complete newbie to Volvo and a bit lost when it comes to repairing/maintaining. recently bought a 04' s60 2.4 non-turbo with 87,000 miles for too good of a price and not knowing it was a rebuilt title. tried to fix my mistake the next day but the salesman decided losing a couple teeth was a better choice instead of putting me in a new car....wasn't out of a lot of cash, so i decided to stick it out as it drove nice and i do like the overall look and feel of it.
the SRS urgent airbag service light was off when i bought it, but came on within the first week. nothing on the steering wheel works(no horn, cruise control, or radio controls). the alarm doesn't work, locks & flashes but no sound/horn. the car hesitates and shifts oddly periodically usually after stop and go traffic. the idle likes to bounce down to 4-500 and back up to 700 - 800 when coming to a stop. i've checked the transmission fluid (looks to be a good color, no smells, correct level) and had the codes pulled with an obd2 scanner but nothing shows up. all has been fine for over a month until i got stuck in a storm and hit too big of a puddle. The engine cut out immediately showing every light on the cluster and continued to do so every couple blocks until i could limp it home, mostly during turns but a few times going straight. coasts to a stop, shift it back to park and it restarts fine like nothing just happened.
it no longer stalls every other block, but it's still doing it every so often usually in a not so great spot to stall. i've been having a strange whistling noise, that comes after excessive stop and go driving or idling... which after some reading on here i found out is the PCV breather box. I'm planning on installing the kit i bought off IPD this upcoming week, if it will stop raining. But i'm not sure the box will solve the new stalling problem.
i've had a backyard mechanic tell me it could be the clock spring/ steering wheel module for the electronic problems & srs light...but i'd need "deep pockets" to fix and the whistling "noises" are hard to diagnose. so i took that as more of a he has no idea how to fix type thing and probably wiser to mess up anything myself. there's a couple volvo shops & 1 dealer in town but all are not a very safe driving distance from me so if i can possibly fix anything in the driveway it'd be better than a 20+mile tow.
any ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated, thank you for reading!
