Hi All
Finally getting around to posting here to document the rebuild (note I have zero car experience). Got bored during COVID and bought the car unseen off gumtree. Without trying very hard, the seller was happy to knock off some $$$ off the asking due to the heater core needing replacing which he had already purchased and included with the car. Probably should have been a warning sign at that point but I've always wanted a wagon! (I also purchased a Kawasaki GPZ900R sight unseen from a motorcycle restorer - again probably another warning sign, and a project ill probably never find the time to tackle). The car was going to live in Sydney for a little while for a friend to use, and when my friend met the owner in Alexandria (supposedly driven from Stamwell Tops to Alexandria on a daily basis) the owner was so keen to get away from the car i think he left his wallet in the car. Being close to Christmas time, my mate was greeted to these beautiful lights.
Having more sense than me, he declined the use of the car given he is not much of a car guy and didn't want to risk getting stuck in the middle of nowhere. It took around another 6 months before the car made the trip down to Adelaide (parked up on the side of the road for 6 months as friend moved to an apartment with no car space, flat batteries, flat tyres, friend doing his ACL so unable to help and a wife with no clue we had acquired it and still doesn't know the full story 🙂 but here it is when it first arrived:
So the first job I've tackled so far is the Heater Core. Armed with no mechanical knowledge and a 'How To Replace a Heater Core in a 1998 Volvo V70' video from Youtube, I managed to complete this job in about 2 hours. The one thing i failed miserably in was pinching the coolant lines, which resulted in the front passenger well filling up like a swimming pool once we disconnected the old heater core. Unfortunately given the time constraints, I didn't have time to capture this. With the car now blowing out hot air, i took it for a drive and surprise surprise it went into limp mode (i also noticed that the indicator lights were not working but more on this later!) At this point i was dead out of time so had the car towed to the local mechanics. The car was diagnosed with an issue with the ETM, so did the sleuthing on the internet and came across the refurbished units from XeMODeX. I took a photo of the box but forgot to take a photo of the unit before it was installed.
So after the refurbished throttle body was installed the instrument cluster looked like this – a gain of a ‘engine electronic system dash light ‘ warning.
I had Scott (Legend) kindly come around and hook the car up to VIDA reset the computer and the following codes were still presenting:
CDM-000A D+ signal Signal Too Low
CDM-DF14 Can-bus L-signal Signal too low
CDM-DF15 Can-bus H-signal Signal too low
ECM-2400 Fuel pump (FP) relay – Signal too low
VGLA-455 IMMO-VGLA code Singal too low
CDM-000D Communication, ECM Internal Fault
ECM-720A Immobilizer communication – Signal missing
We did however lose the 'engine electronic system dash light' warning 🙂
Let the fun begin I guess? Suggestions on starting points would be a great help!
