So I bought my first 1997 S70 T5 today, previously owned 244, 740T and 850 ... Driving it home 30km I got stuck in very slow traffic everything was going fine until the car started to stall. It blow bit of black smoke and died. When trying to start it, it would start and then die in couple of seconds.
We had similar problem with our 244 back in the days where the problem was the fuel pump that was overheating...

Can anyone tell me if this is a common problem with S70/850s as well?

After leaving the car for couple of hours to cool down I drove it home next 10kms and everything was fine.. even gave it a bit and no problems at all.

The lambda light is on and Im guessing that also check engine light so need to get the ODBII cable to check the error codes.

All the piping was tight and I dont believe it was due to leak or anything ... felt like fueling issue.

Just wondering if anyone had similar issues or what do you guys and girls think it could be?

Thanks

 

There are several recent threads that speak about stalling. Common to these cars, fuel pump relay.

 

yeah I been reading all the threads relating to stalling when hot and with similar symptoms it does sound like the fuel pump rely. I'll pull it out this morning and replace the capacitor and generally check if there is anything wrong with it.

Will keep you updated.

By the way I wanted to ask, from reading the volvo forums Im getting an impression that reliability of these cars might be an issue has anyone had a S70/V70/850 where they didn't have to replace or fix anything on them since new?

The car I bought I was told the radiator was replaced, engine mount was replaced and also the steering rack. The car has done 185k kms and from what I can see these are common issues on this car.

 

Man, are you serious? Is there any car anywhere in the universe that is 15 years old without anything breaking? As any car age and rack up miles they will need more and more stuff repaired. Yes at 15 years the fuel pump relays go bad, yes when they get 125k+ miles on them and the driver has been banging the car against curbs parking it for 12+ year the steering rack goes bad. Yes a front wheel drive car with a lot of hp torque will need motor mounts. I would think a better question would be how many other cars that are 17 years old hold up as good as these do? My '95 850 wagon is the only car at my house and no, it doesn't have a cel. I do my own maintenance and repairs and people do think it's 9 years newer than it is but I hope to put another 300,000 on it.

From what I see on this site, it's the most common Volvo forum and most of the people that swing by here and post are people that are new to car ownership (young people that have gotten their 1st car), and a lot of people that have just obtained one that was probably neglected for a few years before they got it. There was a lot of these cars sold and if 7% of these 15 year old cars are having fuel relay problems I don't think its a real big deal.

 

Not trying to put these cars down or anything (I wouldn't buy one if I didn't like them) I was just expression my opinion based on reading few volvo forums in the past couple of days and also from the past experience I had with older models.
I generally work and restore early 90s Japanese rally cars (Mazda Familia GTX/GTR) and I find them to be very reliable... never had any of them die on me on the road and I owned over 15 of them in the past 10 years... and most of them still have all the original parts and they hardly brake down. The 1.8L engines in these produce close to what T5 put out and can take pounding quite well.
So I guess when you do buy a new (well second hand new) car last thing you want it to brake down on you on the way home.
This S70 T5 has been well looked after with full log book, receipts, only two owners and overall its in a pretty good condition so I was quite happy with the car but I guess bit of disappointment when you don't make it home at the end of the day.

Anyways to give you an update. Friend of mine with a wrecking yard gave me a call this morning and told me that he has a 850 in his yard that is going to be scraped next week and I can pull any parts I want from it. So I went and picked up all the sensors, ABS unit, crank angle sensor, O2 sensor, fuel pump rely, fuel pump and everything else that I thought I could use as a spare.
After replacing the fuel pump rely the car seem to work fine but I guess I will find out after I get stuck in traffic...

Another question, are the sensors (and other parts like the fuel pump) same between NA 850 and T5 S70? Like the CAS, Idle control valve, MAF and so on?

Thanks

 

I'm not real sure about parts that are interchangable. What I usually do is visit a parts site like FCP and search the part & compare the part number. Volvo tries to improve on their parts as time goes on so a '94 will likely have different parts than a '98.

As for reliability, I have purchased two 850's sight unseen, met the sellers at their local airports, and drove them home to the tune of 1,400+ miles. I have put about 800,000 miles on Volvos and had to be towed twice. I think both was due to a problem I had with an accident I had that damaged my fuel tank. Ran out of gas without knowing it.

As for Japanese cars, I've had my share of them. No problems breaking down but I have stopped to help others that have. I did have a Jeep that had to be towed due to a cam sensor, less than 100k on it. My neighbor has a Honda Accord in his driveway now that he can't get started. All cars break sooner or later & yes, these fuel pump relays should probably be replaced every 10 years. Just thinking about it makes me think that the relay going bad may be damaging the pumps.

 

rspi,
I'll see if I can check the part numbers as you suggested thanks for that

I guess I'm used to these little Mazdas that haven't given me much trouble even though they are close to being 20 years old... Im not used to changing faulty car parts on these cars.

But Im glad to hear about your experience with these models of Volvo and hopefully I'll have trouble free experience with this S70.

From the past experience of the Volvos we had, first one being 82' 244 with fuel distribution EFI engine and that thing gave us sooo much headaches we even took it to volvo dealer and they still couldn't fix it ... however it was a beautiful car.
The next Volvo was a 89' 740 Turbo... excellent car run fine for few years until one of the valve springs broke.. it still got us home over 350kms.
I took the head of recoed it and it was all good after that. Cant complain about this one was a great car overall.

The 3rd Volvo we had was a 96' 850 that we bought from the auctions it had a damage to the sub-frame but nothing major. After fixing all that O2 sensor needed to be replaced and it seem to have some intermittent problem with the ABS wheel sensor and this is with less then 86k km on the speedo.
I guess overall both 740 and 850 been quite reliable and I hope that S70 wont be much different.

Said that I been going through the previous receipt of this S70 which I just bought and it looks like the previous owner has spent close to $3000 in the past year replacing front shocks, steering rack, radiator, full service with front disks and pads all around.
Also it appears that the basic service (oil change) has been done every 15k kms as per the log book I change the oil in any of my turbo cars every 5k kms with oil filter change and fully synthetic oil .. is this a normal practice with Volvos???

 

No, the turbo models are suppose to get an oil change every 5k miles (8,000 km). If you have a NA car, they suggest you change oil every 10k miles (or 16,000 km). So, if they were doing it every 15k, they were on the wrong schedule for a turbo, Yikes!!! I usually do mine between 3k - 5k full synthetic w/Mann filter.

I had a 740 GLE that I put over 400k on. That is the car that I messed up the fuel tank on.

I do think these 850/S70's are a lot higer maintenance than the RWD Volvo's but the turbo's are a lot more fun and very good cars. As you troll through the threads you will see the common problems like doors and windows switches, strut mounts, and a few other things. A RMS problem in my opinion is simply a problem of neglect (PCV), kinda like a timing belt issue.

 

So I took the car for a short drive today 3kms if that... Went fine when I got to the shops. When came back 10 mins later started the engine the car started idling rough and it would die again after few seconds. To keep the engine from dieing I had to accelerate which sounded like the car is missing.
Anyways somehow I got home and it was idling all fine again.
So the problem is not the fuel pump relay.... any other thoughts?

Thanks

Edit: Took the car for another drive and its was fine again .... I really hate intermittent problems!!!!
I have ordered a OBDII cable on ebay and waiting for it to arrive so I can check the error codes. The check engine light is on. Is there any other way of reading these codes? 850 had this button with red LED that would flash and give you the error codes. Has this been removed from S70?

 

So, how did you determine that it was NOT the fuel pump relay? Did you replace the relay?

 

Yep replaced it with another one from 850 volvo. I worked fine on the 850 so Im guess it was a good relay.

I think next thing to check would be the MAF ... Its just the problem is so intermittent that I haven't yet got a chance to pull the plug off the MAF sensor to see if it makes a difference.

I guess reading the error codes from the ECU might also help I just don't have the cable yet to do so.
Might take out the MAF and give it a good clean just incase ... so would contact cleaner do the job?

Thanks

 

Did you buy it from a dealership? Do you know if the car has sat still for a while (a couple of months).

My old 850 had some idle issues right after I bought it. I didn't replace anything. Drove it for 2 years after that and I had no idle problems.

Actually, I lied...I did replace the fuel filter - have you done that? (It costs less than $25 and it is one of the easiest things to replace. Even easier than an oil change.

 

@ HighVoltatge: Used relay.

@ Fosgate: Sounds like a plan. You should be able to unplug the MAF and see how it runs.

 

Yeah will try that next time it starts playing up.

I just got the car few days ago so haven't had a chance to replace any of the usual things such as the leads, spark plugs, dizzy rotor and cap as well as do a service on it. Planning to do most of that over this weekend... hopefully the OBDII cable will be here by then and I can see whats ECU complaining about.

I found couple of BOSCH MAF for this model on ebay so if it is the MAF and cleaning doesn't help then I'll get one from there.

The fuel reply I got was from 850 which friend of mine was wrecking in his yard and it had over 285,000kms on that car so not sure how good that reply is. I checked all the soldering joints and caps and everything looked fine... but you never know. Might replace the caps anyways just to be sure.

Will keep you updated.

Thanks

By the way anyone knows what Turbo would be on 1997 S70 T5? and what would be a bolt in upgrade?

 

Not 100% sure about 1997 (are you somewhere in Europe by the way), but it should be a 16T. You could upgrade to the 18T.

If you want to go higher, you will also need to get the bigger injectors.

 

I'm in Australia by the way, So even if I upgrade to 18T I need to get bigger injectors?
How big are the stock Injectors? and Whats the biggest injectors I can use before I get problems with over fueling on standard ECU?

Thanks

 

Did you get the stalling issue fixed yet?? I have a 98 V70 T5 and it just started stalling on me. It will stall at slow speeds and some times when crusin on the highway 65 mph. Also, some times it won't even start.

Any ideas?