Alrighty folks, it’s time for an update to the Volvo high performance blog. Its been a while since I have written. Don’t worry, I haven’t been sneaking around making undocumented modifications to the race wagon. The problem is that I have been busy and poor. That’s a bad combination for a hobbyist hot rod builder.
I’m sorry to say I didn’t reach my goal of running an 11 second pass in 2009. With only a couple days left it isn’t looking good for making that happen either. So I guess I’ll be pushing the schedule and now the 2010 goal will now be to run an 11. I think I can increase the pressure a bit and shoot for an 11.50 or better. That is a good number to shoot for because it’s the cutoff where alot of extra safety gear is needed on the car. In particular, a roll bar will be required. Lets hope that I’ll be installing a roll cage later in the year.
One of the big changes for 2010 will be in the driveline of the Volvo Turbo wagon. I’m swapping the Getrag 5 speed with an automatic transmission from a 1991 Chevy Corvette. This transmission is named the Turbo Hydramatic 700r4 and its quite a stout part from the factory. Though it never had to deal with more than 300-350 hp in any factory installation. With the turbo wagon now making 500hp it will need some help to deal with the abuse that the little 4 cylinder turbo will be dishing out.
With future performance increasese in mind I am starting a rebuild and enhancement project on the 700R4 I have had in my garage for the last month. And a little later I’ll be working on some adapter parts to make the Chevy transmission work behind a Volvo engine. This should really improve the 1/4 mile performance of the car dramatically.
Automatic transmissions are really uncharted territory for me. I have worked on most every part on a car over the last 20 years. Engines, suspension, and manual transmissions are all things I have done. I have even dabbled in fabrication and paint work. But automatics have always been a little bit scary and unknown. Its definitely one of those projects that not many home mechanics undertake. And just to confirm how complicated these devices can be the box of rebuild parts arrived on my front porch to give me a preview of what I was about to get into. I was blown away with the assortment of parts. There must be 100 seals and gaskets, a half dozen press fit bushings and another 100 hard parts that include clutches, steels, bearings, valves etc. This thing is a really advanced jigsaw puzzle. It should be fun to see how it all works.
I picked up a very nice manual written by ATSG on rebuilding the 700R4 and studied for a few days before cracking the gearbox open. The internet also provided lots of nice color pictures and descriptions. After filling my head with abstract diagrams and pictures, I decided it was time to remove the pan, and pull the oil pump to see what lives inside. Over the last couple nights I have been slowly disassembling the transmission and taking pictures not only so I can brag about this on my blog, but so I can remember where the hell all these loose parts go. One of the scariest parts is when you unbolt something and a couple of random balls, washers, or metallic parts go bouncing across the floor. I have a handfull of parts that I have scratched my head about, wondering where they came from. Hopefully the diagrams are good and will help me reassemble the puzzle.
The insides of an automatic are really amazing. Planetary gear sets remind me of playing with a spirograph when I was a kid. Its really neat stuff.
It has been a while since I have made an entry in the old Denverspeed story book here. Since last time I posted, there have been some changes to the volvo. I finished up some modifications on an intake manifold to improve the high rpm breathing. I also installed a new wastegate to better control boost with the monster turbo I installed in the spring.
The intake manifold came out pretty good. I added some extra volume to the plenum area. Turbo engines like to have a nice big reservoir to hold pressurized air near the runner inlets. I also shortened the length of the runners and ported them. After porting and cleaning the inside, I welded it all back together again. Its installed back on the car now and working like a charm.
The new wastegate is a chinese copy of the venerable HKS 60mm wastegate. This sucker is HUGE! I had to do some tricky work on the header to make it fit. and there wasn’t much room under the hood to fit such a behemoth object. Here is how the header looks now with the new wastegate installed:
I am going to hold back info for now about how all this stuff is working on the car. I do have some prelimary results, but I want to wait to report them. I will say that nothing is broken, and the car seems fast. More to come later.
I have beem working on a little project to improve the airflow into my Volvo’s 16v engine. I could have built a complete intake from scratch, but this is alot easier. And the factory volvo parts will still bolt to the intake, things like the throttle body, throttle cable, cruise control, fuel injectors, and vaccuum ports are all still able to bolt on in their factory designed location. I hope this mod will extend the rpm range of my engine upward by several hundred rpm. Some flow testing by a friend showed that the stock intake runners flow 190cfm each. To put this into perspective, the stock unported head can flow 230 cfm at 10mm lift on an intake port. My head with some port work flows more like 260cfm. So you can see the bottleneck is quickly becoming the intake manifold. I have suspected this for a long time because my torque curve falls so quickly after 5000 rpm. This engine shouldn’t be losing torque so quickly. Something is choking the flow at higher rpms.
The plan is to cut open the stock manifold, port the runners as much as possible, and then weld the parts back together more or less. The runner length will also be shortened for better flow and a higher rpm tuned length.
Intake saw work
The intake was cut apart using a small table saw with a carbide tipped blade. Its just your normal high quality woodworking blade. It goes through Aluminum quite easily and the fence allows for a nice straight cut. There are no pictures of the ported insides, but roughly 1mm in all directions was gained. The parts were then welded back together. Notice that I added 1″ aluminum bar to the plenum area to increase plenum volume. This should help improve flow balance between the intake runners, and give a nice reservoir of high pressure air from the turbocharger.
Welding the intake back together again.
Everything was carefully TIG welded back together, using 4043 filler rod. The cast aluminum welds relatively easy despite living a life in an oily engine. There is a little black residue around some of the welds, but mostly it welded cleanly. The parts were sandblasted clean during the prep. Clean parts always weld better.
I hope to have some results soon, the drag strip is open for business this week. I have a couple things to do before im ready, but I’m working hard to make it out to a Wednesday test night soon.
I took Irene to the dyno shop today to do some tuning and see what this new turbo was going to give me for my money. The classic 4 cylinder Volvo engine didn’t let me down, and Irene laid down some pretty solid numbers. After 8 runs and alot of fine tuning of the fuel and spark maps, the results were in. The best run peaked at 519 horsepower, and 525 ft-lbs of torque.
Strapping my car to a dyno always makes me nervous. There is something strange about standing next to an engine running wide open, but not moving anywhwere. The engine seems so much louder in a closed garage than when you are running down the road. I’m always convinced something is going to blow and parts are going to fly. I sat in the passenger seat during the tuning this time, and one of my paranoia’s is that the clutch or transmission is going to fly apart. So I sit with my feet under me and out of the path of the spinning engine and clutch parts. I don’t know why, I always have my feet on the floor on the street. Its basically the same thing as racing down the road, but like I said, its paranoia, not reality.
Its rare that I can put the engine under the same kind of stress on the street. And this is even more true now that the car is so ridiculously fast. To tune the engine properly, I have to datalog with my laptop, and run the engine all the way up to redline. But I really can’t open the throttle on the street anymore without the tires spinning in the lower gears. I have to use a higher gear, 3rd or 4th, and this means that I am possibly running double the speed limit in a hurry. So I rarely tune on the street anymore. The dyno is a much better place to do this kind of work.
Irene started the day off with a bang, and put down about 480 horsepower on the first run. That was enough to get the attention of the guys running the shop, and A few people came out from behind the scenes to see what was making all the noise. These guys primarily work on Mitsubishi Evo’s, and were used to seeing 500+ horsepower cars on the dyno. But they were really shocked to see a Volvo laying down this level of power. Over the next hour I tuned and tweaked the AF ratios and ignition advance. And the last run I squeezed 519hp out of the little 4 cylinder motor.
Here are some thumbnails of the dyno charts. Click them for larger views.
Its winter in Colorado now. All the racetracks are closed, and driving a 400 hp volvo on snowy, icy roads isn’t all that fun. And when it is dry, the snow tires are almost as lame for traction. So I put the dragon wagon to sleep for a couple weeks to do a little bit of work.
I removed the loaner turbo I had been running for the last couple months and sent it back to the most generous number one Volvo nut in the country. He goes by linumxman51 on Turbobricks. He is a cool dude, and thanks to his mighty loaner Garrett turbo I made was able to drive back to Colorado after breaking down in Alabama. I also proceeded to make a 12 second pass and almost 500hp. I also rebuilt and sold my old ball bearing Garrett turbo after deciding that it was a touch on the small side. So I have some cash in my pocket now. That was a great way to finish up 2008.
To get the project back on track again, I went shopping for a new turbo. I dind’t want to buy another ball bearing turbo this time. I decided that they are just too fragile, and way too expensive to repair. The expense just wasn’t worth the small gain in response you get from them. I also wanted something with a much bigger exhaust wheel. The turbo swap experiment showed me that my engine really liked to have a free flowing exhaust. It responded with huge top end power when I had Kenny’s turbo with the stage 5 exhaust wheel. After searching around a bit, I settled on a new turbo made by Precision Turbochargers. It is model SC6265. There are couple cars in the country making 750-800 hp on this turbo. It has a t4 hot side with a monster size P trim wheel. This should really lower my exhaust backpressure and allow the motor to really become efficient in the higher rpms.
Here is the new turbo next to my old GT30R Garrett. You can see how much larger the hot side is on the new turbo.
I can’t wait to get the car on the road and see what kind of horsepower this new turbo frees up.
My first drag strip pass of the year was way back in April. I was testing a new turbo, and a few new goodies at the time. The car ran a solid mid 13 second pass. The fastest the wagon had run to date. But I could tell that a 12 second run would be very possible. The car was really showing potential. So I set a goal to run in 12s before the end of the season.
I made 5 trips to the drag strip this summer. The car always impressed spectators, but I could never make that elusive 12 second pass. Traction was always an issue. I really need to buy some drag slicks in the future. I also had some issues with clutches. I burned through a couple of them, each progressively more “sticky” and agressive than the last. I finally have a clutch that seems to hold with the boost turned up to 20psi. I also had some fuelin limitations, I installed a bigger pump, and bigger fuel injectors. And there was lots of fine tuning on the dyno, and tinkering with the laptop trying to optimize the power.
Tracey and I made a trip down to Pueblo for the last drag day of the year to try and sneak in a couple passes before winter comes. It was super crowded down there. Pueblo is a town of traditional hot rods. There were endless rows of Camaros, Novas, Chevelles etc etc etc . . . I do believe I had the only european car there. And one of 2 import cars. So after waiting in line for about 2+ hours, I finally got my chance. It was looking like I might only get 1 run. I didn’t want to blow it and smoke the tires on the line. So, I played it safe and launched the car pretty easy. The engine bogged a bit, and made a little boost in first gear. But it was mostly a wasted gear. Once I got the car in second gear the turbo had some time to build boost and the power boosters kicked in! Holy chrikeys, the wagon was pulling like a jet fighter. It felt great all the way down the track. BUT, as I have learned it was going to take a perfect pass to get my 12. Sadly the timeslip read 13.1. I pulled back around to pick up Tracey and head home, but it looked like there might be a lull in the action. So I ran back around to the front of the line as fast as I could. It was a bit like cheating, as I cut in line. But I didn’t have another 2 hours to wait.
The next pass I launched the car a little bit harder. The tires gripped tightly to the ground in first gear. Surprisingly they didn’t spin like they usually do. The track was very sticky. The engine bogged again, but I managed to get through the rest of the gears pretty smoothly after that. I went around to the timing house to pick up my 12 second time slip from a smiling little kid with braces. He habds me the timeslip and says awesome run man! I love your car!
It didn’t come easy, but I finally can tell people that I have a 12 second Volvo station wagon.
The drag season is over here in Colorado. I now have some time to plan some winter improvements. I don’t have much in mind right now. Though I would really like to get a 12 second timeslip next season. I believe it should be possible with the right combination of boost, e85, and just clean driving. Im not ready to try nitrous or any drastic right now. But some winter dyno tuning might get me where I want to go.
I am packed and ready to hit the road first thing in the morning.
The crew for this mission is Ken the senior as co-pilot, myself (Ken the younger) and my nephew and chief navigator CJ. We plan to get on the way first thing in the morning after CJ checks in with his teachers and tells them sayanora for a 5 days.
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The wagon is packed with 10 gallons of spare E85 to make those long hauls across Kansas where E85 stations are sparse, lots of spare parts and tools, Drag racing tires, and a little bit of food, drink, music, etc. And if you can’t read the caption on the window in the other picture it says “Flying Brick!! - SE 7.0″
Our destination is the southeast Turbobricks get together in Montgomery Alabama. ie SE 7.0. For those of you who are not sofware saavy, that is a pun indicating that this is the senventh release of this get together. I can’t beleive this is my first one. It is far away, but it should be worth it. Many of the long time Volvo enthusiasts from the Turbobricks web forum will be attending. Im anxious to meet some of them in person.
The weekend has lots of fun events scheduled. There is a trip to the local Montgomery drag strip on Friday night; A dyno day on Saturday. And a big party at one of the members houses on Saturday night. And I’m sure there will be lots of tire kicking and car talk in between.
There are guys from the UK, some from Canada, California, me from Colorado. This is becoming a pilgrimage for modified older Volvos.
I need some sleep before driving all day tomorrow. I’ll try to post from the road when Ken Sr. is driving.
I have a thread going over on Turbobricks to track my progress. I’ll be posting here and there during the trip. Here is the link.
I welded up an oil separator for the the project station wagon today. It took me about 2 hours from beginning to end. I really like the way aluminum goes together. It just cuts and shapes so easily, and the welding isn’t easy, but the finished product is always rewarding.
An oil separator is placed in line between the crankcase vent on an engine and the intake manifold or tube where it would normally be plumbed. The compression blow by that comes out of the crankcase vent always has a mist of oil suspended in it. The separators job is to keep the engine from sucking this oil into the intake stream. Oil in the intake stream coats the turbo inlet, the intercooler, the intake manifold, and even makes it into the combustion chambers where it can leave carbon deposits and enable detonation. So its a good idea to keep it out of the intake.
I designed this container in 2 halves. I’ll use a 3″ silicone coupler and hose clamps to hold them together. This will let me open the container periodically for cleaning and packing steel wool inside to help condense the oil vapor.
This text is lifted from the my old web page about my 1988 Volvo station wagon. I made some updates and completed the text so it now has pretty complete information needed to assemble a similar shortblock. I’m re-posting it here for so people can find it easier and search for it on google or turbobricks.com website.
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Shortblock details
This is how you build a strong long stroke Volvo Red Motor
Block
I started with a 1984 B23 block. At the time of assembly, this was considered the strongest foundation to start with. The block is a little heavier than the late blocks due to more iron in some spots, and it also has a forged steel crankshaft that doesn’t come in the later motors. Since then people have proven that the later blocks and cranks are strong enough for just about anything you can throw at them. But I started with the best at the time:
Block Specs:
1984 Volvo B23FT
Bore: 3.800″ (.030″ over)
Deck Height from crank center to top: 9.125″
Crankshaft
The backbone of a strong motor is the crankshaft. I started with a B23 forged crank. My machine shop did an offset grind on the rod journals to use Mitsubishi 4G63 connecting rods. The rod journals now hold the mitsu rods with about .010″ side clearance. Much nicer than the Volvo setup which guides the rods from the piston. The crank was heat treated after grinding. In metric measures, I started with an 80mm stroke Volvo crankshaft and ended up with 88.8mm stroke
Stroke: 3.496″
Rod Journal dia: 1.771″
Rod Journal width: 1.130″
Pistons
The pistons are custom from Diamond Racing. I specified the dish shape to match the combustion chamber of the 16 valve head. And they fit the Mitsubishi 4G63 rods I am using. The piston to head clearance should be about .040″, just about right for good squish. This was a priority for me, since I’ll be trying to maximize power with this turbo motor running on pump gas. Tight squish motors help keep detonation away. As a curious observation, there are 3.800″ bore pistons for small block Chevy motors with very close compression height. It could be worth looking into if you are trying this type of build on a tight budget.
The engine uses a set of Scat H-beam connecting rods for a Mitsubishi 6-bolt 4g63. These rods are nice and strong with an ARP 3/8″ cap screw holding the caps on. They also have a small hole drilled in the big end that sprays oil on the pistons. A nice little bonus feature.
The rod dimensions are: Scat Rods for 4G63 Mitsubishi Length: 5.906
B.E. dia: 1.890
pin bore dia: .827
Big end width: 1.117
Small end width: 1.010 Some pictures of the assembly coming together. The final displacement is roughly 2.65 liters. Enough for some extra low end grunt.
