2011 V50 D2 cutting out and limp mode issues
 

Hi All,

My first post on here and I'm also a complete mechanical novice so please bear with me. I've had my 2011 V50 Rdesign 1.6 D2 since January this year and have been very happy with it until this month when the problems have begun.

The car had covered just under 70k miles when I brought it and is now on 78k and has travelled up and down the country and over to Belgium recently with no issues. However in the last month the car developed an unpleasant problem where it began to randomly cut out at low and moderate speeds with no warning. I would be driving along and all of the warning lights on the dash come on. The car has always restarted with no problem and otherwise, was driving without any issues at all, aside from a slight misfire when the engine was cold.

Initially i put this down to filling up with cheap supermarket diesel when I was running low a few weeks ago but the problem then started to get worse and after the car cut out on my 4 times in the same day (which also happened to be the day before driving from Leeds to Cornwall!) so I decided to call out the RAC. They hooked the car up to their diagnostic machine and it came up with no error codes so they suggested firstly changing the fuel filter and if the problem persists, that it may be a fault with a fuel injector. As it was also a bank holiday weekend I couldn't get the car into a garage before our trip and so we just decided to try it, take it steady and see how things went.

The car behaved faultlessly all week, covering over 1000 miles. However on the way back up to Leeds whilst driving through Okehampton, the car cut out again twice at 2 separate sets of traffic lights, both times whilst driving at around 20mph.

Luckily I managed to get the car back to Leeds with no issues and got it booked into my trusted independent garage I've been going to for 10 years now. They ran another diagnostic check with came up with a fuel pressure fault code and so they replaced the fuel filter for me.

The car was noticeably smoother after this, the misfire has completely gone and I drove the car to Sheffield this weekend and back without any issues. The fuel economy had also increased so i thought this was the end of the issue. However unfortunately I was wrong.

This morning I started the car and set off for work. However a new warning came up on the dash indicating "reduced engine performance". The car idles smoothly and there are no other warning lights on but it is significantly down on power and it feel like the Turbo isn't kicking in, also really struggled going up a steep hill.

The car is booked into the garage again tomorrow for another look but I was wondering if anyone has had this issue with their D2 and what the fault was?

This is the first time I've had a diesel so I am trying to avoid using the car for short journeys, so I am confident it shouldn't be a DPF related issue as the car gets a decent motorway run at least once a week.

If anyone else has had any similar issues with their D2 and can let me know what the solution was it would be much appreciated! If my garage can't sort the problem I think unfortunately it may have to be a trip to the Volvo dealer...

Thanks,
Sam.

Quick update- I've had a call from the garage this afternoon. The car went into limp mode again as soon as they started the engine, so they did another fault code read which came up with a failed fuel pressure sensor in the fuel rail, they've got the part ordered so hopefully they should be able to get it sorted tomorrow.