Today I talked to my friend who I sold my former 89 745 to, a few years ago. Hadn't seen him in a while. I was surprised when he told me the car had caught fire, especially as it was sitting in the driveway, looking about like it always has. He said that one day, he went to start it, and it wouldn't start, and a big cloud of white smoke came out from under the hood. It is not completely clear to me what happened next, whether it went out by itself or had to be extinguished. He had it towed to his regular indy shop (not Volvo specialists, but competent and reasonably honest) and $500 later, was back on the road. From what I could tell, by all the new parts under the hood, was that the positive battery cable had chafed through and shorted to ground, somewhere near the front of the engine. The battery discharged itself rapidly and was ruined, and the resulting heat melted a power steering hose. For whatever reason, the shop replaced both battery cables. I was surprised to see that the alternator was unaffected, and appears to still be the original one, at something over 360K miles. (though I did replace the brushes once, when I had the car) I told him he was lucky it didn't burn to the ground.

Something to keep in mind if you are working on anything in that area---might be a good idea to check the condition of those cables.......