92 240 wagon shiftlock and overdrive problems

is this an automatic or a strandard? did they have standard transmissions in 92?

my wife's 89 240 auto has a button on the shifter which holds it from shifting up when you are passing on the highway, there is a light which comes on on the dash when it is enguaged. you will only notice a difference when you are going quickly, like passing someone on the highway. it holds it from shifting into the top gear while it is pressed. ( is that shiftlock? ) I don't see how this would get you stuck in the driveway , unless it is just the lamp on the dash bothering you.

my 90 240 std has 5th gear not overdrive, and it has a light that somes on on the dash when it is time to shift up ( for best economy)

but my old 79 240 and 80 240 std had a switch on the shifter for overdrive, and I have had others ( an 82, ...yes i love volvo 240's ) with a button on the shifter ( push once to turn overdrive on , and once for off)

there is also a lock ring on the base of the shifter on older std cars. that you have to lift to get the transmission into reverse this is a mechanical locking mechanism in the shifter, there is an allen head bolt which follows a groove in a little bracket near the floor. if the bolt or the bracket comes loose or bent up it could jam up and make it hard to get into reverse.

so anyway if it is a push on push off button there is probably a relay involved , it could be bad, if you can hear it click when you switch it on and off ( key on) that might help you locate it , and you might be able to take it apart and pull a small bit of fine sandpaper through the contacts to clean them if they are black and pitted. .I am not sure where the relay it is located. down above your feet? there are relays for the fuel pump and wiper delay tucked under the carpet in the same area.

it could be a bad switch. it gets sweaty hands all over it and stuff gets in there. if you can find where the wires come out of the stick ( near the floor? ) you might be able to hook that up with a meter or a light bulb to test the switch itsef.

I remember something about pushing a pin out of a rubber bushing about halfway down the shifter and pulling the top half of the shifter off on a standard car.

keep in mind that the wires in the shifter move around alot .

Some may go from the relay to connections on the transmission. (overdrive on standard transmissions uses a 4th gear switch to prevent it from being enguaged while in lower gears.) I have had experiences with these wires suffering from intermittent, loose connections and have found them by moving wires around with someone up top watching the light. on a dash or a light bulb connected into the circut.

it gets oily down there! oil makes the wires hard and wires can shake around till they come loose or rub through the insulation and short to the body.

If the transmission has been removed there is a good chance for the connections to get jerked apart, and sometimes hastily taped up into a poorly connected oily bundle.

I wouldn't rule out the fusebox either. the fuses corrode , as do the wiring connections here. try turning each one back and forth a little.

I bet when you find it it is just a matter of cleaning a switch, relay contacts or fixing up a bad connection.

good luck :)

Phil

Repair or replace the overdrive relay, you can reach it by removing the glovebox and reaching to the left, if you snap the cover off it you'll find cracked solder joints on the circuit board that are causing the overdrive to stay locked out. The lockout is to keep the transmission from shifting back and forth constantly going up steep hills or carrying heavy loads.

Shiftlock to my understanding, is in place so you don't drop the car into drive/reverse when you don't have a foot on the brakes... Remember the Audi

5000 of the 1980's... how it used to crash thru garage doors - notice how it's taken this long for Audi's to even start to become popularish... I think they want the shiftlock to fail in the locked state to avoid this same debaucle, something's probably broken with yours.

On these later examples of the 240 the shift lock is electrically driven, I think via a solenoid. In otherwords, the large lock button is actually a switch which activates a solenoid or other device located elsewhere, which actually locks the mechanism. Hopefully you have a bad fuse in that circuit, as that's an easy fix. If not that, then I imagine it could be the switch, a wire or connector, or the solenoid - the usual cast of characters in electrical systems.

I think it's likely that the fuse went bad - or it's contacts are corroded, which is frequent - thus disabling the shift lock AND the Overdrive Solenoid. This would explain the simultaneous failure of both, which is othrwise an unlikely coincidence.

I drive an '86 240, and once worked on a friend's '91 240 (both are automatic transmission cars). On my friend's car, I jogged a fuse loose which disabled the shift lock. I was mystified, and very embarrassed until I got the advice above.

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PButler111 wrote:

Thanks. I was able to get a '92 owner's manual via eBay. Once I received it, I read up on the whole shiftlock thing and it, too, says if there's a problem to check the fuses. When I had the car at Rolf's again, I asked them to check the fuses. I'd really hope that would be the source of the problem, but they checked and found all the fuses in working order. Still have the problem, though, and still mystified. I've just kind of resigned myself to having to use the manual shiftlock release every morning.

Have you checked the relay? 95% of the time this is the problem, the other

5% it's the fuse.

I don't know from relays. But I have to take the car in Tuesday for something unrelated, so I'll suggest it. Thanks.