Volvo T5 engine tuning

So, does anyone know much about volvo T5 engines, looking for close experience not what people have heard. In my quest for a new car I'm considering more and more not getting a new or newish car. Instead I'm thinking of a sub $10k Miata or Boxster then keeping the C30 as my daily but putting some $'s into it. I've bought Konig FSD struts to go on and do the want room k hard low suspension for a DD so I'm toying with the idea of:
A tune, would like to get close to 300 for both power and torque. For that I assume a downpipe would be needed as well.
Possibly and lsd, if so do the clutch and possibly a light flywheel at the same time.
Larger rear sway bar.
New wheels instead of $700 to refinish the stock onew.
Maybe Focus ST Recaro front seats.

Volvo forums make my head hurt. Who are a reputable reliable one stop place for Volvo tuning? Driveability and longevity win out over the last ounce of performance. Is one noticeably better or worse than another shop?

Nothing is set in stone, just considering my options.

Lucky comes highly recommended. If I remember right he worked for IPD before starting ARD. http://www.ardideas.com/

In reply to Adrian_Thompson:

http://hiltontuning.com/

I have had Speedtuning and IPD 17 psi tunes on a 1995 850 HPT. The IPD tune was much better product as the Speed tuning was way too rich. I eventually went back to the OEM ECU with a manual boost controller set at 14 PSI (which is where the OEM map stops) and it was better than both.

Times change and Hilton has emerged as the favorite of people who mess with their Volvo's on the Sweedespeed and Vovlospeed boards (which are not very good boards) on the later P2 cars. I like that you send him files and he adjusts the tune to the particular car. I believe your car has the hot-side of the turbo cast with the exhaust manifold so bumping a size on the turbo is not as stupid easy as the earlier cars. I believe 300 fltlbs at the crank is bolt on land. 300 HP might need more turbo.

Back in the day (2002-2003) I had an Upsolute tune, 550ccs and Bosch 044 and a 20G making over that on an auto.

I'd check whatever IPD and Heico are up to these days and I'd be a little more specific with your setup. T5 850? V70? Some differences there.

Edit: C30 I suppose.

So I do not want to change the turbo unless it goes bad. I would settle for 300lb/ft and a bit less on power for the stock unit. I have bought lots of Maintenance partd from ipd but that Softloader information seems very old.

I do like what I'm seeing on the Hilton site.

Adrian_Thompson wrote: So I do not want to change the turbo unless it goes bad. I would settle for 300lb/ft and a bit less on power for the stock unit. I have bought lots of Maintenance partd from ipd but that Softloader information seems very old. I do like what I'm seeing on the Hilton site.

The softloader stuff is strange on their site. My recommendation was thinking you had a 850 or V70 T5. Their ECU reflashes that you mail in are pretty good for those generations.

Do you have a GIAC dealer near you? Maybe they have a C30 tune.

Evolve Tuning seems to have a solid reputation among C30 enthusiasts (C30Crew is where I'm getting my info from). I know they have a tuning solution, sway bar, downpipe, etc. I'm looking into a C30 as a DD myself and would do a similar set of modifications on my own.

This thread has me looking at P1s again. There's a 6sp AWD model not too far from here for Knurled money.

Dangit.

Is anyone going to come in here to point out that the 5 cylinder blocks split the sleeves at ~60hp/cylinder the way the four cylinder blocks do?

"Is anyone going to come in here to point out that the 5 cylinder blocks split the sleeves at ~60hp/cylinder the way the four cylinder blocks do?"

Not the 2.3 blocks or (pretty much) the 2.4l blocks. From what I have seen in my 10 years of T5 high pressure turbo ownership and embarrassing amounts of board reading the cracked sleeves are an issue on the 2.5l turbo blocks even with stock everything although I always suspect overheating or some maintenance issue or another as the culprit on the 2.5l OEM engines that fail. To a lesser extent the 2.4l blocks will crack sleeves as well. The people who crack the 2.3l and really any 5 banger Volvo sleeves generally are really really trying (20+ lbs of boost) and know they are taking chances. As the P1 cars have dropped in price and since there are lots of them more people that are fine with FWD and that are interested in dyno numbers and 1/4 mile times have been putting big 'snails' on them and go for big numbers and blown them up in a variety of ways with too much boost too soon yielding bent rods as the favorite. Sensible shoes performance increases on well maintained cars run reliably for a long time. I have 100k at 17psi and then 20k at 14psi on a 220k T5 and it needs valve stem seals. Wore out the 15G and everything outside the long block a couple times. Other than that it sounds and runs like it did when I bought it at 95k. I do not think the later cars will be any different as it is the same architecture. Like any OEM Volvo has been lowering the internal friction and addressing emissions constraints so piston skirts are smaller ring lands are closer to the CC bearings have shrunk yada yada yada. So I have lowered my expectations on tweak ability accordingly. The 2.3s are very tough if one is reasonable.

You're not helping me avoid a having a P1 in my future.

Although I did suspect that the problem was mainly with the 83mm bore blocks.

Well this is a 2.5L 5 cyl. I want and would expect 100K mile reliability. I've got 105k on the clock and don't plan on going inside for at least that much more.

Vivaperformance has some slick parts, surprisingly enough, flying lizard offers excellent tuning for them, as does atspeed.

Knurled wrote: Is anyone going to come in here to point out that the 5 cylinder blocks split the sleeves at ~60hp/cylinder the way the four cylinder blocks do?

I never had that issue. On my 93 850, 2.4 NA-T I ran a Holset making big power for quite awhile through the automatic. Very stout motors.

My 2001 V70 T5's automatic transmission didnt like partial throttle shifting very much but under full boost with a 20G it still did great.

Outside of bolt ons, on a manual transmission 5 cyl turbo platform, especially the C30, I'd focus more on the suspension personally.

This dude, ben kaplhenke has been making some cool volvo stuff for a while, was mainly redblock stuff but hes got lots of whiteblock stuff as well. Hes come out with this block guard for the 2.5 like you would commonly see for hondas. http://www.kaplhenke.com/collections/c30-s40-v50/products/2-5l-max-cool-block-reinforcement

In reply to chiodos:

Not. Helping.

In reply to chiodos:

He's a good dude and local to the mid Atlantic crowd, he's been out to some local drift and rallyx stuff the past 2 years. Great suspension bits

In reply to captdownshift:

Yeah i dont know him personally but i know him from the turbobricks forum, one of they few genuinely good guys on there.

If I do this I'm absolutely not looking for the last ounce of performance or hp. This would be to bring my 227hp/236lb/ft daily driver up to more modern, fun daily performance. Zero track time, 100% street, daily driver cut and thrust rush hour in and out of traffic.

Good discussion. I am in a similar quest for my 850 Turbo. 300hp is the goal. It seems doable. I am going to upgrade to a 16T and a Japan Manifold once I get the car back to good stock-condition. I have installed an aftermarket boost gauge, because I thought the factory gauge was off. Looks like I have a lot of boost leaking. I am only boosting to 6psi., so I am missing about 3 to 4 psi. I have found at least 3 leaks that I need to fix now.

How do I plan to get to 300hp:

1. Bigger turbo
2. Better manifold (with porting)
3. Big injectors
4. Manual boost controller
5. Rising rate regulator
6. 3" downpipes and exhaust

In reply to vazbmw:

But how different is the 850 power train? It's still a T5, but it's a regular bolt on turbo not built into the exhaust manifold. It's completely different engine control. If I do this I'll drop my expectations before I start swapping turbo's, injectors etc. MBC's and rising rate regulators don't work on modern engine management.

Adrian_Thompson wrote: In reply to vazbmw: But how different is the 850 power train? It's still a T5, but it's a regular bolt on turbo not built into the exhaust manifold..."

Powertrain should be the same...except 850 has a smaller turbo. and different ECU.

So you are saying on your T5, the turbo is built into the exhaust manifold? Was not aware of a T5 with the turbo built into the exhaust manifold. What year is this?

Why would modern engine management not like MBC and Rate Regulators? In essence what you are doing is letting the ECU run as normal and using the regulator to richen the mixture. You would need a wideband O2 sensor to know how to adjust richness, but the ECU would not know there is any difference.

Thoughts?

Last point first: You don't ever want to use a rising rate fuel pressure regulator on a MAF car. 99% of the time, they work by measuring airflow directly, the computer knows how many grams of air are going in, so it automatically gives the correct grams of fuel. The isn't any going "off the map" like you can with a speed density system where you run past what the MAP sensor can read. The only variable is a lambda map, which tends to be rather rich anyway. So running a rising rate regulator will simply make the car run extremely rich at higher boost levels.

Regarding MBCs, Volvos seem to be MBC tolerant. They don't set overboost failures until you run them past the range of the MAP sensor. Although, the boost control strategy does seem to favor electronic control rather than wastegate control, so the best way to do it would seem to be to run the MBC in conjunction with, not instead of, the electronic controls.

In reply to vazbmw:

Not sure what year your 850 is, but according to with Wiki-of-the-Pedia your car is:
B5254S is a 2.4 L (2,435 cc) straight-five. It was equipped with Bosch LH 3.2 Jetronic engine management. Output is 168 hp (125 kW; 170 PS) at 6100 rpm with 162 lb·ft (220 N·m) of torque at 4700 rpm. as fitted to 96-97 850's.
Mine is: The B5254T3 is a 2.5 L (2,522 cc) straight-five. It has VVT, is turbocharged and intercooled. Unlike previous designs, the turbocharger is integral with the exhaust manifold. It uses the Bosch ME 9.0 engine management system. Using the M66W (FWD) or M66C (AWD) manual transmission output is 217 hp (162 kW; 220 PS) at 5000 rpm with 236 lb·ft (320 N·m) of torque at 1500–4800 rpm. With the AW55-51 automatic transmission, torque is limited in first and second gear. Adaptations of this engine were used by Ford, with power levels ranging from 217bhp[116] to 345bhp. At Ford the engine was called Duratec-ST; Duratec ST; Duratec RS

Example of the turbo. See the turbine is integral

In reply to Knurled:

It will only make it rich at high boost levels, yes. That is what is desired. You would adjust the pressure to that it not be over-rich, right? I ran a similar setup on an old school Toyota, and ran pretty well.

In reply to Adrian_Thompson:

Interesting on the turbo setup. Thanks for the education on that. What year is this?

Nope...this my car. 1994 850 Turbo (5234T) Wikipedia: 1994[edit] 850 Turbo: 2.3 L I5, 222 hp (166 kW) @ 5200 rpm and 221 lb·ft (300 N·m) @ 2100 rpm

But I do have the B5254 in my S70