Vovlo busted, any suggestions?

[Mr_Bo11ox]

My Volvo 240 is out of order, meaning that I am having to drive everywhere in the Pony, which was fun for half an hour but now I am feeling the pain (although my wallet isnt as the Pony got 46mpg out of its last tankful!)ANYWAYThe Volvo coasted to a halt last week after running out of electricity due to a goosed alternator. I bought a new one (£100!) and lobbed it on in the works car park, in the pissing rain. Initially I wired it up wrong due to the new alternator having different connections on it to the old one, but eventually I fixed that and all seemed to be in order. I pulled the earth wire off the battery with the engine running, to see if the engine died. it didnt, so I knew the new alternator was doing the biz. For some einexplicable reason, I did this for a second time, and this time the engine died and would not start again. Its never run since! On cranking the engine just spins over without any hint of a fire until the battery gets very low then it coughs and splutters a bit. Also during cranking the engine smells very petrolly making me think its overfuelling. Theres a nice big fat spark and the timing is untouched. I have taken the plugs aout and theyre always very wet.NOW this morning I borrowed a massive digger battery and tried to force it to start, it cranked for ages without even a hint of a fire or a splutter or anything. Eventually I gave up and then noticed, a brown liquid coimng out of the bottom of the engine somewhere. This liquid looked like oil but smelled like petrol and it was still pouring out 5 mins after I stopped cranking it. I am now thinking that my disconnecting the battery wire must have fried the ECU in some way and knackered up the signal to the injectors. I reckon now they must be permanently injecting while the ignition's on, and as such the sump must now be full of petrol, and its got to a certain level and started leaking out of somewhere (christ knows where). Theres nowt showing on the dipstick like and it was defo full before all this happened.I reckon i'm a reasonably capable mechanic but this has got me stumped, has anyone got any suggestion beyond just buying another ECU and trying it? WTF is going on here?

[Mr_Bo11ox]

Here are a few spots from my trip to Wales at the weekend BTW:

 

 

 

 

 

Disappointing territory for shite-spotting I find, nice hills/trees etc though

[wuvvum]

I love the way he's grafted the grille and lights from his dead HA onto the Landy.And sorry, I have no ideas on the Volvo. Your diagnosis sounds plausible - I once killed a Rover 820i when the earth lead clamp broke and the lead came off half a dozen times in the same trip, that was enough to fry the ECU. That car got scrapped, but your 240's a bit nicer than the old 820 was.

[seth]

Was about to say teh same as Wuvvum re grille.Is that an early Minor or an A30? Difficult to tell.

[Guest]

At the risk of stating the obvious have you checked all fuses?Only other thing I would venture is that it has some sort of ballast resistor cable and that might be knacked, otherwise the fuel pump relays can play up on old Volvos but I'm getting outa my depth a bit here.Comedy Landrover btw - wonder whether that grille's hiding a longer engine

[Mr_Bo11ox]

Yep checked all fuses, no issues there. You can hear the fuel pump buzzing up OK when the ignition goes on.

[retrogeezer]

What a bummer, sorry but I can't offer any advice but I hope you get it sorted MB.

[Father Ted]

=

 

Problem solved

 

Sorry, I cant be of any use here, but if there are sparks, there is petrol and there is air it does sound like the ECU is stuffed.

[FredTransit]

Sorry to hear about your problem, but thanks for the heads up. I will not try this at home....

[nigel bickle]

Sadly, I think prognosis spot on.'Nother brain & a gallon of cheapo oil needed here - hopefully.Good luck!

[gallondrunk]

.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

There is a diagnostic plug in the engine bay, but TBH I dont know what to do with it! I havent got a fault code reader or owt. Also being a 1992 model i presume it is before the days of universal OBD scanners so I guess you need some volvo-specific gizmo to interface with that plug.As for a shagged injector, surely one shagged injector isnt going to completely prevent the engine from firing at all?

[Pillock]

Is it worth hoiking an injector out to see if your guess is correct? Hold it in a tin of petrol just above the surface and you should see either pulsing spray on the surface or, if you're right, a constant stream.just thinking through, if you've been cranking and cranking for ages that would force petrol past the rings and into the crankcase anyway wouldn't it?

[gallondrunk]

.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

Is it worth hoiking an injector out to see if your guess is correct? Hold it in a tin of petrol just above the surface and you should see either pulsing spray on the surface or, if you're right, a constant stream.

 

 

quote]

 

Thats not a bad idea, although hoiking an injector out means hoiking them all out as they are all held in place by the fuel rail. I guess if I had a spare one that would be a quick and easy test to do, I might see what I can do there actually.

 

Just went up to the car park, the oil/petrol mix is still cheerfully dripping out 6 hours later and has made a right mess on the ground, I am no doubt gonna get a load of grief about that off someone, specially if it rains tonight!! YUK.

[seth]

Probably not a good idea to try and start it until you've drained the sump. Or it could go bang if there's loads of fuel vapour down there.

[Owain-328i]

What have you done to that! No leaky injector is gona fill a sump over and beyond. Once the fuel rail is empty no more is gona come through as the pumps not on so theres no pressure once its leaked out of the rail.Sounds like you've MASSIVELY flooded it, using truck batterys etc to jump it. Carelessness has lead to carlessness.Good luck repairing it!!

[wuvvum]

Sounds like you've MASSIVELY flooded it, using truck batterys etc to jump it. Its probably lacking a spark due to you frying its coilpack by gimping about with the negative on the battery.

Yes, except

Theres a nice big fat spark

[Mr_Bo11ox]

yeah yeah a big battery is not going to flood it on its own is it. In fact it should be impossible to flood, unless something is fooked, which it clearly is, and thats what the question is about.

[Owain-328i]

oh bollocks.Well in that case its time to look at the ecu as already said. Failing that, id be looking at compression as it could be suffering with bore wash as its been flooded.

[Ratdat]

Just for future reference, it's not a good idea to disconnect the battery with the engine running as it's a good way to totally fry the alternator.What injection system does the Volvo have? I'd guess Bosche K or L jettronic.Also, an injector permanently stuck open would flow quite a lot of fuel whilst cranking. They'll probably be something like 300cc/min at full duty so one injector could flow nearly a litre of fuel in three mins of cranking. How much of that would make it into the sump is another matter though.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

Yeah its LH jetronic.

[Ratdat]

Yeah its LH jetronic.

Bugger, I've got a book on Bosch injection but I've lent it out. Does it use dropping resistors on the injectors? I had a 740 which broke down due to no power to the dropping resistors. It was a failed relay. On that there were two relays in the engine bay which were the same so I just swapped them. I think the other one was for the horn.

[Richard]

The Volvo Forum might be a good place to find out what you've buggered and get a replacement.

 

Have you tried disconnecting the battery for an hour in the hope that it forgets what you did to it? I've never known that to work, it's probably right up there with using the freezer to decode a radio, but it wouldn't cost anything to try.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

yeah tried that, no luck there.

[Futuramic]

I had a similar problem with my 740. Coming home one night it suddenly lost power and would not restart. There was juice in the battery and a good spark.The problem lay with the fuel pump. I know you have described yours as working; however my car has two and if one goes the entire system fails. Mine has fully mechanical injection so the system might be different, however I believe all those cars had both a lift pump, to pull petrol out of the tank, and a pressure pump, to supply it to the injectors. One of these pumps is hidden away in the bowels of the car; so is not immediately obvious. It's something to think about.

[Des]

I looked at a jag many years ago with the same prob, it was horrendously over-fuelling, wouldn't run / couldn't run as way too rich, oil level was right up the dipstick, half and half petrol, it was the temp sender at fault, was telling ecu that the engine was stone cold, hopefully this is your prob as it's probably the cheapest option. Don't run it until you've changed oil and filter unless you like your engine rattley.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

Yeah I wondered about that and disconnected the temp sender, and bypassed it (its resistance drops to zero as the engine warms up). That didnt make any difference unfortunately. Also last night I used the diagnostic port to do a self-diagnosis thing as described above on gallondrunk's link. It flashed up '1-1-1' (no fault found)! Well, I'm sure there is a fault, seeing as the bastard has seemingly filled its sump with petrol.I am going to try and interrogate the signal at the injectors today, see what that tells me.A very helpful chap on R-R is trying to source another ECU for me to try, fingers crossed he'll turn one up.

[M'coli]

With the help of an assistant to turn the key, you could take the leads off the injectors, try to start the engine using easy-start or some such, and if it'll run on the easy-start, bung the injector leads back on and see if it'll still run?

[shite_meister]

In the years that I worked in for an Automotive Electrical Specialist garage I've never once heard of pulling the earth off the alternator while its running, although I don't need to tell you this now but you really ought to have used a cheap multi-meter to diagnose the problem correctly rather than use some odd method of fucking about with the wiring. It doesn't take much to cause an electrical spike and bollox your ECU or other. Think if it were me I'd be looking on ebay at cheap ECUs, for my E30 BMW they were as cheap as 10-20 quid and a car of that age should be plug n' play.It is possible as Owain correctly mentioned that it is flooded and has major bore wash, we had cars in the workshop from other garages that have no problem other than been flooded, if it is that then oil overnight in the bores usually works but obviously if the compression rates are good before doing anything else then its not that.Unfortunately it could be a number of things and you'll need to work your way through them one by one-do you know anyone on any volvo forums who might lend you an ECU? I take it the coil pack and dizzy are seperate like normal cars on this? (unlike like some Mitsubishis)Getting things proffesionally tested will cost alot to be honest, you will find buying a good used ECU cheaper than having yours tested.