[Paul Sanderson]

This is a heads-up for those in the same position, though leading to a successful resolution.

If you have a 1995-2004 era Volvo S40 or V40, and both the turn indicators and the hazards start playing up and then failing altogether, it is the relay that is at fault, not the hazard switch on the dashboard that has a known history of flakiness.

The symptoms are that the hazard lights, the turn indicator lights and the dashboard repeaters for them simultaneously don’t work but then – maybe the next day – do work again. They may be OK for a while, then they temporarily fail again. It won’t be long before they fail completely, which leaves you with a drivable car but no turn indicators.

The circuits for each of these go through one relay, which is the Peugeot relay MB953383. It is also used by Citroen where it may be numbered 9563533980 or 739187, and I also have two other numbers; 72BM000 and 30870939. I can only vouch for MB953383 since that’s the one I used. Including postage, it was £12 from eBay, since Volvo itself is uninterested in supplying such old parts, a policy it trusts you understand by simply agreeing to return your calls on the matter but not actually doing so.

The relay is located down in the driver’s footwell (this is a UK-spec car) just forward of the red bonnet release handle but behind the horizontal under-steering wheel trim panel (which just pulls away). There is also a small fusebox there but you will see a white block close by that the relay is plugged into. I suspect that it is a Volvo adaptor block to allow that particular relay to be fitted for the market my car was meant for.

On my car the white block had to be removed complete with old relay since there was a clip fitting which gripped the two together, and that wasn’t apparent until the whole thing was removed.