Hi guys I am currently working with my s40 2.4i with a bunch of problems from electrical to mechanical. The mechanical problems I can tackle them easy* no problem. But on the electrical end this car is forcing me to become literate on that.
The main issue that I have is that there is no current going to the ignition coils when i switch the key to start position. The one thing I noticed is that the starter kicks in and stays spinning for about 20 seconds and the engine turns like if it is out of timing so no compression.
The oil pan is/was chattered beyond repair so I thought that the no compression was do to the oil pan being broken. However I decided to take the cam shafts off to check for bent valves and/or compression with the spark plugs in AND compression is good (thanks God)
So let's say that some how the car skipped timing when the oil pan broke or something like that, does that mean that when the engine skips timing the ECU senses that through the cam/crank shaft sensors and cut the power to the ignition coils? Maybe to avoid any further damages?
I took my voltmeter to check for continuity throughout the complete wiring system with the help of some good diagrams (you can download the pdf book for free) and checked all wires going from the coils to the ECU and the fuse box. Everything was good. I even checked all branching points to see if there were broken/corroded wires but all in good health.
So basically a simple question that may be helpful to many others. Considering that I went to the 380,000,000 Google search results and did not find the answer to this question.

Chattered oil pan. I noticed that the prevous owner of this car neglected this engine to eternity.

This is an used pan from the yard but virtualy brand new.

Took the cams off to make sure that all the valves were leveled. I also noticed poor baby s40 was being neglected preety bad.

 

Fuse F34 in the under-hood fusebox sends voltage to the coils. I can't think of why that would blow with an oil pan problem though, but it's certainly worth a check. Check that there is voltage getting to that fuse - it comes through a relay (R14) that is powered (on both the coil side and the "output side") by fuse F9. If you have power to all those points but the relay isn't coming on, I'd suggest swapping out the relay with another one (I believe that there are at least a couple similar relays in the same under-hood fusebox). If that doesn't give you a result, the only thing left is to trace the problem back to the ECM (Engine Control Module), which has an output that turns on relay R14 by supplying a ground to the coil (the other side runs directly to battery voltage via those fuses mentioned above).

If the ECM isn't sending the message, you need to dig into why... (google will be your friend doing that).