New to the forum and I have done a lit of looking around for anything that might help but I'm at a loss. Wife's S80 (2001) completely cut out going down the road with no warning. All electrical still on and car would turn over, but not even try to fire off.

Got the car home, did the cursory fuse and relay checks and nothing out of sorts. Pulled a couple of the coil packs and checked spark. Spark looked kinda weak even with new plugs, but it did have spark. Also didn't have the coil pack grounded so I don't know if that makes a difference. At this point it seems like fuel is the only issue left so I will be checking fuel pressure tomorrow. I can hear the fuel pump kicking on when you turn on ignition, so that seems in order.

Here is the off the wall observation. I can't quite put my finger on it, but the engine just does not sound right when you turn it over. If I had to describe it, it seems to rotate slower than normal and it sounds odd. Almost as if there is no compression in the engine and it is just freespinning.

Apologies for the novel, but I tried to give as much info as I could think of. Any help would be greatly appreciated as this car isn't worth the money to take to a mechanic at this point. It's just a "get by" car at the moment.

 

See if it'll run on ether and do a compression check.

 

Update: Fuel pressure great. Compression, not so great. Actually it's zero. Not even a jump or hiccup. So two questions to move forward.

1. Cam pulleys are in perfect alignment, so no slip there. I can't check the crank without what appears to be a lot more work unless there is a trick to it. Is there anything besides it actually jumping timing that can cause what is happening. In my past experience (old school American V8 and Vtwins) if you've lost compression from a blown head gasket, it's fairly obvious. So is there anything i.e. crank position sensor or something of the sort that can cause this condition.

2.This sounds like an out of time compression loss to me, but I'm still just a shadetree. If I'm correct I'm assuming that this is an interference engine, then shouldn't I have lockup or at least some horrible noises coming from the top end? It's smooth as silk, just spins freely, but no puff pop sound of compression that every 4 stroke in the world makes when it's just turning over.

 

Blown head gasket seems unlikely to take out all the cylinders, but I have seen it. I don't really know how that happens. during cranking, I just got a whirr.