ETS light on, but no OBDII error code?

Some friends drove a few hundred miles to visit us here in town, in
their Volvo. Soon after they got here, an ETS warning light came on.
Looked it up in the manual, and found that ETS means Electronic Throttle
System, and all it says is to take it into the dealer. The model is a
2000 S70.

I have a laptop ODB-II module, so I decided to plug it into the S70's
OBD-II port (it was in the center armrest, rather than under the dash,
somewhat unusually). After hookup, OBD reported no failures, but the ETS
light was still on. I thought maybe my laptop did not make a real
connection, so I checked the engine sensors through OBD, and it reported
things like RPM, throttle positions, etc. just fine. So it did connect
properly to the OBD. But why would an ETS fault not be reported by the OBD?

Plus what exactly is the ETS? Does it mean that the Volvo has something
like a fly-by-wire throttle, rather than a regular mechanical link?
Flooring the accelerator, while monitoring the throttle position through
OBD showed that the throttle only opened up to 30% at most.

I read that there was some kind of recall about the ETS. Anybody know
what models it covers?

Yousuf Khan

 

Yes your Volvo dealer will 1st install an Electronic Throttle Module
(ETM) software upgrade this usually takes care of the problem but if
their Volvo is under 10 Years & has under 200,000 Miles on the odometer
then if the ETM is faulty it will be replaced @ no charge to them any
questions contact your local Volvo dealer for further assistance on this
matter

Glenn K
Volvo Certified Technician 2008
ASE Certified Technician 2008

 

That's good, I'll make sure they know that it should be free. But why
no warning code in the OBD-II?

Yousuf Khan

 

Um, who wrote your obd-2 software?

 

Don't know who wrote it, but I got about 3 different ones that I have.
The one I most use is ScanTools.net.

Yousuf Khan