I’ve been working on a big project for the Volvo this winter. The plan was to solve some of my drivetrain weaknesses by installing a stronger, faster shifting automatic.  As the power levels have gone up over the last couple years, I began having problems with clutches lasting. I always had to keep the boost at a level that would not cause the clutch to slip in the higher gears. The engine was always capable of more power than I was able to put down to the ground. In addition to the clutch problem, The BMW Getrag manual trans I was using was never a great shifting transmission. They are very strong, but not the most graceful shifting gearboxes. Since I have been more interested in drag racing over the last couple years and needed something stronger to boot, I decided to make an automatic GM transmission part of the drag/street package. This should be a good  modification for improving performance in the 1/4 mile and won’t affect the street driveability at all. This transmission has some nice fuel saving features like an overdrive 4th gear, and lockup torque converter. It will still be street driveable.

I had to source a couple key parts to make the Volvo 4 cylinder engine bolt to then GM automatic. First I would need an adapter plate that would bolt the block and transmission together. This plate is available from KL Racing in Sweden, though I had a custom made plate done in the US by a fellow Volvo club member. The bellhousing adapter is a piece of 5/16″ plate steel with bolt holes for the volvo block, and GM transmission. It also has guide pins and holes that align the parts together precisely. Here is a picture of the plate:

Having the engine bolted to the block is only half of the problem. The torque converter also needs to be bolted to the engine’s crankshaft to before the car will be going anywhere.  An adapter or a custom flywheel would have to be made to do this job. I wanted to use the Volvo flex plate if possible because it has the starter teeth on its perimeter and bolts to the crankshaft already. It would be nice if the enter package could be bolted together in anybody’s garage in the case that someone might want a copy of these parts that I was having made.  Another good reason for the Volvo flywheel is that it would let me use the Volvo starter in the stock location. Some important features of this part would have to be precise alignment of the torque converter and crankshaft center lines. It all has to be balanced. The centering snout of the converter would need a pocket to fit into. And the adapter plate would need a snout to align it to the crankshaft. Here is what I came up with:

Some CAD work to help visualize the part.

Solid Model of Rotating Adapter

After getting some good measurements and drafting the part, I had it machined by some great guys in Sweden who are sympathetic to the modified Volvo crowd. Its not easy getting hot rod Volvo parts. They chose some 6000 series aluminum for the plate, and helicoiled all the bolt holes. The plate came out great.

And here is how it looks with all the parts get bolted together.

Converter, adapter, and flywheel bolted together.

Once the trans and engine were bolted together I focused on fitting the package to the car. In the Volvo 740s, the stock transmission tunnel is is pretty narrow. Compared to my old 240 with a Chevy engine/trans swap, the fit in the trans tunnel was very tight in the 740. I had to do alot of hammering on the sheetmetal at the very front of the tunnel where it turns the corner to the firewall. Id say i moved the metal more than an inch in several places. I could have moved it more than I did for easier working and fit. But the metal is very very stiff here with all the contours, and I must couldn’t hammer it any farther.  I did manage to get it to fit eventually.

For the rear mount, I grafted a steel mounting pad onto a Volvo automatic trans crossmember. I used the GM rubber transmission mount to support the tail shaft of the trans. I checked the engine and trans angle carefully and made sure that the front driveshaft was in line with the trans center line.

Volvo rear crossmember adapted to 700R4 use.

The Volvo driveshaft would need some work to make it usable with the GM transmission. The local driveshaft shop removed the Volvo front u-joint coupling, and installed a GM u-joint and slip yoke onto the end of the factory tube and also removed about a foot of tubing from the original length. I kept the 2 piece design that the 740s come with originally. A one piece shaft doesn’t really fit into the 740 tunnel correctly. There are a couple of tight spots, and a cross bar that goes under the driveshaft that really make the 2 piece design a better fit in this car. I might re-think this if the car ever gets sliced up for a back half chassis installation. But for now it still has all the Volvo body and floor pans intact.

Custom driveshaft work.

I added a nice quality shifter to the project. Its a B&M Pro Ratchet, and its  the single most expensive part of the entire transmission swap.   It makes for very positive shifts without the fear of shifting 2 gears at once.  It uses a cable to actuate the trans shifter, so it can be mounted almost anywhere relative to the transmission. And it also satisfies some of the safety rules for automatics with a reverse lockout lever, and neutral safe start switches built in.

B&M race shifter to make sure I don't miss gears or worse.

The shifter took up alot of room between the seats. At first I removed the parking brake and thought I would just delete it. I have park in the transmission now. But then I thought some more and decided to shorten the brake lever and make it fit behind the shifter.

Shifter and parking brake relationship.

I put it all back together and this is how it looks now.

The shortened parking brake and shifter.

One of the last items to address was an oil cooler and lines. I ran a couple of  5/16″ steel tubes from the transmission to the front of radiator area. I mounted the transmission cooler just behind the front grill in a place that would get good airflow from under the front bumper spoiler. Its a medium sized cooler rated for towing, racing, or other heavy duty use..

Transmission Cooler

There is still a little more work to do before driving, but the transmission part is done now and ready to have some fun.

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.

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.

See you soon!

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.

Here is some evidence:

There is a neat website that collects car performance numbers submitted by car enthusiasts and their personal cars.

Take a look at the Volvo 740 page: My car is at the top this week!

http://www.dragtimes.com/Volvo–740-Drag-Racing.html

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.

* 30491|300 NOT FOUND * * 30516|300 NOT FOUND *

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.

http://forums.turbobricks.com/showthread.php?p=2037743

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.