I've been running errands with a lot of stop and go. Came home and sat for about half an hour.

Went out to the car, the cars thermometer said it is 96F outside. Went to start the car and saw the yellow triangle with the illuminated message
reduced engine performance.

It was running a rough idle and I turned off the motor. Went and got my scan tool and it says no current or pending codes. Hm?

Started the car and all warning lights are gone. Maybe some bad gas? So I put an ounce of cleaner into the tank (I know Volvo says no to it) and I went for a drive. It drive fine -- stopped and started the car several times and no warning lights.

I'll give it a rest in the driveway and go see if it does it again.

Without a CEL I don't know where to head with it?

It is a 2002 S60 with about 232,000 miles on it. The PO removed the stock filter and installed a big round dry filter. It is washable and maybe it is time for a filter washing?

At least they didn't use a coated K&N. Not a fan.

 

There are codes, just not that a generic code reader can read. Most likely throttle related.

 

Throttle is what I was thinking and also that there are codes that my $200 scan tool probably won't read.

 

I would think something that expensive would read them, but I don't which ones do and which ones don't. You could press and hold the Read button and then hit the rear fog light button twice while holding Read to cycle through the modules on the text display to see if there are codes. Won't be able to read them though

 

Well that is a cool little thing. We had a caddie and jag that had that same thing (different way to start it).

Ok here ya go these are the ones that show "set"
ECM
CEM
DDM
CCM

We have always had an issue with the alarm going off (sometimes) when you unlock and then open the door.

Even though my reader didn't sho codes I ran erase codes a few times and now ECM doesn't show SET

 

Well whatever was stored in the ECM was the code you needed.

 

Well it may have been a burp. I've owned cars that would on occasion burp and I spent a lot of $$$ on it but never cleared the burp. If it comes back and isn't a rarity I can investigate more.

For all I know the car has never had new coil packs or the age of the plugs. Checking the plugs has been on my list.

I use premium gas and sometimes I worry about the freshness of the gas. Not that many cars use premium anymore and ethanol loves to find and mate with water.

On one of our cars we were going away for the weekend and gassed up at Sam's Club. Went to pull out of the lot and the car stalled. Got it started and limped home. Turned out that they had a problem with water in the in gas. I took care of the problem but we didn't take that car for the weekend trip.

So I am off to the place that sells non-ethanol and fill up the car. He goes through a lot of high end cars stopping in there for premium.

 

I had a similar issue with my old deceased S60, the fuse for the accelerator pedal is shared with the Aircon clutch, if blown that message comes up on the display, in my case the serpentine belt side of the Aircon compressor had seized, and before I had time to sort it, the belt broke and destroyed the engine.

 

We installed a new AC unit last summer, along with a new serpentine belt and pulleys.

I hope it isn't the beginning of a dying ETM. Even if I install a new ETM the car still must go to the dealer for a computer update. In the past year between a new key and some other things we've spent $350 on hooking up to the dealer computer for computer updates.

Not a fan of all the computer updates needed but I wonder if a lot of newer American cars are dealer computer dependent?

 

so what exactly caused your car to die? I had exactly the same problem with my car now. Changed the serpentine belt, the a/c compressor and mass airflow sensor. The engine is fine but no acceleration.