I bought this 440si 1.9TD off ebay last month. I thought I was dealing with a nice, honest, family lady but am now having my doubts as she failed to mention a lot of faults I am now discovering with the car.

I'm really looking for advice on issues in order to avoid taking the car to an expensive garage and looking blank at the mechanics thereby asking, nay begging, to be utterly shafted on repair bills!

I've got a very good scrappy nearby and a good mate with his own workshop that will do mechanical stuff without charging me the earth (or at least not unnecessarily!)

Does anyone object if I use this thread and continue to add to it with problems? I do look through the forum for answers to similar questions first.

Engine stuff:

1. The woman that sold it to me neglected to mention the fuel gauge was not working correctly. The needle does not drop into the red zone and the warning light does not come on (although when the ignition is first switched on the needle is in the zone and the light is on until it starts climbing).

Is this likely to be the sender? How much would one cost to purchase from volvo? Would it be worth getting one from a scrappy? Are they difficult/expensive to replace?

2. Referring to above problem - I'll give you one guess how I found out about this fault? Correct - ran out of fuel in the middle of nowhere with a 20 month old baby in the back of the car.

I do zero my odomoter at every fill and count the miles but with a car that's new to me, and diesel which I am not used to running, and a blatant fib by the previous owner as to how much diesel they had put in the car before I collected, it just added up to disaster.

Consequently I now have a major fuel problem. The car will not start from cold without a great deal of effort including hand priming the fuel pump and repeatedly pumping the gas pedal until the engine catches and turns. I then need to keep revving until the engine stabilises. I am, of course, not trying to turn it over until the glow plugs warming light is off.

The car was warmed up when I collected it so started fine then. I ran out of diesel the first time I used it after getting it home and that morning it was a little tricky to start but nothing like as hard as it is now (I didn't have to get the bonnet up anyway!).

So have I caused this starting problem/fuel problem by running out of diesel?

3. This is likely to be connected to above problem - it looks as though the fuel line has been replaced by a non-standard line (narrower in diameter and red in colour) at some point, and the original line has been left under the bonnet cable-tied out of the way. I wonder if this has been an AA/RAC roadside fix at some point which has been left in place by lazy previous owners? Is this narrower line going to be causing delivery problems?

4. Could it be something as simple as tank muck getting into the fuel filter causing a retardation in delivery especially from cold? Would be over the moon if it was as easy as a filter change but doubt it - not my luck! Also don't understand why that would make it worse when cold wouldn't it be the same whatever temp the engine was at? When engine is warm it runs great - as long as I drive away as soon as it's started - if I sit letting it idle to warm up a bit (and while I scrape windows etc) it runs like a bag of poo

5. On starting from cold or slightly cold (i.e. after parking at supermarket for an hour or so) there's a massive puff of white smoke from exhaust. I know diesels are a bit more smoky anyway but is a huge cloud of smoke right? What could be causing it?

6. Would anyone recommend stuffing some engine restore type oil additive into the system or is that considered an expensive waste of time?


Electrical stuff:

7. Heated seats - neither of them heat up. I assume the small white dots at the bottm centre of the dash switches are lights which illuminate when switched on? If so, these don't work either. Could that just be a fuse to the heated seats and/or switch circuit?

8. Heated rear window: It eventually does demist, spreading slowly from top left of rear window diagonally downwards but I suspect that is from warm air circulation inside the car rather than the window heating element. Just wondering where the fault might lie on this and if it's an easy repair or a whole new rear window job?

9. Remote locking fob appears to be somewhat temperamental, sometimes deciding not to operate for no known reason. Sometimes a reset (as discovered elsewhere on this forum) works and sometimes it doesn't. Of course if not used to unlock the car the immobiliser won't turn off. I've tried locking/unlockling the car manually but this still arms and won't disarm the immobiliser. I'll look for a spare/new remote fob but in the meantime is there any advice re disabling the immobiliser?



Despite all these wee problems I LOVE this car, there's just something so grown up, solid, safe and mature about it and I really want to fix the niggles so I can drive with pleasure and without worry! I'm a mum of a 20 month old daughter so money is tight and everything needs to be done as economically as possible!

Very sorry to be so longwinded! Trait of mine I am afraid!

Very Happy New Year to all Volvoists :-)



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Does your fuel needle move at all? On mine it takes a few minutes to rise to the level in the tank.

I don't have heated seats so i wouldn't know. My dad has heated seats in his Land Rover Discovery and they only start to heat up after a few mins.

I know what you mean about the car.. The pictures of the car are not enough you really need to be driving the car etc to really love it.

As far as your fuel delivery goes, a narrower fuel pipe will, to an extent, restrict your fuel delivery and effect your fuel pressure.

The heated seats, in my opinion, it's common on older / high mileage volvo's to find they don't work.
I've yet to own a volvo where they both work. The closest I got to this was a 94 850T5R I owned two years ago. Only the drivers one would work, but you could smell burning after a little while, so I disconnected the switch as a safety measure.

Fuel gauge, a faulty sender unit in the tank would cause inaccurate indications on your dash, it would also affect your warning light.

The remote, if the battery is on it's way out, can cause it to be tempremental.

Might be worth getting your mechanic friend to give the car a quick once over.

How many miles has it done, and when was the last service you have paperwork for?

We should be able to tell you what might have been overlooked / whats due, armed with the milage etc.

Excellent choice of car though, especialy with a young tot.

We've had a few bumps in the volvo's we've owned in the past, one major three minor. Walked away from all of them without a scratch.

Wouldn't feel as confident driving my three boys around in anything else.

Let us know the milage etc.

Stu.

Hi,
Regarding your heated rear window. Mine didn't work when I got the car, it turned out to be the dashboard switch. Does a light come on under the rev counter / speedo when it is switched on? If it doesn't it may well be your switch too. Once I'd removed it and tested it, all I did was 'bend' the contacts a bit so they made a decent circuit and they have been fine ever since.

The fuel gauges are rubbish on these but are usually pessimistic rather than optimistic.

It is possible (apparently) to change the heated seat pads. I'll let you know haw difficult it is once I've replaced mine... if I ever get round to changing it!

Enjoy the volvo

Hi - thanks for the reply.

The needle does climb slowly after the ignition is switched on. It starts right at the bottom (with the fuel warning light on) and climbs to what I guess is a reasonably accurate fuel level. It's just that it doesn't go down far enough when the fuel is running out. When I ran out of fuel the needle was about 1.5mm above the start of the red zone and the warning light was not on.

:beer:

Thanks very much for your reply.

I must have been really lucky with my old 360 (1991 reg) as both heated seats worked a dream on that LOL. I'm hopeful it's just a fuse/switch issue since the lights (*or what I assume to be lights) on the switches don't illuminate. But I've read on other posts that sometimes these are disconnected because of fire issues? But not in this old model I think? Could be wrong... Anyway don't want to reconnect them and cause more problems LOL.

I agree I think the sender is the likely culprit for the gauge...

The remote batteries were changed the first time it happened to me (10 days ago)

Car has done 111k miles and has absolutely no service record whatsoever but the cam belt was changed quite recently (within 4000 miles) according to previous owners, and I've checked it and it does look spanking new.

They also had a new distributor cap fitted quite recently.

I've checked the engine oil and while there's sufficient level it's as thick and black as treacle so I am assuming it's a long time since it was changed. Also the water/antifreeze level was scarily low when I checked! I think previous owners decided to flog instead of readying it for winter. Grrrrr. Wouldn't have bothered me or stopped me buying the car if only they'd bloody told me!

I'm just going to pop off to my mate's workshop right now and see if he can fit her in for a once-over. I'll have to have one little thing done per month and prioritise them. But since she's going to be left in airport long-stay in three weeks time and I want her to start nicely to get us home after our trip abroad I think I'll concentrate on the fuel issues LOL that would be my luck stuck at edinburgh airport with travel-worn toddler and conked out car!

Thanks again :-)

Thanks very much for replying and I think you have possibly hit the nail right on the head there - now you mention it I am sure I haven't seen a corresponding dashboard light come on!

Great, thanks very much again :-)

You might want to move changing the engine oil up your list. If the water/antifreeze looks dirty/rusty you might want to flush the system and top up with a good quality antifreeze.

Have your mate look at it. He would be able to give you first hand advice.

Volvo for life !

Yeah I'll get the oil/filter change done and a fuel line/fuel filter replacement could be a wise move, ASAP. Didn't make it in to him this afternoon (small child tantrums prevented getting much done this avo!)