my car has been in the shop now for 3 weeks!!! the shotty mechanics say there's an electrical proublem, and that its the computer, and would proubly cost in the thousands to fix!!. Well me and my mister arnt paying for it, his mom would be and that is the worst thing the mechnaic could have told her because now shes backing out, saying we should just junk the car!! and she'd buy us a used one with the monet from the old one. But this isnt just any car this is our volvo, ive put so much time into it always religiously changing the oil, and the filter and whatever else it needed. We have so many memmories in that car, im sure al you volvo lovers out there can understand me. My mister has had this car since he was in high school, we had our first date in it, first kiss, i learned to drive in it. Whats makes this worse is that the day i found out there was nothing the shotty mechanic could do, and his mom wanted to junk it. The 100,000 mile badge i ordered came and i was standing there opening it, as they were talking about junking it. That just made me burst into tears, right there. What should we do? I over hear my mister and his mom talking ans she said we dont take care of our car, that just pissed me off!!! i put everything into that car, i did all the preventive maintence on the car and at the right intervels. EVERY TIME nothing should have gone wrong. Has anyone else gone through this before?? does it really cost thousands to fix??? should we jeust let it go and junk it???

For $300 Pick n pull will sell you an entire engine with every computercomponent you need to run it. I reccomend that you get you manual and memorize the name and location of each sensor and actuator. The names are pretty self explanatory, and usualy give you a fair idea of what they do. Armed with that knowledge, you can compare the symptoms to the shop's hypothesis, and consider if it seems to make sense or not.
Then there are the basics....
Do you have:
spark
fuel
compression

If you are missing one of these, diagnosis is half done.
if you have them all, it is a timing problem(could be machanical or electrical).

I drive a diesel, and it will run with only one wire. Gotta love that.

As for costing thousands....my friend took her moms 91 945 (mom got an XC), withthe warning that it took $350 a month in maintainence at the shop. Now, about a year down the road it has cost maybe $500 including fresh tires fuel pump, tune up, bushings, brake job and a new FPR. Drives better than ever. at the shop, thousands come up pretty fast, but for most, that is an easier road than becoming a Volvo expert.

AS an example, I recently diagnosed a failed VSS(Vehicle speed sensor)by intuition. The dealer charged $130 to confirm my opinion(sucka didn't have faith in my diagnosis), and offered to replace the $40 part for a further $180, resetting of check engine light included. I reached under the car in their parking lot, using a had with working fingers and a 1/2" wrench, and replaced the part in 3 minutes, then reset the check light by disconnecting the battery fro a minute. Dealer rate @$3400.00/hour on that job. My friend just laughed at me when I asked for half of that. Best of luck.

http://www.picknpull.com/Self_Service/self_service.html

At one of the PicknPull locations at the link above, I picked up a 240 air-mass meter this past weekend for $45 with a 30-day warranty. Their listed price for the computer box was $40 (plus maybe $10 for the warranty).
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I'm sure there's a reasonably priced wrecking yard somewhere locally. Get the car back, and get a list from the mechanic of exactly which parts they think are bad, and go from there.
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Is the car in good mechanical shape otherwise? If so, fix the broken stuff & you're back in business. Post again with the specific problems, and someone can help.
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Jim (90 244DL 170K miles) turbo sways w/poly, front struts & bushings, OD wiring

Yes the car is perfect mechanically speaking..i make sure everything is in good working order before we take the car on long trips or anything. Im always on top of when the car needs new things, you'd swear i was obsessive about it. I have a fear of braking down in the middle of a high way or street. hehe

hi there,
I definetly understand what ur talking about.. First why did u ended up taking the car to a mechanic? What was the symtoms..? I believe Ecu (brain) Of the car rarely goes bad.. Check with the FAQ's.. It could be as easy as a sensor or a relay or a wiring problem.. or on the other hand mechanic might wanna close the car for a cheap deala nd swap the needed sensor and sell it or drive it.. I saw that happened too..
Sammy29926

Well for a while it would have a difficult start but, would start and run fine to the whole time. As time went on(about a week) i started to notice it and checked everything i could think of, all the spark plugs, cleaned them and put them back in, next i checked the battery, and its connections, the alternator, (i didnt think it would that because we had just installed one we bought from ebay and it had been working fine for the past 4 monthes or so) i checked belts, then i got to checking the fluids. Everything was fine except the coolant, it was really wierd it ate up a whole res of coolant over a two day period!, i refilled it just to make sure i hadnt missed a refill or something,i thought it was me. Wouldnt you know it a day or so later it was almost half gone!. So i filled it again, topped it off and left it, and that was the last time it ate that much coolant. I checked it everyday after that, it was fine. Next we moved on to electrical, i had heard from HERE that a bad fuel pump relay could cause i no start, so i ordered one from ebay, swopped them and had no luck the car still wouldnt turn over. I had joe (that i met on here, thanks joe)come down and try to see if he could get it running, or at least tell us what was wrong. He figured out that it was infact electrical but couldnt track down exactly what was causing the no start, he even switched his relay with ours but had no luck. He charged the battery for us, because the car had been sitting in front of my house for almost a month at that point. So finally i had my mister call his mom and see if she could help us, she said she knew of a shop that could fix it, but i think she just wanted a good deal because it was her brothers shop and she wouldnt have to pay for labor. That made things worse because this was not a volvo,BMW,audi shop, this was a japanise auto place. They had no clue what they were doing and i knew from the momment we got there this was not the right place for the car, just by looking at all the other cars on the lot, it was nothing but foreign cars. Toyota's, civics, cars like that. At this point i was worried as hell so i called the shop everyday to check on the car, just to see if they were making any progress. I got one excuse after the next, they cant figure it out, "were gonna have a car electrition come in and look at it and hell be able to figure it out" THE NEXT DAY "oh he couldnt come in toda, hes has his own shop so hes busy alot" the next day "oh his wife is having a baby, itll be about a week before he can come in and look at it" Then finally "oh he cant figure whats wrong ether your going to have to take it somewere else" This happened over a 2 week period, this last week "I" have been calling places up the butt trying to get the car in to a volvo place. I have to arrange towing still, basically i have to do all the work, the car is still at the shop as we speak.
Friday its supposed to be moved to another shop YAY A VOLVO SHOP!! AND ONE THAT I PICKED OUT!! finally my misters mom is listening to me. So thats how it is right now at this momment.

Hmmmmm.......Just a though, I'm wondering if it could be the crank position sensor that screws into the top of the bellhousing above the flywheel. My Vo mechanic had a '90 744T in the shop today that had one that was failing. The car was hard to start in the morning and he said it turned over kinda wierd like it was pausing 1/2 way through the engine's rotation....I don't know if this is your problem, but the symptoms sound similar. The Volvo shop that you're taking it to shouldn't have much of a problem finding what's wrong. Good luck! I hope it's fixed soon!
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Chris. Halifax N.S. '91 745Ti, 290K km and '91 745 NA, 378K km.

Hmm.. heres a thought, what if i go to a pick-a-part place and get all the parts itll need once i get a list, will the volvo shop install them? how would that work?

Yeah, the Volvo shop would *probably* install them, but they may tell you that since they're used parts there's a chance that they may not work or that they my fail in the near future. If the problem was something like a flywheel sensor I would advise against getting a used part as they're not that expensive and it's likely that the used part would fail soon.
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Chris. Halifax N.S. '91 745Ti, 290K km and '91 745 NA, 378K km.

Thanks soo much all of you have been so helpful already, i will keep you updated on everything that happens up to the mintue...

The car is now working!!!! all it was, was just this little wire...the volvo shop we took it to fixed it in about an hour and for a mere 85 bucks!

He doesnt know. The electrical system under the dash and everywhere is complex he would have to rip everything apart to find that one wire. I called around places a week ago and they said finding something like that would cost $1300. Our mechanic said he would it would cost $800 to do. But he insisted that its not nessesary, and then he hacked it and charged us 85 bucks for the diognostic and at the same time fixing it. The hack that he did included an add on that allowed us easy access to a new fuse that somehow regulated the electrical system. He said the wire had ether shorted out and was on a negitive. the fuse had a 10 rating and he gave us a bunch of extra ones.