HELP!! My 1999 Volvo S70 keeps dying
 

Hello everybody! I hope someone will be able to help me with this issue I seem to be having with my Volvo. I was running low on gas on day and on my way to fill up, my car died. It would stutter and start and then almost immediately die on me. I was able to get it running enough to get it into a parking space. It then died on me again. I thought I was too low on gas and it just wasn't going to run until I got some more gas in it. I got some gas in a gas can and then put it in. It seemed to be fine so I pulled out to go fill up completely. Not more than 5 minutes later, it died on me again. It did the same thing, it would start and then almost immediately stutter and die. My father thought I had gotten an air pocket in the fuel line somewhere. We once again managed to get it running and it seemed that the "air pocket" had worked its way out....not. Shortly after filling up completely, it died again. This has been a recurring problem for about a week and a half. My fiance and my father had replaced a fuel filter, cleaned out vacuum lines, replaced one vacuum line that was dry rotted and warped. But nothing seems to be working. They even replaced my gas cap because the seal was bad. What else could be wrong with it? They're thinking the charcoal canister or even the ECM. What do you think? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

I think you should diagnose the problem and fix it or take it to someone who can; if you want a WAG my guess is you killed your fuel pump by running it out of gas...

1+ with GDog. These cars have fuel pumps in them that are 12+ years old. Seals are almost gone and the pump barely works. Then we run them out of gas and over heat them by trying to start the darn things over and over again when we know they are out of gas. On top of that, being that the is no gas in the pump to keep it wet and somewhat cool, we overheat the thing by trying to run it dry.

NOTICE TO EVERYONE WITH A 850 OR S70. If you run the car out of gas DO NOT try to start it until you get more gas. You will likely kill an already weak fuel pump.

OK, Mine did the exact same thing when I was low on fuel. When I went to fill up my car it kept spitting and sputtering and would stop running, I limped home and I had it checked out and I had a hair line crack in my distributor cap and it was full of crap. It had nothing to do with my car being low on fuel, it just happened to be at the same time my car was almost out of gas. Check out your distributor cap and see if this could be the problem. I had people telling me that it could be my fuel pump and others were telling me all kinds of sensor problems but it turned out to be a simple fix. Good luck

Well, if it were a sensor or dist. cap it would NOT randomly run smooth. Once you have a messed up dist. cap the car will run rough 100% of the time until you get it fixed. The fuel pump on the other hand will act up intermitantly until it finally fails.

My car ran fine for months with the distributor cap cracked, and then when it did start messing up, it would start out fine and then start running like crap.

Wow! I never heard that before. How did you know it was cracked and running fine?

It was cracked for almost 6 months, when it started acting up my mechanic figured it out. But sometimes it would run like nothing was wrong and sometimes as soon as it warmed up it would not run right.

Why didn't you have it replaced if you knew it was cracked?

Hey everybody. Thanks for the tips....although some were a little snide. For one I didn't run out of gas...it was just a coincidence that my car died when I was LOW on gas. Either way, some of your tips helped. We to the fuel pump relay off and jumpered it. It ran fine, so it looks like it's the fuel pump relay. Ordered on and will put it on today. Looks like my problem is solved.

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