Volvo 480 Club Europe

'Afternoon

Earlier today when trying to start my car after fitting the headrests, the engine failed to start, in what is perhaps the first instance in my ownership.

on further investigation, it was found that the sparkplugs were sparking, but when looking into the hole from which they came, the combustion chamber seemed to have an excess of liquid fuel, too much for the sparkplugs to ignite. When trying to start the engine with the sparkplugs held at the opening, external combustion is achieved, yet currently the car simply will not go.

Has anyone encountered this before? has anyone got any suggestions?

Many thanks
Ben

100% you've got good sparks?

I presuming you had long cranking period going on?

maybe the idle valve has gone, I think (stand to be corrected) that if the ECU detects the sensor on the crankshaft then you get a spark, no sensor signal means no spark, of any shape or at any time

so you have fuel, appear to have a spark, only thing lacking is some air?

If it is flooded then leave it a while, slacken the pipe from idle valve to inlet so that there is a small opening, holding teh pedal down will probably not help as the ECU might adjust the fuel accordingly??

or if you remove the bolt that holds the idle valve in place it will run at about 1500 to 2000rpm,as I discovered when doing a rebuild
I couldn't understand why the engin ewas running so fast with throttle closed and idle valve just attached with the hoses!!

So I have been getting enough sparks to ignite the fuel vapour outside the block, all the times I tried the accelerator pedal was not depressed.

jifflemon wrote: ↑

Sun Nov 24, 2019 3:43 pm

100% you've got good sparks?

I presuming you had long cranking period going on?

I hadn't done any manual cranking, just went to start it after about a month outside.
when trying to start it I did have the key turned to get the starter motor going, but to no avail

Alan's theory on the idle valve may make sense as when idling the car, it does tend to sit at 1500-2000 when at traffic lights, but a tap of the accelerator tends to fix this

As your left it for a month, maybe you have leaking fuel injectors? And the residual pressure from the line has bled through the injectors and filled the combustion chambers.

How about you leave the plugs out until all the fuel has evaporated and then put the plugs in and try to start it? If it fires up fine, that pretty much proves that the injectors were leaking. ‎

Your car has different injector to the rest of the 480 range so don't swap a set in from anything else but ones from a B18E. However, I don't recommend a swap, rather I think you should get yours tested & serviced. I have had good results at injectortune.co.uk ‎

You have to take the intake mainfold off to access them, so will need a new gasket for reinstallation for this and the throttle body. ‎

‎

When you tapped the accelerator you made the throttle valve go into it's closed position. The cable gets stuck somewhere. It has nothing to do with the idle valve. Oil and/or loosen the cable a bit and check if the accelerator comes up all the way. If at starting the throttle valve was not at it's idling position flooding the engine at an anyway difficult start for the first time after a month seems obvious.

I missed that bit of info about the cable needing a tap at the traffic lights to get it to idle properly. In my experience, the plastic guide breaks ‎where it goes through the bulkhead and can cause the accelerator not to return to idle.