Hi, first post. I have a 2008 Volvo S40 2.4i with the 5 speed automatic gear box and aproxx 145k miles on it. I was driving from work, and got onto the highway on my way home when my gas light came on, except a "transmission service required" message showed up along with something about abs service required. All 3 of these things showed up at once, and the car almost immediately turned off. I tried to restaet it, and it will turn over but will not start. I replaced a breather hose yesterday and have put approx 100 miles on it and everything seemed ok. Any help or insight would be appreciated.

Edit: Didn't replace the diaphragm itself, I replaced hoses related to the PCV system.

 

Nearly certain that the root of the problem was a dead battery (that's the common system that can affect all those things that were showing problems). Obviously, that shouldn't happen when "just driving along", so one of several things is possible:

1) Your battery has some sort of fatal internal flaw, and is going to likely go south and leave you stranded again (sooner than later, most likely). Strange that the car would turn over without starting though.
2) There's an intermittent connection somewhere in your charging / electrical system, possibly one of the "big connections" (not sure which ones would affect the ABS, transmission and gas lights).
3) There's a cabling / module problem somewhere that's common to all three of those systems.

I can't really look it up right now, but if the problem is intermittent it's going to be "fun" to find the source of the problem. I'm curious what prompted changing the PCV valve - was the car throwing an OBD code, or was there some other symptom that pointed at the PCV.

 

After getting the car towed to the same shop that had previously done work on it, they almost immediately told me that my timing belt had broken (again). Im not exactly sure how this would be the case considering that I had the timing belt changed and the head rebuilt less than 5 thousand miles ago.

 

I'm hoping you misinterpreted the shop's comments (or that they got it wrong) and it's "just" the serpentine belt that broke. That would stop your alternator, so the battery would go soft in short order and you'd start getting those various error messages / lights.

OTOH if it WAS the timing belt, it could be that it got killed when the serpentine belt broke (they can get tangled up in the timing belt - not sure that happens on the Volvo 2.4i motor, but I wouldn't doubt it's possible.

Otherwise, it's hard to imagine how your initial problems with all the warning lights was related to a timing belt breaking, which is going to stop the engine, but won't set off all those other problems.

And one more thing - there can be a few reasons a 5,000 mile timing belt could break. First, it could have been a defective / lousy quality belt (I always buy "the good stuff" when I'm doing a TB). Second, the shop might not have replaced the timing belt tensioner, which can fail and derail the timing belt (don't ever do a TB and not replace the tensioner). And three - something else could have "killed" your TB (see my comment above on how the serpentine belt could come off and get wrapped up around the (usually on most motors) the crank pulley area).