S40 (New) Electrics : Electric problem. Could someone please help?

[silvicontact]

Hi everybody.
I was the happy owner of a S40 1.8l petrol SE, until 2 months ago.
I had a fault in the electric system, that burnt out the CEM (central electronic module) or on board computer.
I had to buy the part and the damaged connectors from a Volvo dealer which costs about £700 and I gave the car to a local garage to sort out the wires.
Now the car is whit a Volvo specialist in East London since 4 weeks ago and so far nobody can program the CEM to work on the car or to find the fault or to make any improvement in the very very very slow process of finding an electrical fault, fixing it and reprogramming the unit .

I am looking for some advice as I do not see any way of getting my car fixed and back on the road, and by the looks of it I will end up paying a HUGE bill and having to dismantle the car and try to sell it by pieces on the internet to try to recover some of the loss.

Any advise or recommendation is very welcomed

[Multiplex]

What was the "fault in the electrical system" that caused damage to the CEM? Yor garage needs to find and sort out this first before fitting a replacement CEM.

If something has caused damage to the CEM (a dead short or faulty component) it should be easy to trace - if you know where you are looking, can uses a wiring diagram and a multimeter etc...

Once the new CEM is fitted the car will be dead until it is reloaded with software - a job that can only be done by a main dealer or an indy with VIDA and access to software.

[redguy]

Check all the fuses. Get a multimeter good point to start. you should see 12v every where. The fuses are there to protect circuitry hence everything should really be protect and not fried. If for some reason you have had a short then have a look at the below:

Are you sure the eeprom hasn't been toasted aswell. I'm an I.T fella who knows a little big about computers so I'm really porting that knowledge across to the volvo system. I don' t fully understand the volvo sytem but the principles are the same

How it stands. the ECU/ECM must be some sort of processor (CPU Chip).
You have had this replaced so it can't be at fault. Next it would be worth finding out whether power is getting to the ECU. Multimeter could confirm this.

Second part it that CPU needs to load a program from some sort of memory chip. This chips AKA, Flash memory/ EEPROM/BIOS and various other names contain the program. IF this chip has got damaged the ECM doesn't have anything to load and work with. So you may need to buy a new EEPROM/Flash and have the old one remove and new one soldered on if it fried. Then you need a flashing kit to put the new program on the EEPROM/Flash. Volvo will have files to go onto the EEPROM or you could try some chip tuning company that have slightly modified files (may have the original too).

As far as I understand it. This isn't a mechanic jobby but a computer geek job.

First check the basic electrics which and electrician could do. 9/10 it might not be as bad as you think

Let me know how you get on

[spokoluzik]

is your specialist using vida to program it???