Greetings all,

It has been a while since this thread had any attention, and I have been living with the starting problem through the winter. Not having a garage makes winter repairs difficult and unpleasant. So, one lives with annoying problems until spring.

While reading up on my starting problem on various forums, there never seemed to be a definitive answer that solved the problem. There were mentions of sensor wires too close to the starting cable, weak crank and cam position sensors, even grounding issues between the engine block and the transmission case. The transmission and engine block are held together with big and tight bolts. How can there be bad grounds there? Also saw on one forum where a dealer (I think) said the engine management computer needed to be replaced. Basically, a lot of shops were shot gunning the problem, and no real solution was presented.

In my attempts to resolve the hard starting problem, I replaced the crank and exhaust position sensors. Low hanging fruit and not overly expensive. No improvement in starting, but at least the sensors were off the table as a possible cause. Then I made an interesting observation. Both my wife's car and mine are '07 XC70s with roughly the same mileage. Both cars have relatively recently replaced batteries, hers being an 3ish year old Interstate, mine being a 3 year old Volvo battery. I noticed her car started with a faster cranking speed compared to my car. Not that my car's cranking speed was excessively slow, but was noticeably slower. Got to thinking that perhaps the starter on my car was getting a bit tired, pulling more current especially when cold, and in the process throwing out more EMI that interfered with the pulses coming from the crank position sensor. Recently I replaced the starter with a new Volvo starter (generally do not do after market anymore, too many quality issues). Immediately noticed the engine cranked much faster, and all starts since then have been perfect. A few fast cranks, engine fires, and off we go. No tachometer bouncing around, no starter fighting against the engine, none of the problems of the past.

So far, it has been over a week since the starter was replaced, and a puzzling problem looks to be resolved. And, did it without shot gunning a lot of expensive parts.

Hope this helps with others that have mysterious starting problems.



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Gary D