Well I've finally done it. This is the fourth winter I've owned the car and I've been putting up with hard starting and sometimes no starting on cold days (-20 deg. C) due to a frozen intercooler. I finally bypassed the intercooler today. The way I did it was to cut the aluminium pipe running over the engine from the turbo just as the pipe begins to run down to connect to the lower intercooler hose. I then ran a flex rubber radiator hose (2 inch I.D.) from the cut end of the aluminium pipe straight to the intake throttle hose. The car started right away and I took it for a fast test drive. Everything works fine and there is no loss of performance. We will have to see how the car starts and runs once the temperature dips down to -20 C again. In the spring I will reconnect the intercooler .

Chuck

I've never seen or heard of that. All that goes through an intercooler is AIR so how does the air freeze?

Might you have a problem with the throttle freezing opened? IF so, Volvo had a cure for that assuming that your car missed the campaign to cure that in '94-'95 which replaced intercooler hose routing and a few other things.
IF that's it, you need to visit a dealer as (I believe) that should still be covered and free to you.

Frank said " I've never seen or heard of that. All that goes through an intercooler is AIR so how does the air freeze?"
It is the water vapor in the air which freezes. When the air is compressed, the relative humidity increses and the water vapor condenses on the cold intercooler interior and can block the passage of air. The intercooler hose "fix" in 94/95 was for this problem but it is not 100 effective for all climatic conditions.
Please explain how a 1994 car would be "covered"???

Well, the freezing throttle problem was a campaign so to my knowledge, all campaigns and recalls don't ever expire thus always free to the owners of those cars. We're still commonly seeing '98 X70s with open campaigns and those cars are out of warranty yet the campaigns are still free to whoever owns the cars.

As for moisture, STILL never heard of that either and not only have I been a Volvo dealer tech for 20+ years in an area that also gets to -25F, I own an older Volvo turbo too and I've never had any intercooler freezing at -25, even at high speeds, full boost (15 psi), and long freeway trips at those temps.

I've never had one customer complain of that either and no, I'm not talking about an old, weak intercooler hose calapsing on accell as also discussed here sometimes (seen that).

Early '94 850s did have a known problem with the throttle freezing opened when extremely cold and that's why they had a huge and costly campaign back then. We did them to many cars but it's always possible that someone missed the literature sent by Volvo to the owners back then.

compressed air produces a lot of humidity ,like a compressor in a carshop they have water filter to avoid damaging air tool ,,