My gramdmother has a 95 850. Yesterday it wouldn't start. It turned over with no loss of power, but it wouldn't fire up. The repair shop she took it to charged her over $500 and said she needed new ignition coil wires, and needed her cap, rotor replaced. But I drove the car the night before and it ran great. No misfire at all! Can someone please tell me if my grandmother got taken by this repair shop. They said the coil wires were $150.
Well that depends. First of all does the car now run? How much was the total parts bill? If the mechanic noticed a problem in the area of cap/rotor/wires, replacing all 3 at once is not abnormal. Just because it wasn't misfiring the night before doesn't mean that there wasn't some condensation causing problems the next morning.
If your grandmother doesn't take her 850 in for routine maintenance, then what happened is expected. But if your grandmother's car was sensitive to damp wires from morning condensation, then it had not received proper maintenance. One other thing it could be is a worn ignition switch. If it happens again, that would be one thing to check. Usually you can get around that by wiggling the key when starting. That is not a common problem on Volvos.
My wife's '95 850 once quit on her on the turnpike. She had it towed to a garage and called me. When I got there I got in and drove it home and it never happened again. I think in our case is was a computer crash and leaving it shut off for a while reset the computer.
You might want to consider the fuel pump relay, located under the fuse box cover, or the fuel pump itself. The relay is accessed by removing the torx screws on the cover, but I unfortunately can't remember which relay if the FP, sorry. I've repaired a number of them by resoldering the printed circuit board where the actual relay attaches to it.
This is a very common problem with Volvo FP relays through the years, and can really cause a headache because of the intermittent nature of the failure.
In my experience, the fuel pumps fail after about 110k miles or so, and it is typical that at the end of it's life it will function properly until the engine is shut off, whereupon it refuses to function upon restart.
Hope that helps.
Dick
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