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    Posted by John Kennard on September 22, 2004, 6:18 pm, in reply to "Volvo 850 20V 'L' very intermittent non-start"

    Hi Nick, not sure about hydraulic lifters but have had many of these beasts, where if the battery is the slightest bit off charge, the engines will flood, wash the bores with fuel and show low compressions. This especially happens when you start first thing from cold, move the vehicle and go back to restart later on. Sorry not trying to teach your grandmother to suck eggs.

    My brother in law owned one of these; same year as yours, for years and this scenario was common. I don't know why but as soon as the plugs got the slightest discolouration on them the thing would not start, tried all sorts of makes of plugs to help the situation all to no avail. We always fit the biggest and best quality battery for starting these beasts.

    I reckon you need to build in a variable resistor into the temp circuit for starting, to weaken off the initial surge of fuel, something I was going to do on his car but before I could he got rid of it.

    Out of interest I have done this very successfully on our Merc Vito Van which from new had what I considered horrendous fuel consumption (used a lot for short journeys around town) but considering common rail inj and all the modern technology should have been better than 17 mpg. The dealer I bought it from was more than useless told me to run it in for 10,000 miles so that when time had lapsed and warranty ran out they could wash their hands of it. I just went to a local secondhand radio specialist and rummaged through a box of old volume control resistors which I use for substituting temp resistors, drilled hole in dash, found one with right resistance, wired switch in parallel to sensor and checked I got the right readings using data reader and marked on dash blue mark, white for normal, red for hot. I now occasionally turn the knob to blue for starting on a cold morning and have improved fuel consumption by a whacking 10 miles to the gallon around town. Pity Mercedes couldn't work this one out.

    Sorry about all my ramblings and boring you to tears.

    John Kennard.

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