Volvo Forums - Volvo Enthusiasts Forum - Snow, Flashing Up-Shift Light, & Check Engine Light

Here in Colorado we get this stuff called snow. It occasionally causes problems. I got our 2001 S40 stuck in it about a week ago. Nothing serious, I dropped the right rear wheel off the pavement backing out of a driveway. The road was ice covered and it took a couple of minutes of rocking the car back and forth to pop it back up on the pavement.

The car is an automatic and rocking it out of a hole is more difficult that it should be. The transmission computer is slow to respond to shifts between drive and reverse, which destroys the rocking motion. Further complicating things is a retarded traction control system that fights wheel spin and can’t be turned off. It’s hard to believe this car was designed in Sweden.

Anyway, I got it out under its own power. The shifting back and forth freaked out the transmission computer, leaving me with a flashing up-shift light, check engine light, and sluggish response off the line.

I drove the car this way for a couple of days hoping the errors would clear on their own. A review of the owners manual lead me to try starting the car in park, shifting to low, then working up through each gear in a parking lot at low speed. This cleared the blinking up-shift light and corrected the sluggish low end response, but did not clear the check engine light.

I drove the car for a few more days and then tried disconnecting the battery overnight, but this had no effect on the check engine light. A search through this forum lead to the information that AutoZone’s offer free scans of engine codes. Sure enough, our local AutoZone offered the service. I took the car in and had the codes read. The system reported three transmission fault codes. I cleared the codes using the scanner and the car has been fine since.

Thanks to all you posters for the information provided in this forum and thanks to AutoZone for a nice service. I’m due for a 90K tune-up and repaid AutoZone by buying all my parts there.