Brrr...

The last couple mornings of single digit overnight lows have presented some prob lems for me.

The first morning the Volvo started ran for about 5 seconds then died. Refusing to refire. It did crank and did seem to have ignition, but it almost appeared that there was a misfire or non-sequential firing order under the hood. I put it in the garage warmed it up and gradually it came closer and closer to firing. It did eventually fire just fine, which made me think something was froze up. I checked a plug after a unsuccessful fire and noticed that I did have fuel deliver to cylinder number 1. It appears that something was frozen. Is it possible to freeze an individual injector? This is about the only thing that seems logical. I have put in fuel line anti-freeze and it has started fine ever since.

This morning, the problems grew. Partially Old Man Winter's fault, partially mine. I went to switch the air selector switch from heat to combo heat and defrost. It didn't want to move in that direction. It did move to the left and reached the air conditioning selection. It then got stuck there and when I tried to "help" it back towards heat / defrost, the plastic slider knob came off in my hand and the metal slider in the unit appeared to have broken to one side. It will return to a straight toward the back pointing position and slide to the left, but if I try to slide it to the right it pivots off and points out the passenger window to the point of falling back into the dash. Is this completely broken, or is there something that can be done? Is this a task to be handled by myself, or should this repair be handled by the pros?

To make matters worse, when I turned on the fan it started to spin then simply died. It has not returned to life. Is there a breaker or relay for the blower motor or has it finally just given up the ghost. With 145,000 miles, I would probably be willing to give up as well.

Any help here would be greatly appreciated, for I am freezing to death and wearing my arm out scraping the inside of the front window while I drive.

Thanks...Shawn