Hey, Just joined for this reason. My son (young) is taking his first cross country trip from San Diego to Florida.

2006 S60

He is 150 miles into his trip (Yuma) and says the car is doing fine at 75-80 mph but when he got off to get gas it was shifting down too early and then his check engine light came on. He checked the transmission fluid and it is fine. He had checked it B4 leaving as I told him to do in his "road trip checklist"....LOL.

So, right now as I type he is doing 80 mph headed to PHX then east. He says the rpm's are normal (2300 or so) and no issues cruising....

I dont' want him to have it quit at 2 am in the middle of nowhere. But, that does build character.........

Should he stop? Should he continue? Should he never slow down to less than 70?

He has 2000 plus miles to go.

TIA
eddie

 

update. It is now doing it at cruise.

 

He needs to get the code (s) read.

 

my son's car recently started doing some odd shifting and it turned out to be the turbo boost controller. as noted the DTCs will help point you in the right direction. He can stop in at a local Autozone etc and get the codes read for free at most.

 

So, only being 150 miles from start (grandparents) he went back. Today he went to auto zone and just before pulling in the check engine light went out and when they pulled the codes there were NONE. Whats up with that? The symptoms did occur on the way back but no check engine light.

 

Ok, got some codes.... ECM Internal fault. Long Term Fuel Trim Bank 1. ECM. THREE "fuel sensor"........and three Undocumented faults.

To me sounds like an ECM issue. Are they plug and play?

Ideas?

 

Not likely the ECM - that's the computer to the car and they don't typically fail. What is more likely is the car experienced a voltage loss (alternator or battery not putting out enough to maintain 12.5+ V) Car should be in the 13.5 to 14.5 V range when running. Anything south of 12.5 can cause random fault codes. Fuel trim bank 1 can mean many different things - intake or exhaust leak, fuel pressure issues (anything that can mess up the air/fuel metering and exhaust oxygen sensing.) Fuel sensor - ok so this sensor modulates the fuel pump to keep the correct pressure at the fuel rail. This can cause the fuel trim issue as well. If the car seems to be running normal, the best thing is to clear the codes and see what reappears. If the fuel pressure sensor was problematic, that code would get set again. Note that the codes should stayed stored until cleared with a reader, but in some cases the CEL can go away becuase the root cause is no longer present.

 

LOL.... you waste my time dude. READ MY FIRST POST BEFORE you reply.....

You ask if the car seems to be running normal then blah, blah, blah. It is NOT. READ the first post before posting some BS response.

You are telling me that a modern car will start having major issues if the voltage drops to 12.4 volts? Either A. You have no idea what you are talking about or B. It is the most crappy designed car ever. What is it?

Your advice is free I get it. But you get what you pay for and yours is worthless.

You an engineer?

 

yes in fact I am an engineer with a EE degree from an Ivy league college with 40 years of hands on auto repair hobby experience. Take any advise from posts you want as its a forum for exchange of ideas intended to give you a clue about how to correlate symptoms to root cause so you can be better informed and talk in an educated manner to a service professional. The point about the voltage drop is that it can cause sensors to report incorrectly and send erroneous fault codes because they fell out of range. DTCs are intended to give the technician the first step in their triage but in many cases don't point directly to the cause as further testing is required - such as testing to ensure system voltage is correct. So to your question are ECMs plug and play? Not in all cars. Some Volvos "pair" the computers so there is programming required via the VIDA DICE tool, other models do not. At this point your next move should be to recognize you don't have the facts you need and you should have the car brought into a qualified Volvo tech (dealer or specialist) to have additional diagnostic work.

 

Lol. I knew you were and engineer. I was a test pilot. Had to deal with engineers. There is the real world and the engineer world. They tried to kill me too many times to count. But thats another story.

As to your conviction that it is not the ECM.

It was. Boom.........

In addition, why in the world wound anyone buy a Volvo or any "over engineered" car like that. $900 for the part? LOL... I have a 2005 Corvette with 200,000 miles. Nothing but oil, tires, belts and tires. Yes, I use up tires...