S40 (New) General : intermittent starting problem S40 1.8 (2006)

[volvopilot]

hi all,

I recently bought a S40 from 2006 with the 1.8 Petrol engine and 5 speed manual gearbox. I noticed that sometimes it takes 2 attempts to start up the engine and I have to crank it for 3-5 seconds before the engine comes to live.

It looks like that this problem occurs more often after I parked the car for a short period of time so the engine is reasonably warm. Cold starts do take a little bit more effort than usual, but seems to start a little bit better compared to a warm start which is very weird.

Another weird thing is that the temperatures are rising now (about 10 degeres) compared to -5 a couple of weeks ago. It seems to start worse when the temps go up.

I have already cleaned my throttle body due to another rpm fluctuation problem at idle, this problem is solved now. So the throttle body is clean.

Anyone with any suggestions where to start to look for the problem? The car does not give any fault codes and the problem is only intermittent. Once fired up the engine runs very smoothly, pulls nicely and runs super quiet.