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I am writing to inform everyone what the ultimate solution was to my problem with the fuel pump relay. Frankly, it is a bit imbarassing because the solution was so basic. I missed it for a number of reasons, but primarily because it presented itself as somewhat of an intermittant problem. That is, the fuel relay seemed like the only problem. Okay, so here it is.
The #4 ground wire from my battery to the engine block was actually completely severed. I believe it was still making some contact, but it was severed. Yes, the engine was grounded through the braided wires from the firewall to the top of the engine near the distributor. Regardless, it was obviously a terrible connection if there was one. I overlooked it as when I checked the resistance from my negative terminal to the engine block, the resistance was zero ohms.
For your sake, I will also mentioned that I was having a problem for over a year with the alternator output voltage. It was never more than 12.45 volts. No matter what the engine speed an no matter what the load.
While I had noted over time, that sometimes when I cranked the engine it cranked like a diesel engine in Alaska, this was easily corrected by turning the key off of start and then trying to crank it again. 99% of the time this cured the problem. I attributed it the problem to a bad solenoid which was not making a good contact every now and then.
I got put on the right track to my problem while working on the car at night. I had been playing with the thought of the engine voltage dropping sufficiently during cranking that it was affecting the fuel pump relay working. I felt this had something to do with the ECU and the proper grounding of the 86/2 pin on the relay. (I was still suspicious of the "black box.") Anyway I found that by using a jumper from another vehicle, my Volvo would start properly and once started would always continue to run. Since I could not carry the other car around with me, I kept playing around. I was jumping the engine block to the negative terminal with the engine running. When I connected the ground to the engine block I saw a spark. Well, dumb though I may be, I recognized a problem here.
Well, I waited until the next day when I had some light and managed to find where the wire connected to the engine block. Not a friendly location. Nonetheless, what I found was that the wire looked like it was still connected, but as I said it was completely severed. The last six inches of the wire was very rigid. I cut off the last eight inches of the ground wire, put on a new lug and reconnected it. The car now starts every time and the output voltage of the alternator is now 13.0 volts.
I want to sincerely thank you for replying to my post. I hope that my lesson learned is useful to you sometime. FYI I am posting this same message to everyone else who sent me a response.
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