Hi all,

This is my first time here, but I love this place allready. I love my Volvo, (It's me first) but both myself and my mechanic are mystified by this problem and I thought someone here might be able to help.

This has happened purely randomly over the two years I've owned this car.

It's a 1989 740gl wagon with 181,000 miles on it. Every now and then (and more lately) I'll be driving along and the car will stall. This happens seemingly at all speeds and circumstances, rainy weather, hot, dry weather, going uphill, downhill etc. The car will then not start for anywhere from 2 minutes to 2 hours, and then start and run fine for a week, a day, a month...until it happens again. The last time this happened, I finally got it started, but it idled badly for 5 minutes or so and when the bad idling stopped, I was able to put it in gear and drive home with a little more sputtering etc. It's been running fine ever since.

Up to now, my mechanic has changed the airflow meter 4 times, put another fuel pump in, changed some power thing located next to the windshield fluid reservoir and has achieved nothing more than confusing the hell out of me and himself.

One thing the car has done consistently is to stall completely whenever I wash it in a car wash or a do-it-yerself carwash. It sputters and dies for 20 minutes or so, goes nowhere and then finally starts and runs fine.
If anyone has any ideas, I'd appreciate being able to go to my mechanic with some suggestions.

THANKS for your time!

David