Hi
First poster and have a question about my wife's 97 850R. The car just turned 50000 and has been absolutely trouble-free with the excaption of many dead batteries due to a lack of use. As I was driving it the other day I watched as one by one the gauges quit working, then the speedo/odo and tach quit as well. I'm wondering if this is a sign of low battery life as in the past the dead batteries have all given up in the winter and I wouldn't have noticed?

Anyway, I'm going to search the archives, but if anyone could help I'd great;y appreciate it!

Matt

 

Has the Dash been out before?
Is the ABS light on?

 

I have a car that doesn't get used much and I have a battery trickle charger that I use to keep the battery charged up. The other thing you can do if you can run a charger is to have a battery cut-off switch at the terminal. Easy to install and cost about $10.

 

I had the same problem with my 96 850R. I too only have 55k on mine. The gauge cluster has two different voltages fuel, boost, temp gauge on one voltage, odometer and tack on the other. I had to buy a new curcuit board for the gauge cluster ($450 ouch!). The older volvo's had a voltage regulator you could change but the 850 doesn't. I installed the board which is fairly easy, but you need to take the car to a volvo dealer to have all the parameters set (tire diameter, mph, gal) with the volvo scan tool. You could find the instructions by doing some web searching. The pictures really help the first time you take the top of the dash apart. Hope this helps.