I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but the Red Volvo lives.  Stephanie has been wanting it gone, since it’s parked alongside the house gathering rust. I didn’t want to cart it off to Gates without looking into it one more time.  It just didn’t seem right that George’s guys got it running once, but not a second time.  George says it’s different, but I think it’s the same problem.

So I went on my favorite Volvo website, Brickboard.com. I looked for Klaus, the resident genius, and ran a search in the 850 forums for ‘not starting’.  Sure enough, Klaus mentions something called Lawnmower Syndrome.  Where you start the car for just a few seconds, ‘to get the lawnmower out of the garage’, and then the car won’t start again.  Sure enough the car presents as flooded and with zero compression!  That sure sounded familiar.

Klaus’ diagnosis is that the exhaust valve guides are gummed up and/or the oil is sealed in the hydraulic valve lifters and the valves can’t close. Hence it doesn’t start and there’s no compression.  Trying to start the car like normal floods the engine.  He said that pressing the gas pedal to the floor is an ancient programming trick from the early days of fuel injected cars to cut off gas flow while cranking. He said the way to get the car running is to push and hold the gas pedal all the way on the floor and then crank the starter non-stop for at least 5 whole minutes!!!

So I did that.  I pulled the Blue Volvo around and hooked it up with heavy jumper cables. Then hit the gas and started cranking.  It started off like regular, and after about 30 seconds the oil pressure light went out.  Klaus said that means that the starter cranking the oil pump has actually raised the oil pressure and the valve lifters should work now.  About 20 seconds after that the engine cranking started slowly speeding up. I kept going.

I kept cranking and the engine slowly kept speeding up until it was turning almost as fast as if it were idling! I lifted my foot off the gas and let go of the key and the motor ran on it’s own!  The Red Volvo was alive!  Crazy!  I wish I knew that before I dropped $1,100 on the Blue Volvo…

Anyway, I don’t have the money to fix it right now, but I am not getting rid of it.