tl;dr: the shop broke my blinker and disavowed responsibility for that AND a suddenly improperly-functioning cruise control...see last paragraph for the gist.

Hi everyone! It's been ages, but I have a couple issues I need some independent advice on. Two weeks ago, I took my 2004 S40 on two road trips, approximately 150 miles round trip each time. As I was driving it, I noticed a front end noise getting steadily worse. I took it to the local Volvo mechanic (not the dealer) and he told me my left transaxle was bad. (I also had a headlight out, and asked him to replace that too.) He had it for another couple of days, and finally called me to say that once he was in replacing the left axle, he noticed the right one was bad too. Since I am preparing for another road trip, I knew I had no options but to have him fix all of it.

When I picked it up last Friday night, the first thing I noticed was that my left blinker was flashing at double-time, something that has NEVER happened in the four years I've owned the car. I chalked it up to coincidence...bulbs don't last forever, and I figured one of them had either given up the ghost or was about to. I needed to return the car I was borrowing from my dad, so headed to his house, and that's when I noticed that I wasn't able to set my cruise the way I'm used to. There's a rocker button at the end of the blinker arm, where up is set/accel, and down is set/decel. I always set it by pressing up (and had in fact done so flawlessly during the aforementioned road trips), but this time that didn't work. I tried several times, and finally tried pressing down instead. This time it set. Once it was set, pressing up to accel had no effect, but pressing down to decel worked fine.

While at my dad's, I looked at the blinker but didn't notice anything amiss. I thought maybe the front one was a little dim, but just shrugged it off and figured I'd deal with it later. On the way home, I suddenly heard/felt something hit my left front fender. I pulled over and my left blinker assembly was dangling by the wires. I could tell there were no screws to be seen, but luckily there's sort of a clip that holds it (tenuously) so I put it back together and stayed off the highway for the rest of the way home.

This morning I took it over to the shop and the owner wasn't there, just his assistant. He immediately insisted that there was no POSSIBLE way they did ANYTHING to affect the blinker, I'd have to drop it off and they'd fix it later, yadda yadda yadda. While we were talking, the owner returned, and as soon as I mentioned the blinker he said, "Yeah, that's my fault." He said he noticed during the Friday am test drive that it was loose, and his explanation was that "someone" along the way must have replaced the blinker and not replaced the screw. Here's the rub, though: in the entire four years/30k+ miles I've owned my car, my blinker bulb has never died and therefore there would have been no reason for anyone to touch it. Plus, his shop is the only one that's ever done anything more than oil changes/brakes/struts (not that there's been much of that...just some minor things completely unrelated to lights). I simply cannot believe that it stayed in place of its own volition for TENS OF THOUSANDS OF MILES and then suddenly came loose the night I picked it up.

What I believe happened is that sometime during the week they had my car, his assistant removed the screw - lord only knows why - and forgot to replace it. I believe this because prior to his test drive Friday morning, the owner test drove it three other times to determine what was causing the noise, and the blinker was fine then. They fixed it and all is well, but I was pretty ticked off when they suggested it couldn't possibly be their fault. I wish people would just admit they're wrong, deal with it, and move on, instead of getting all defensive. It's not like I walked in accusing them of breaking it - I simply stated the fact that while I was driving it home Friday night it came loose.

Anyway, the real problem now is the cruise control. It seems likely to me that there would be connections related to the cruise that connect to the axle or nearby...and it definitely seems possible to me that somewhere along the way something got jacked. What I don't understand is how it could only work/break halfway. It seems obvious to me that a fuse would be all or nothing...and thus is the extent of my vast knowledge on the subject. Anyone have any thoughts on what that might be?

 

I'd suggest pulling every interior fuse to make sure all is well. My 2005 had the strangest interior light problem that turned out to a blown fuse for a completely unrelated system. I know that many cars with a blown fuse will have erratic behavior as the electricity will find a path if any exists.

Is the broken blinker the same side as the replaced headlight bulb? You think they pulled the whole headlight off trying to repair the bulb and messed up something? I'd first check all the fuses then start taking things apart looking for a broken wire or ground.