Hi,
I am the second owner of a 2000 S70. I bought it in 2006 and it had 82K miles on it. It now has 128k miles. It has the 2.3 turbo with automatic transmission.Yesterday while driving in stop and go rush hour traffic I noticed the ambient air temp reading was 102 (the outside air temp was 93 degrees). After about 45 minutes of driving and actual distance driven about 11 miles, the ambient air reading climbed to 108 degrees. Then as I went to drive after waiting at a traffic light, I had no movement. The engine revved as I gave it gas but the transmission was not responding. I was eventually able to slowly get off of the main drag and onto a side street where I parked the car. I had no movement in any gear. I thought that my transmission was shot.
My friend who was with me popped the hood and saw that the coolant fan was not running and he thought that the transmission had overheated. While driving, we had the air conditioner off and the engine temperature gage never moved from the normal position. We decided that the fan must have failed just before the transmission went. We let the car sit for about 45 minutes pondering our fate and then we tried starting the engine and putting it in drive to see if it responded. Well it worked fine. I decided to drop it off at a non-dealer Volvo specialist I have used since I bought the car. We drove the car to the shop and it drove fine. I checked the coolant fan upon arrival and it still wasn't turning on. This morning I called the shop and explained what had happened. The technician said that he had run the car up to operating temp and could not duplicate any of what I had experienced. The coolant fan worked fine for him.
He did detect a injector problem in #5 cylinder. I decided to have him replace the injector, flush the transmission, and replace the coolant fan relay as he suspected it was faulty.
I picked up the car after work and drove about 11-12 miles back home. This trip took about 20 minutes. The car ran fine. When I got home I shut it off and checked the coolant fan which was running. I had to run an errand less than 5 minutes later and started the car and drove about 2 blocks when I noticed the lack of transmission again. I turned the car around and tried to get back home.
I had to pull to the side of the road and wait about 5 minutes and then I was able to drive it back home. I noticed the ambient sensor temp was 102 degrees but I don't know where it started at.
My question is: Is my transmission shot? I feel like given time, something resets which leads me to think the tranny may not be the problem. My guess is the shop will declare that I need a new transmission. Could there be something else at work here? This all came out of the blue. Anyone have any ideas? Btw...the technician told me the transmission fluid was black.
I had the same shop flush and replace the fluid in 2009 at 108K miles. Who knows if the original owner ever changed the transmission fluid.

Thanks, Frank

 

Hey Frank. There is a horriable rumor that these cars do not need the transmission fluid changed. Just nasty. If that were the case, I would drain my motor oil and put the stuff in there as well.

Other than that, I doubt the transmission is going out if it hasn't been slipping. That is not usually something that happens all the sudden. Maybe the transmission TCM is going out. I sounds like something electronic. You can try a few things:

1. Next time it happens, shift the car to a lower gear to see if anything changes.
2. Shift to park, select the other preformance control button to see if anything changes.
3. If those 2 things do nothing, Put the car in Park or Neutral and press the W button. That is suppose to tell the computer to make the transmission to skip gears 1 and 2, start in 3rd. I used that to get me out of a jam of a car that I purchased once.
4. See if the car will go in reverse.

Those cars have a lot of switches, solenoids, and sensors that control the behavior of the transmission. Do NOT inject other situations into the equasion like outside temp. These cars will run fine when it's 125 degrees outside.

There is also a chance that your electronic throttle control unit could be causing the problem. Sorry to say but this may be one of those times where you have to go to the stealer because it's not a daily problem with these cars.

Your cooling fan is likely fine as well. It is set to come on when the engine temp reaches a certain temperature, like 225 or something like that. It usually comes on with the AC as well.

 

Thanks rspi!

You gave some good suggestions. I did try to switch between gears when it happened and tried reverse as well. It acts like it's in neutral. It seems to reset itself after setting for a while.

I will try the "w" button idea. I don't mind going to a dealer. I don't trust them and I am trying to confirm the transmission is not bad...as I am sure they will be more than happy to replace it whether it needs it or not.

Btw...the reason for the rumor about not needing to change the transmission fluid? My Volvo mechanic told me that in the early years of this transmission they discover that if you just drained the fluid and added new fluid, that the transmission pump was no longer in a primed condition and when the car was driven before the transmission had a chance to become primed, there were transmissions burning up. Volvo subsequently declared no fluid change ever. My guy claims he was ahead of even dealers with using the method of drawing new fluid into the tranny while at the same time removing the old fluid.

 

Oh, I did not know that. Many people are draining and refilling the tranny without a problem. I wonder if it matters if you let it sit to long in the drained state. :-/