windows, gauges, airbag

[Rads42]

Help! need some direction here. A couple weeks ago the drivers power window switch bank on my wife's '02 XC started failing intermittently. It seemed to work ok when the car was warm but not cold. So before I could investigate that, two days ago all of the gauges stopped working; speedo, tach, gas, everything. Now today the SRS airbag warning came on, the gauges however are working again so that problem appears to be intermittent too however temperature doesn't seem to matter. I'm pretty handy both mechanically and electrically and I will dig in to this if I can but I'd like to have some idea of where to start. Anyone have any suggestions? They'd be much appreciated. This doesn't seem like one that can wait.

Thanks!
Eric

[Rads42]

Nothing??? 72 people have looked at this and no one even has a guess! C'mon there is way too much knowledge on this site for this to go un-replied. Please help

[Astro14]

I have lots of guesses...not to be confused with actual answers...

Here's one: your battery is dying, leaving insufficient voltage for things to operate...even though the alternator might be putting out the right Volts...an old battery can cause really weird stuff to happen...

In the "not guessing" category: correlation is not always causality. Just because things happen in sequence or at the same time, it does not follow that one caused the other, or that they have the same cause. You may have a bad window switch...and a bad ground to the DIM...

[Rads42]

Thanks for the reply, the battery is fairly new but your second point is a good one, I had been assuming they were all related but I don't know that for sure and they didn't all happen at once. Maybe I'll start with the door panel this weekend and see what I see. Thanks again for replying!

Eric

[howardc64]

Best to hook it up to VIDA/DICE diagnostic tool. Read the codes and have and experienced tech make an educated guess. Electronics subsystems and connection busses are complex on this car and probably all new cars.

On dash electronic gremlins on this car, tech often points at a failed DIM which is over $1000. Following links came up with google "Volvo DIM failure" and "volvo DDM failure". The second one sounds a lot like your car.

http://www.justanswer.com/volvo/1otno-volvo-dealer-says-need-new-dim-module-cost.html
http://www.justanswer.com/volvo/1dym2-2001-volvo-s60-yesterday-driving-dashboard.html
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100420124543AAmOBm6

[Rads42]

So I took the door panel off and tested the wiring coming in to the switch and there was 12 volts there. Used switch on ebay and I was back in action. On to the gauges...after a bunch of research I determined that the DIM had failed. I removed the instrument cluster and sent it to XemodeX in Canada, they worked their magic on it , returned it and it is working great. I did have an airbag warning light on when it came back but they had warned me up front that sometimes that cannot be cleared. So I had to take that to a mechanic who cleared it for $90. All in all much better than the estimated $1500 that I was reading about to have the stealer take care of this for me. I should also mention that Xemodex had instructions on their site to remove the instrument cluster which were dead on, it literally took 5 minutes to remove it. So it appears my three issues were not related as I first thought. All that's left now is the blower motor and a timing belt which I'll do within the next couple of weeks. Thanks to those that replied, it was helpful.