2003 Volvo S60 Starting Mystery?

JCROSIE123

MEMBER
2003 VOLVO S60

Ok. It has 32000 Miles on it. About 3-4 Months ago. My wife was leaving work and the car would not start. What I mean is She turned the key and everthing lit up, radio on, interior lights. But nothing. No click no turn over. Nada. She tried about 10 times. Nothing. She called the dealer. They brought a tow truck over. He jumped it and it started. Brought to the dealer and the checked it out and could not repeat the problem. Battery and Starter checked out fine. Computer in the car showed that nothing happened. Well it didn't happen again till this week. It has happened about 5 diifferent times. I tried moving the shifter and steering wheel. It would finally just randomly start. After trying for about 5-10 minutes it would start. I am wondering if you have any IDEAs before I take to the dealer to pay them $109 an hour. Could it be the battery? Still Original. Thanks

1 Reply

ROGERL

MEMBER
2 POSTS

Wow, I thought my S60 was the only one with this problem. My 2001 S60 (120,000 miles) behaves exactly as you described. It has been doing this on an occasional basis for several years now. Twice it did this while still under warranty. The dealer would tow it to their shop, unload it from the tow truck, get in it and start it right up. They could never find anything wrong and the only thing they did is add some washer on the battery cable termination point under the hood. The battery checked out good and since that time I've replaced the battery and the problem didn't go away. It may go for months without happening or it could happen several times in the same month.

I bought one of those jump start batteries and when this problem occurs I can usually jump start it with that. The really frustrating thing is that I can't always jump start it with this device and in some cases it would not start when connected via jumper cables to another car. If I continue to try or wait several minutes and try again later it usually starts.

This problem can occur during any time of the year, but last winter it was occurring more frequently than I had ever seen. It even occurred when I dropped my car off at the Volvo dealer for other work. I started the car up, drove it 3 or 4 miles to the dealer, and turned it off. The dealer tried to start it 5 minutes later and it wouldn't start. They checked it out and found nothing wrong.