Alright so this is my first post, really love this site.. so mint for volvo lovers.

So I've had my manual non-turbo 97 volvo 850 sedan on the road for going on three weeks now, and my malfunction light has been on the entire time. It's getting colder outside and today my battery finally gave out. Hoping its not my alternator, so I did a battery swap this evening and im curious to see if my baby is gonna turn over in the morning. What I find interesting, is once I put my new battery in, my malfunction light went out for a matter of a few hours. I drove probably about 25k into town, turned it off. Turned my car back on after about an hour and drove another 5k. Now when I turned it off and turned it on the second time, the light came on once again and stayed on? I'm pretty puzzled by this, I thought maybe the light was on in the first place because my battery wasnt holding a charge the entire time and now it had a good connection, but now I have my doubts? Any ideas guys? Would be totally appreciated!

 

Well you can see what everyone guesses or the easy way is drive it to an Autozone, Oreilly or ..... store of choice and have them read and reset your check engine light. Most do but not all so it's wise to call and ask first (unless you're in calif, your profile doesn't say). Reset so if it comes back on you can compare the new code to see if it's the same as what you had for three weeks therefore verifying that the computer is seeing that problem.

Then have them check the battery under the hood and your alternator and bring the other battery in so it can be checked too. Calif or not they will all do this with a hand held checker.

Then you know where you are and from there we can try to help you make intelligent choices.

 

In all honesty I'm just a student, I don't have much money to be throwing around in repairs. How would I go about reseting the code myself? I have access to quite a bit of tools, and as for a follow up. My car has been running good lately, pulling a bit to the right because one of my tires wasn't put on the rim correctly a few weeks ago, continually losing tire pressure. Regardless, the new battery has been working fine, starts great in the morning, holding a charge. My malfunction light is still on though unfortunately? Not to be confused with the check engine light, its the malfunction light.
(Green triangle with, looks a little line inside)

 

Not sure what light you are talking about. Go here and let us know:
https://www.customers.volvocars.com/...1_1.html#pg1.3

 

I don't know about anyone else but I went out and either that bulb is burnt out or you have the "special" one they used a green light and a triangle for a "Check Engine Light" or "Malfunction Indicator Light" (MIL). They are both the same thing just depends on who's talking.

The pictures suck, camera battery is near dead, it's 18 degrees and 11:30 at night.
My MIL is yellow. In the group of lights on the right it's the second one in from the right that isn't lit.

In the second picture is the only thing I see that has a triangle. It's located toward the center of picture two and it's dim red. It's on all the time the ignition is on as it's the indicator for where the hazard light switch is.

What is it you're looking at that's green ??

 

Alright I think I was just confused you guys are right actually. The light i was talking about might be the check engine light, I was thinking thats what the service light was for, but yeah.

It's the green light that's directly below the parking brake light in the picture. Stays on all the time while the engine is running.

 

I'll shut the hell up .........

Where are you located?

And, much better picture than mine.

 

I wouldn't want you to shut the hell up haha?

I'm located out of Thunder bay, Ontario.(Canada)

 

Ok, it seems like you do have a CEL. You need to go somewhere and have them read the codes from the car's computer and see what is wrong with the car. If you get the codes, you can post them back here and we can try to help you more. Here in the US, most auto parts places will read the codes for us for free.

If you had a problem with your battery or alternator, your top left light would be on all the time.

 

It might be that the two are not related. You might have an engine management problem that happened to pop up the same time your battery chose to die.

I'm trying to figure out what that symbol for the check engine light is. All the ones I've seen on "American" cars are yellow and either it's the symbol of the engine itself or it says "Check Engine". That's why I thought you didn't know what you were talking about, sorry.

 

No big deal Kiss, I thought the same, that is why I posted a link to the cluster and wanted to see for myself. Not a charger light as he was trying to describe. Simply a French cluster.

 

I remember reading some where that some canada 850's cane with block heaters installed and a block heater sensor going bad may cause the batt and alt to act up, throwing a CEL ..

Im looking for the post where I read that, but do you have a block heater?

 

I was pretty confident my 850 had a block heater, don't see it anywhere though, cant even find the cord the plug it in, I was looking. As for getting the codes read, I suppose I can do that, where would be the best place to go do you think? A mr. Lube or something?

 

And am I in the danger zone by continuing to drive this car? I have to get to work, haven't noticed anything drastic except that it has a shudder and is pulling to the right on the highway because one of the wheels is out of alignment. I thought those would go hand in hand but maybe the shudder is something else?

 

I don't know what's available in Canada. I would call around to see if you can find a parts store or something similar to see if they will read the check engine codes for you free. If they don't remember to ask if they know of anyone who does.

Around here we have a choice of a few different auto parts chains that do this service for free. That and they will also do a battery, starter, alternator test with a handheld unit at your car, also free.

It's hard to say how safe it is until you know what it is that's wrong. Usually if the engine seems to run normally then you are fairly sure it's ok to contune to drive. It might be that whatever went wrong the computer has compensated by going into backup or limp mode which is just a program that guarantees it will run but usually goes richer so you're burning more fuel and getting less performance. Those settings are safer for the engine to default to.

 

It sounds like you're fine to continue to drive. When your car drops into LIMP HOME MODE it will barely drive, like real slow. A shudder usually indicates missing which the code will tell you real quick.

As for your suspension issue, that's a different story. As long as you don't have a linkage fall out or something rare and drastic like that you should be ok.

 

Alright guys, thanks for all the suggestions lately. This is what happened. I took my vehicle to a hotspot for oil changes today and asked the mechanic to reset and read my codes. He did it for free (which was frigging mint) and told me that every one of my cylinders was misfiring. I changed the plugs less than 2 months ago, and he suggested that either my ignition plug coils are shot or I didn't gap the plugs properly. He could be correct about me not gapping them right, sounds about right. Do you know what they need to be torqued to? Also, is this gonna be a big hazard to my engine? And am I losing gas mileage because of this? Thanks alot guys, im gonna attempt to re-gap the plugs as soon as I hear back from someone about how about I should do that.

 

Well (a deep subject), how old are your wires? They have a date stamp on them. Week/Year so 52/06 would be that they were made in December of 2006. If your wires are old (as the car), older than 7 years, I would suggest changing them as well. Don't yank all of them off at once, get the new ones and replace them one at a time so you don't get them mixed up.

Your gap should be 0.7mm (0.028") and torqed to 25 Nm +/- 5 Nm (18.4 ft. lbs. +/- 3.7 ft. lbs.). Be sure to use anti-seize compound on the threads. Also, if you haven't done it, you probably could use a new rotor and distributor cap.

Just a side not, sometimes when fuel pressure gets low it can cause your car to missfire at all cylinders.

And YES, anytime your motor is not running smoothly, it will cost you fuel effeciency.

 

What you have is the "Lambda Light". It is exactly the same thing as the Check Engine light on a US car and it means that the fuel or ignition system has an error. Only codes will tell the tale but most of the auto parts stores will always tell you that you need a new $150.00 oxygen sensor. The oxygen sensor is rarely the problem.

If you can get the codes read please post back the Pxxxx number(s) and we can try to point you in the right direction.

...Lee

 

If you've done the plugs then it's Cap, Rotor and Wires time. Unless they have been done recently it's best just to do them all from a reliability standpoint.

Plug gaping is on youtube. You can either bend the electrode seperately or use a ramp gapper where you slide it until the gap has been stretched to your engines specification.

NOTE: If you spend the money for platinum, iridium or any other fancy metal DO NOT use a ramp gapper as the expensive rare metal is plated on the tip and you'll grind it right off trying to gap it with the ramp style. Result is you have a plug that cost you nine bucks and now may not work as well as a standard dollar ninety nine cent plug !!