yosser

I had a bit of an experience yesterday as the D5 suddenly cut out in roadworks on the M90. Deep joy.

Getting from lane 3 to safety using what momentum I had (in a 40mph specs zone) was fun....

A bit of background first:

The car is quite new to me, so I'm still learning it's individual foibles and P2 stuff in general.

It's a 2002 V70D5, manual, with 226k. It came to me as spares or repair as it would enter limp mode on anything other than very modest throttle. A fuel filter seemed to sort it out. I've done various other servicing and maintenance and the car seems in pretty good order.

I was on the return leg of a 100 mile ish round trip, the car had been running fine on the outward leg but went into limp mode on the way back.

I read/cleared the code with Torque and it seemed to correspond to the generic code that corresponds to ECM6805. The car started, albeit it did seem to turn a few more times than normal, and I resumed the drive.

At this point the OBC reported 100 miles to empty and I was concerned that it might be so wrong that I was actually running out of fuel.

After 15 miles or so without further problem I thought it was ok, until it cut out completely on the motorway.

At that point it was not for starting at all and I still thought it was out of fuel.

I was recovered from the motorway and met at services by an AA patrol.

After fuelling the car it still didn't start, so we began ripping it apart suspecting fuel pump failure,

Despite taking out what seemed like the whole interior we still weren't getting anywhere until the AA guy started digging around under the dash and found this:



Apologies for the bad phone picture, but that (as I now know) is the ECM. The scorching on it is pretty bad.

This thing (a resistor according to Vadis) was in the slots:



The contacts on the resistor were badly oxidised, and the contacts on the ecm were horrendous.

A quick clean with emery cloth and the car started, so this does seem to have been the problem.

I've managed to remove the two burnt connectors from the ECM and replace them, so *hopefully* that will be the end of that. The wires seemed very corroded, almost like there had been water ingress, so perhaps that was the root of the problem at some point.

Moving on, does anyone know what the purpose of that component (resistor) is? - I assume it's in the fuel pump circuit but I have no idea.

I must say that the AA guy was one in a million and was determined to get to the root of the problem, I'm very grateful for his assistance.

Thanks also to Tim for taking my call out of hours.

I'm just about to hit the button to buy a set of Federal RS-R's to put on the S70R, but before I do I'd like to ask those of you that have put some miles on these tyres what your impressions are please.

The car is only likely to do 3k ish miles per year, mostly on the road, although I hope to get a day or two in at Knockhill this year. It is likely to see wet weather but probably not winter use. I have the D5 for a daily driver.

I was aiming to put AD08's on but the RS-R is coming in at about £33 less per corner, and I can't ignore that (tight Scotsman etc...)

So, what are they like in the real world? - ok as a daily drive tyre? acceptable wear rate? good/bad/lethal in the wet?

Thanks.

I'm after a set of Comets, but they must be the 7.5" type which I think were standard on the C70 and V70 (the S70 got 7").

I don't need or want tyres, and condition is not a deal breaker as I may get them refurbed anyway - prefer them unbent though.

If it's of any use I'll be disposing of my 7" comets if I can locate a 7.5" set, so I can trade these if thats of interest. They're in great condition, although the tyres are getting past their best now (225/45 Conti SportContact).

Let me know what you have please

I took the D5 in to the local Volvo dealer today (somewhere I very rarely go) to get a remote fob programmed to the car.

It's a genuine remote, correct part number, still in the packet with all the relevant codes/numbers etc etc.

No problem they said. Come back in an hour they said.

One hour later: "Ah, yes. We were downloading the software to your car when the whole thing just crashed. Now we can't get the system up and your car won't start . Take a seat in the lounge and have a cup of (shite) coffee and we'll get back to you shortly."

One further hour later: "We've managed to get your car back to how it was when it came in, but we're not going to try to reprogram the remote again. We've sent a report to Volvo to see if they can explain what happened and we'll phone you when we find out."

So they were bricking themselves that they'd bricked the car and won't try again as they're still bricking it in case it does the same thing.

The car talks to my Vida/Dice fine, there are no communication issues with any modules that I'm aware of - did their computer just shit itself at a really inappropriate time?

I have no idea what happened, but I'm glad it happened to them and not me........

When using vida/dice I've had a dialogue box pop up to say that the dice unit does not have the current firmware and prompting to update.

I've ignored this as I don't want to brick the dice.

Should I continue just to ignore it, or is there any point in updating the firmware?