Hi

My 88 760 GLE (non-turbo) runs fine in cold weather.

On hot days it is hard to start, hotter the day the more blue smoke that pours from flooded cylinders. Short trips cause the car to flood when attempts are made to re-start. Shorter the trip (5-10 min) the more blue smoke pouring from the flooded engine. Once warmed up vehicle runs great and I dont regret swapping my TR6 with my father for this car. Haynes manual points at several really expensive parts I should buy. Starter injectors, relays, air mass sensors, etc. Any help with this problem would be appreciated.

V/R Jim Aaron

Your problem sounds pretty tough to diagnose to me. I'll tell you one thing which you may know already, blue smoke indicates a good amount of burned oil. I'm also fairly certain that a volvo of your vintage wouldn't be possible to "flood", and if it did, the smoke would be black instead of blue. The only reason I could give you for a car being harder to start after shorter trips compared to longer ones would be that the spark plugs aren't able to reach their optimal self cleaning temperature during shorter trips and may be more prone to oil or other types of fouling. I'd pull your plugs and check for oil on them, especially if the car also smokes while its driving. If they are becoming oil fouled, I'd go for something like motor honey (basically just thicker motor oil) to try to slow the oil burning problem. I'd also buy a good quality fuel injector cleaner and run it through the tank just to eliminate the possible variable of clogged injectors. Hope this helps.