Older Volvo floods--the fix!

Sometime back, you guys were talking with a fellow who had an older Volvo which would start fine, then die after about a minute. You were advising him against putting in a lot of money on a fix for the problem.

Well…I have an '88 Volvo 740 Turbo Wagon and it ALWAYS dies about a minute after I start it in cold weather, the engine flooded. My Volvo factory-trained mechanic couldn’t solve it in a month of fiddling with it (I was able to leave it with him because I bought a Honda Civic Hybrid so I could reliably get to work). (and he didn’t even charge me much for his time!)

I finally came up with my own fix: I pulled out the fuse that powers the fuel injection system, restarted, and let the engine use up the gas that had flooded it. Then I replaced the fuse and, with a little nursing, was able to get the engine to run.

I then got fancy and put in a rocker switch to turn on and off the power from the switch. Voila! Flooding sort of fixed and car useable!

Nice patch. But with a car this age do you want a fix? Its probably a cold start injector. Old school way to rich the fuel injection.

Make it MORE rich? Won’t that make it flood worse?