Hi all

I have a 2000 Volvo V40 1.6 litre car. I have had it from new and for the majority of the time its been a very nice car. It has just reached 92,000 miles and for about the last 6 months or so I have noticed a bit of a performance issue when accelerating.

The problem is more noticeable when pulling away from a standing start, say at a junction or traffic lights. The best way I can describe it is like carburetor/throttle lag. In my Volvo I can begin to move off from standstill and then put my foot to the floor to get max acceleration (without spinning the front wheels), however the car doesn't seem to pull away particularly fast. Once the revs get to about 2000RPM then I suddenly get a surge of engine power and we're off.

The worrying thing is that I am finding that when pulling out into a junction, unless I boot the throttle and give it loads of revs the engine almost seems to stall on me. Very worrying when you have other traffic bearing down on you!!

As for the engine noise, when the engine is idling at around 800RPM I can hear a variety of bumps and knocks that repeat in the same sequence at a regular interval. The noise sounds like this

I hear:
1) a knock
2) silence of about half a second
3) a rattle that last about 1 second (sounds a bit like a horse snorting)
4) silence of about 2 seconds, then the sequence starts again.


I recently got one of my dads neighbors to change the timing belt for me as he is a tech at a local Ford main dealer. He had a listen to the noise and said it was something to do with the VVT. He said that it would need either a Volvo dealer or a Volvo specialist to make the repair and setup the VVT again.


However there seems to be a complete lack of Volvo specialists in the West Midlands area, and I don't particularly rate my local Volvo dealer too highly (apart from the fact that they would most likely want to charge more to repair it than the car is worth).


Does anyone have any ideas about what part of the VVT system might be causing this noise. If it is the VVT, would that affect the performance in the way I have described? Is this a common problem on these engines? Might it be worth considering swapping the engine out for another 2nd hand used engine?


I think the thing that made me realise just how underpowered my engine is, was because the other month I borrowed an Audi A4 1.8T for a week to go on a business trip for my employer. This Audi had a 1.8 engine compared to my 1.6 and it accelerated like a Ferrari F1 compared to my Volvo (ok, i know it had a turbo but i thought they only played a part at high revs). Anyway driving this Audi was the most fun I've had with my clothes on in a long time and it really did make me think i had serious engine troubles with the Volvo.

Cheers
Ian