How important is the aluminum tube that runs from the air cleaner area to the exhaust manifold? The one that is on my Volvo was in 2 pieces right at a bracket that held it in place. Is it possible that this could be the culprit that is causing my Volvo to die on the road? I did buy some throttle cleaner to clean the throttle area but noticed that the pre-heat (I assume that it is called that) pipe was broken. Any help would be very grateful. Thanks, Paul

The broken tube will not affect performance in any way, it's purpose is to feed air warmed by the exhaust manifold to the throttle body to reduce emissions only during the later stages of warm up. It may cause the inspection guys to turn you away with a fail though.

What are the symptoms of "dying on the road". Complete shutdown? will it restart? Loss of power? Is there a fault code?
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David Hunter

Thanks for the info on that aluminum tube: the car will die on the road but will start after I let it set for about 5 min. Someone informed me that I should check the battery ground to the engine then clean the throttle, so I bought some cleaner for it & haven't had the time to do that; I'll check the battery cable too. Thank you for your help. Paul

Throttle body will cause idle problems but an accumulation of crud in there will not cause the car to die while running at speed nor will it cause a no start or no restart. Battery cables could cause that problem but not likely as you would most likely have problems cranking the engine when starting.

There are a few possible causes. It is always best to diagnose rather than just guess at the cause. The first step is to determine if you have spark at the plugs during the no start condition, this will narrow it down between the fuel or ignition sytems. Some would say go ahead and replace certain items that frequently fail and are cheap and easy to do such as fuel pump relay, radio supression relay (if you have one, not sure).


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David Hunter