Last weekend I bought my first Volvo, I used to own a body shop and had a friend who bought Volvo repairables, I have wanted one ever since he brought me a yellow 850 R, what a cool car !! I bought a 96 850 turbo wagon, its got 244,000 miles, its had alot of brand new parts before I bought it, it was done at a college where they where doing training for volvo. They put all new front end, complete brakes, calipers, rotors, lines, timing belt, water pump, axl shafts, brand new bridgestone tires.

So today I went to pull the factory cd player out and put in a nice Alpine cd player I took out of my ford excursion I just sold, and I did not disconnect the battery, shame on me!! I had an issue with the radio, the speakers in the dash would only work and with not much coming out of them.... probably a wiring problem or the guy who wired it, OR Is there a factory amp that has to be disconnected? Anyway I went to lock the car, go in the house to figure out radio problem, l went to hit unlock on the keyfob and it wouldn't open, figured battery inside keyfob probably died, so i go and put the key in the drivers door, the lock cyl would not move, so I try the pass door and the hatch -same thing, i ended up calling friend in the tow truck and he came over with a lock out kit, opened the car in 30 seconds, impressive.... and the door lock button on the dash will lock the door locks, but will not unlock the doors, DID I FRY SOMETHING WITH THE DOOR LOCKS BY NOT DISCONNECTING THE BATTERY TO INSTALL MY AFTERMARKET RADIO ???

ANY HELP WOULD BE GREAT!!
Thank You -Andy

 

I have had my radios out several times without disconnecting the battery. I doubt that is what's causing your problems. Not sure what is causing your problem. Hopefully somebody will come on that knows more about it.

 

You may have an amp, its would be between the radio and the heater core. There is a gap there for the amp. It will be empty or full of an amp.

For the locks, just thinking, wonder if one of the actuators dead locked so it wont release. Can you manually pull up each door lock?

 

Thats kind of what I thought, or something got messed up with the central locking system, the fuses where good, so I'm gonna mess with it a little more and also taking a road tip to strandbergs volvo ( volvo heaven) in wisconsin tomorrow and get some other parts, and if i can't fix it i'm just gonna take it up the rear and bring it to a local shop that specializes in foreign cars. My car does have the factory amp, I talked to crutchfield today and they appologized for not asking if the car had a factory amp and offered to send an adapter for the new harness to use the factory amp with the aftermarket alpine radio, for no charge.

Very cool site, alot of good people here alot of good information and help!!
I feel better every day about my new volvo, can't wait to talk my girlfriend outta her kia spectra and into a new volvo s40 !!

 

You can bypass the amp. It just unplugs. The factory harness plugs into the amp and the amp plugs into the deck. Unplug the amp from the harness and you have the factory harness.

Here is a picture of the amp...one of these days I will put it in mine I am just to lazy to do it.

 

I just checked out their website and their prices are a bit higher than FCP Groton. If you can wait two days for shipping, you'll probably be able to save some coin.

 

I decided not to install my alpine cd player for now, Strandbergs hooked me up with a 1998 factory cd player, face is charcoal gray and not black like mine no big deal, they didnt have a clue or have never heard of my problem, Borton Volvo in Minneapolis told me for $130 an hour they could diagnose the car - NOT !!!

So is it possible something in the "Central Security System" got fried? You can see the light on the dash and the rear view mirror light up at night, all the fuses looked good- where can a person find some in depth info on this? Or am I stuck bringing it to the dealer and paying big bucks, its got to be something stupid ??

 

I talked to a repair shop specializing in Volvos, its a short in the wiring for the central lock system, I'm going to have the pros tackle this one, with my hours at work I have no time. So hard lesson learned, might have been a coincidence this happened, but just about everything in my volvo repair manual said to disconnect the battery when doing electrical repairs, better safe than sorry, - I learn everything the hard way....

 

The box for the central locking system is behind the glovebox. You can get one from a junk yard, likely with the romotes in the car, replace that and see what happens. If you want a manual for that system you can pm me your e-mail address.

 

What was it they found to be your problem?

What shop and were you happy with their work? I'm in your area

 

Hey baadandy — regarding parts, if you're around Minneapolis, it's also worth checking out upullrparts.com. They frequently have 850s out on their lots, and the prices are dirt cheap. Plus you can learn how not to break parts on their cars rather than yours when removing the things you need.