Background. 2007 Volvo V50, owned for about a year now. Regular oil changes, not driven heavily (at least when my wife is driving
) Had a new head gasket in December. We were experiencing stalling this spring, diagnosed as throttle body, replaced and it’s been perfect ever since. Fast forward to now. The issues started about 2 weeks ago. I pulled up to park on the street after a 30 minute drive from a cold start. I pulled up, and then backed up, turning my wheel slightly, and as I was backing up, the car half stalled. The radio cut out, “anti-skid temporarily disabled” flashed on the dash (roughly one second), and the rpms dropped, and then it came back. All is good. Upon restarting the car, it cycled through the 6 disc as if power had been cut.
Then fast forward a few days, my wife reports this happening again, multiple times. The half stall. The CD cycling has also occurred upon start up’s even if a half stall did not occur. Which, I have since then traced, to on certain occasions turning off the car, and pulling the key will result in the dash completely shutting down, instead of the time and milage remaining lit. Upon re-entering the key, and turning it, nothing happens, and then a second try will start the car. Time, trip meter, everything remains consistent after this dash shut off happens - for all the times I’ve been able to watch it happen, but I have noticed the trip meter being reset - and my wife reported that she didn’t do it, so on some occasions the trip meter will be reset due to these power issues. Every time the dash shuts down when pulling the key, the 6 disc will cycle through each one again (there are no discs in the changer).
Then there’s some more larger issues. On a ~70 mile drive from a cold start, a quick brake to rolling stop, and then going again, the car completely shut off (11:30 at night) lights, everything, while I was mid turn, and turned back on a second later and kept driving. This was pretty concerning. This has happened similarly one other time, it was during the day, so I’m not sure if the lights and everything went out, and it seemed to recover more quickly or not have completely stalled, but nonetheless, extremely concerning. Thankfully no cars were around either time.
In the same day, prior to the mid-turn stall there were a few issues, some of which I’ve been able to repeatedly replicate. I will list them below.
- Cold start, pulled out of parking space, drove ~10 ft, stopped, and went to accelerate after a stop sign and the car had shut off. - have not been able to replicate.
- Warm start, 15 minute drive. Pressing brakes and turning, the music would cut out, the numbers on the radio would disappear, and then come back. Interior and exterior lights remained on, including the radio. 12v bluetooth transmitter through the cigarette outlet remained fully powered, and music resumed shortly. - This seems to be able to be replicated by pressing the brakes and turning the wheel back and forth, and this will cut the radio for a brief second. This DOES NOT happen every time though, and is extremely intermittent. Some days it’ll happen every time you do it, other times it’s impossible to reproduce.
- Light flickering. While driving home (prior to the stall) the lights seemed to have a slight flicker to them while driving on the highway.
- In this same vein, I’ve noticed dash and radio lights having intermittent flickers, especially when (possibly anecdotal) turning wheel and pressing the brakes.
Now, since then, with the exception of the one instance. There have been limited partial or complete stalls. However, I’ve also experienced another issue with the radio briefly cutting out, and interior dash and radio illumination flickering when playing a song at a high volume. This only occurred once, have not reproduced.
This also could be anecdotal, but seemingly most of the half stalls occur in reverse. Also, notably, most of the time the air control was off, or set to low.
Lastly, there have been no check engine lights, with the exclusion of one the other day, which my wife said occurred after she accidentally bumped the car into M and drove in 3rd gear for awhile. The RPMs didn’t get above 4000, she realized when she noticed the increased noise level around 3000 RPMs and from there switched back into drive. The code is a catalytic code P0420. It was cleared and driven for ~100 miles with no return yet. It could be anecdotal that driving in M would have caused the RPMS to rev higher than usual for longer than usual and outputted more exhaust than typical, triggering a code, but it’s possible. That said, I’ve reved higher than that before on acceleration, and have never gotten such code.
And (finally?), most likely completely coincidental, but given the flickering, I thought it was worth noting that the one low beam bulb went out. Again, probably a coincidence, but given the intermittent flickering, I thought it could be worth noting, that maybe somehow a shortage of power could have caused the failure.
So, I know that’s a lot of information, and a lot of it is completely random, but if anyone has any idea’s as to where to even start with diagnosing this, that would be great, thanks!
