its never been changed according to the prrvious owner.

 

I have a 94 850 and had the EXACT same symptoms. It was my fuel pump relay, about $60 at my dealer. Mine was located on drivers side under the fuse "tray" . But you really need to check for spark vs. Fuel when it doesn't start. If you couldn't hear the FP start I'd bet on the relay. My 2 cents!

 

FYI - these are known to have bad capacitors in the fuel pump relay causing intermittent failure -

 

BWD - Fuel Pump Relay

Part # : R6013
This is what I found at O'Reilly Auto Parts
It's about 36.00 and I'd imagine about the same at NAPA, Carquest .........

 

For what it's worth, I had what I assume is a similar intermittent stall problem. The car would sometimes stall when slowing down at intersections. Then it seemed to lose power momentarily while driving at speed. Then it would sometimes not start after being parked for a while, though it would start a few minutes later. Having read through the back posts on this issue, I changed out the fuel pump relay, then the fuel filter, then the fuel pump. Since I managed to find the fuel pump for $9 at a u-pull-it lot, at least the expense was low. The stall problem was so occasional that I thought I had fixed it — until the next time it stalled out.

I went back to some old threads and saw commentary about how it might pay to clean the throttle body, clean the mass air flow sensor and change out the camshaft position sensor. So I did all that. Again, I found a clean looking camshaft position sensor at the u-pull-it lot for $3. As it turned out, mine looked a little scorched. My feeling — but it's only that — is that the camshaft position sensor was to blame. The car has been running fine since.

I feel better about all this now that the car is running well again, and that it was mostly time and not much money. But in the middle of it I felt like a moron throwing parts into the car god volcano. Low on diagnostics, high on trial and error.

 

Several people have found different causes for the same symptoms. In my case, it ended up being the fuel pump itself (20 minutes job).

+1 on diagnostics first.

 

When the car dies, does it have any electrical power? I had that happen and it turned out the negative cable was loose on the battery. The guys that installed the new battery "lost" the little bolt that tightened the clamp to the post.

Another time the car died on me was when the fuel pump was bad. I was headed down the highway on a Sunday night and it freaked me out!

Does the fuel rail have pressure? You can check the schrader valve near the throttle body.