'89 240 cranking issue - COLD weather

Hello,

This weekend mother nature dropped our temperature down into the
teens, and covered everything with ice.

Mid day I decided to crank my '89 Volvo 240.

It turned over easily enough, but would not "catch."

After a few tries, I heard a buzzing noise from the vicinity
of the glove compartment, and thought that might be
the fuel pump warming up.

Eventually it cranked, took me to the grocery store, and then
that was it. No more cranking, no buzzing, no nada..

I walked the mile home and today it's warm again, so
I called for a tow.

As soon as the tow arrived, the car started no problemo and
I drove it twenty miles or so to re-feed the battery.

Now what could that buzzing have been?

Whatever it was, does it need to be replaced?

I don't want to get stranded if something is going bad.

Thank you.

Allan Ballard

 

That's likely to be a fuel pump relay under the glovebox... it is in my '80
model. There is a fuel pump under the car & another one in the tank (in the
'80 one), but there wouldn't be one in the cabin in any car I reckon.

 

A long shot, since I don't know if it affects the 240 at all, but easy to
check -

In the 740/760 series a failure that has given a few of us headaches is
corrosion of the wiring at the positive battery terminal. In the 740/760, a
single wire carries voltage from the battery to the ECU. If that wire
corrodes through, the corrosion can carry enough current to try to start the
ECU, but when the fuel pump relay tries to pull in the current is too low
and the cycle starts over again, leading to a tell-tale buzzing of the fuel
pump relay. The wire ends can also be close enough to touch and make
everything work for a while - very frustrating.

A gentle tug of each wire at the positive post of the battery will reveal
whether this is happening to you.

Mike