Hi Jeff,

You might want to get a rotor button that goes under the distributor cap.

You should carry a spare one in the glove box or in your spare tire cover compartment.
I keep a spare taillight and headlight bulb in a small box in there too.

The rotor buttons go bad slowly IMO.

My failures start with an occasionally miss at idle that sometimes will report itself as an IAC blip of idle revs adjustment compensation.

Next thing is brief hard start like you are describing.

Later, without any set time limits, the car stays dead with another crank over session.
This has happened twice to me, once on my '86 wagon when it totally died.

Luckily I had only driven three blocks from my sister-laws house. I had shut the car off to wait for my wife's appointment time to arrive. I dropped her off and was going to do another stop and come back. That's when I got the no start.

I walked back to her house and stole a rotor button out of her '73 VW bugs distributor.
I had it running when she walked out! It was cool to tell her the story but then I heard a "What" about her car?" I played it out with a long subtle smile and shrugged shoulders!

My '84 does the missing IAC trick on my '84 with several years in between.

It might help if I would quit using buttons and caps I get from junkyards. Unfortunately there are no mileage readings stamped on them. (:-)

When the car dies, the center strip across the top will be cracked or it has blown a hole from inside out from the sealer around a resistor material on the inside.

Don't get me wrong, they are still a reliable component but even Bosch stuff wears out! I try not to buy other aftermarket brand rotor buttons. The conductor quality of the brass tips looks a lot worse on those! Besides the junkyard beats both prices.

It's strange that people will pay mechanics to fix a car and of course he is going to tune it up with parts! If it continues to have a problem, they stare at that last repair bill and sell it to a junkyard for cheap.

There are many other goodies left on the junkyard Volvo's. There can be radiators, belts and hoses, alternators and prizes like new fuel pumps or a fairly new A/C compressor!

Phil