Anyway, now that winter is showing signs of ending, my unsolved Volvo problem from the summer of 2007 has reared its ugly head again. Last year, when it got below 70F outdoors, the problem with my Volvo went away.
Last weekend on the way home from Chicago it showed up again and is in full effect, making the car nearly undriveable. I'm just going to lay out all of my issues and what I've noticed again and see if any of you can help me figure out the logical explaination.
The following things may or may not even be related to each other, so keep that in mind when offering up suggestions. And THANKS for any help!!!
Last spring I was having crappy accelleration and could feel a dip in power throughout the RPM range when I planted my footfeed to the floor. When I drove the car hard, the exhaust system gave off a sulfur smell. I took it to my euro repair guy and had him pull the O2 sensor and run a pressure test on the car to see if the muffler or cat converter was plugged. He did this for me and told me there was no pressure issues. At the time I put in a new cap/rotor/wires/plugs.
The car still ran about the same. Something is slightly lacking in power delivery, but the car is fine to drive.
Then in early summer when it got hot, the car started stumbling badly off of idle when I'd give it gas and had a lot of stumbling throughout the RPM range. I had no idea what the cause was and changed the fuel filter, cleaned the MAF, checked my engine codes, etc...
To this day, there are no engine codes being thrown, so I'm left with a shotgun approach to figure out this problem. Like I said, the problem left me in late September, only to return last week.
Here are some other interesting symptoms that may help you guys help me: If I don't drive the car for two or more days it is a BEAR to start. Cranks and cranks and cranks. As if there is no fuel at the rail (Not verified) but after a minute of cranking it will finally fire and run as normal.
Last winter, one of my fuel injectors started leaking gas everywhere and I replaced it with a junkyard item for 20 dollars. It has never leaked externally to the car since. However, I have no idea what condition all of my injectors are in.
When driving it, it almost entirely cuts out but comes back in spurts, finally to hit with full power like "oh yeah, someone wants to go faster!!!" at which point I can get up to speed with the rest of traffic. Once you're cruising at 80mph, the car will maintain speed OK. If you hit a hill and the car has to downshift, the stumbling problem will happen again. It seems tied to the act of giving throttle. If I VERY carefully give throttle, the car will run smoothly throughout RPM range. However, that makes me really slow in traffic and annoys people more than my spastic, jerky cut-in/cut-out driving style.
So anyway, here I am with several thoughts on my mind. Is the fuel pump bad? Fuel pressure regulator? The ignition coil intermittantly failing? The throttle position sensor bad? The MAF or O2 sensors bad??
What are your guy's thoughts? It's totally a fuel delivery problem. I can't tell if the car is running rich or lean when it's cutting out though.
Any help would be appreciated! I'm getting tired of driving my rusted out 4x4 Isuzu pickup
