I recently made a 280 mile trip to Michigan and after crossing a set of railroad tracks 2 blocks from my destination my Volvo turned off. A message on the display screen read "reduced engine performance" and the engine would not restart. I disconnected the battery let the car sit a while and it restarted. The next day I drove it around for 45 mins and the car seemed fine, turned it off and on numerous times with no issues, later on that same day I stopped the car in a parking lot for a few minutes and went to leave and the car just turned off and wouldn't restart. After numerous attempts of disconnecting the battery trick the car wouldn't start. The next day I went back and on the 6th attempt the car started and ran fine. I left the car in Michigan because I didn't think it was to reliable at this point. I'm thinking about taking the car to the nearest Volvo dealership. The check engine light is not on and there are no messages on the display which means there's no codes for me to read to see what the issue may be. Can someone please help me and tell me what could possibly be wrong.

 

I would check the under-hood and interior fuses first to see if you jiggled one loose.

It sure sounds as if something came loose as you crossed those railroad tracks.

 

Is the battery OK after all those restarts

 

The battery has been fine and doesn't seem to have any issues, I giggled the H*ll out of the cables thinking they were loose. I've hit plenty of other bumps and other road hazards thinking that would cause the car to turn off again but the last few times it's turned itself off it was just sitting still.

 

Does the 2005 have any circuit breakers? The kind that overheat and disconnect then when it cools it works again? I don't know enough about mine yet to give you an answer.