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Ross9
Sunday 23rd November 2008, 01:00
Yep, thats right kids, 2002-2007, 5 whole years worth (ok it's a cpy of a year old write up but most hangs true and I'll tag a reply on for the 2008 update)

Jacq Doesn't like to say too much about the car in case it comes across as bragging, I have no such issues, so here we go.

And yes, this will be long, so get a cup of tea and settle down. To make you feel even more compelled to read it, I started typing this at 6:45pm, then 10 minutes ago drunkenly hit a wrong button and closed the window, it's now 20:55 and I am starting again......thankfully the alcohol is tobering my internal rage.

So, the typing and grammer might be poor due to inebriation, I'll fix it in the morning, you'll get the jist anyway.

Jacq got the car in 2002, I went with her to test drive it as a replacement for her V6 Vectra SRi, and off we went, flat out through the first speed camera on the A1, oops. Never heard anything so I guess the garage dingied it or it had no film, either way the car knew what to expect from its new owner.

First off she decided she loved the performance, but it didnt stand out like the Vectra had, it had an induction kit that made it sound like a V8 holden ( I imagine), so she decided on an atmopsheric DV being her first turbocharged car and contacted Don at Kalmar Union, you'll here more about him and his involvement in the car later.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v210/Ross9/KalmarUnionDVKit.jpg

Then she came to visit me and some mates at Crail one afternoon and we talked her into doing a few runs, being Jacqs first time the starts weren't the best and she managed 15.1 @ ??mph.

She returned to Crail a while later and managed a 14.7 @ 98mph with much better starts, and so her need for speed was born. She did consider a power increase and a remap to achieve this from reading the forum, we spoke to Don at Kalmar Union and also Volvo Tuning, due to where we were located and the low spec of the car a unichip was mentioned and we tried that, dastek UK is just up the road so off we went. They RR'd it before and it got 228 bhp and a peak torque of 261 lb.ft, though it dropped almost instantly and held more like 240 ( a tad higher than standard lol) so they put the unichip on and mapped it up, got 9bhp more, removed it all and phoned us, said they couldnt justify the cost for 9bhp, reckoned someone had fiddled with it already (more on this later) and gave us the RT plots and no charge for the days work, immense service.

So "standard" it made 228 bhp, 261 lb/ft and 14.7 @ 98mph

We then attended the Uxbridge Auto Show as part of the VOC stand with the car, for this she had a BSR OPti-Flow induction kit fitted and the engien bay detailed. I also found a copy of a spec sheet for the show while looking out old RR plots to verify the details in this post, it said "Future plans : Hybrid Turbo, Large downpipe and sports cat, 2.5" cat back exhaust, Remap for mods (remember this list for comparison to the spec at the end of the post)

So, more power it was, and we adopted the approach more favoured by myself, bought an MBC and whacked the boost up to see what happened, thanks to Dan F for the info at this stage, set it to 1.1 bar.

The results for this were 236bhp and 260 lb/ft (but held for longer) and a 1/4 mile of 14.4 @ 100mph.

At this point Jacq decided a proper remap was in order, and contacted Don again, as regards VT she felt they were more in tune with T5's than T4's and MTE were due in the country soon and so she booked a custom remap with them through Don and Kamlar Union. For this she had a custom exhaust made up from the turbo back, 3" pipes with 2.5" internal dia boxes ( or so was intended)

So off we went to London, MTE service was great, Don was astoundingly accomodating, met Pyaap for the first time and his fiance's cream cakes were amazing. Car was mapped and off we went home very happy. Interestingly the MTE mapper recognised the current map's file name as not one used by olvo, but someone he knew, this confirming why it made more than stanard figures.

Once home I wanted an MBC refitted to the car, set in series with the ECU controlled BCV, just to aid the spool up, ie MBC set to 1 bar, on a 1.4 bar map.

Results on rollers and strip from this were as follows

260 bhp, 305 lb.ft (peak and than tail off) and a 14.1 @ 101.7mph standing 1/4

at this point another volvo forums members, this was 2005, were doubting the times on the strip due to saying Crail was downhill, c'mon people lol, so, we went elsewhere and ran it at Elvington in York at the Scooby shootout.

Here's a video from 2005 of both my Rover and the Volvo (both pre-rebuild and big spec) at Crail.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v210/Ross9/th_CrailAdventures2.jpg (http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v210/Ross9/?action=view&current=CrailAdventures2.flv)

and also a clip of me in Jacqs T4 at Elvington racing a modified WRX STI Type R V-limited

http://www.bebo.com/FlashBox.jsp?FlashBoxId=4480586072&

as well as 1/4 miling there was also a top speed run at this elvington event, I ran Jacqs car up that.

from a standing start, it did 0-149.7mph (was about 155/156 on the speedo) in 1.2 miles, this beat numerous subaru's and an E46 BMW M3.

After this, Jacq came to the decision a few months down the line to go the whole hog, and show what teh car could be made to do.

So she ordered a lot of performance bits from VMS in the US of A for turbo, kit, and ancilliaries, Sten Parner in Sweden for internals, Quaiffe ATB LSD from.....quaiffe, and also an intercooler from Forge that I myself made out of cardboard, measured, made a schematic drawing off and had Forge make to my dimensions with one of their performance cores.

Pics.

STEN PARNER BITS - All good apart from the fact he sent 1.9 phase 1 block bits the first time and when matching pistons to bore they fell right through lol.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v210/Ross9/100_0710.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v210/Ross9/100_0709.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v210/Ross9/100_0707.jpg

QUAIFFE DIFF

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v210/Ross9/100_0714.jpg

VMS BITS - All good apart from the manifold, which was **** poor, took hours of remodification to make it fit, then after that had to be rewelded 3 times to make it stop cracking, been fine for a few months now. Delivery time shocking also. Best to avoid if poss IMO.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v210/Ross9/T4bits1.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v210/Ross9/T4bits2.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v210/Ross9/T4bits3.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v210/Ross9/T4bits4.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v210/Ross9/T4bits5.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v210/Ross9/T4bits6.jpg

INTERCOOLER - Made by forge, dimensioned by....ME lol.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v210/Ross9/T4bits7.jpg

So with all this on MTE came back, the car was finished 4 hours after they arrived, thus meaning they wsere kipping on the waiting room couch in the garage until mapping time, and the car was mapped on a 20 mile old engine. Mapping commenced at 9pm in ****ing rain and finished at 3am, tell me any other company that would go to those lenghts. Maping was done at 1.35 bar max and car was shifting, wouldn't run any more boost. We assumed at the time wastegate springs.

few weeks passed.

put the car into exhgaust place to have a bracket looked at and decided to ask for the middle box to be cut out while there, as the guy removeed it he said "oops, I think this is only 2" internal dia" , replaced with 3" pipe and boost was through the roof lol.

Controlled boost with use of aftermarket MBC and different wastegate springs to 1.4 bar with OK fuelling at that, then finally managed to get MTE back to Scotland for more mapping, hard to get a company to custom map in your country when your the only one wanting work done lol.

Jacq also had some suspension work done and was fitted with a Koni Kit with fully adjustable dampers and a rear strut brace.

Jacq did some more research before MTE returned and the car had a modified breather system and modified fuel system put in place. Breather system modified and still spitting dipstick, the solution it now turns out according to Autotech in Sweden...is to tie the dipstick down lol. Apparently they just produce a lot of cranckase pressure and not to worry about it.

The fuel system was modified by introducing a return line to the tank (no return line as standard) and fitting larger fuel lines and adjustable fuel pressure regulator, we had a tank pressurisation issue with this that has now been remedied, but we think may have damaged the pump.

This time the car was all set, no early am nightshifts with half prepped cars etc, and 2 hours in the car had a stroke, threw an electrical fault that produced a million fault codes all at once and removed all idle control. Nothing else for it but to jack the throttle cable up to keep it from stalling and do a map to 6k (lowered rev limit due to al the fault codes) at 1.7 bar.

Turned out the ECU didnt fault, took 2 weeks to track it down but it was the breather system heater that was no longer in use but left connected, had got oiled up when the dipstick spat out and was shorting out when hot, thus blowing the engine sensors fuse and messing everything up.

So, that was that.

We had the ECU issue sorted, stuck the wideband on and upped the boost.

The fuel isn;t keeping up with the boost and it's leaning out,( almost certainly due to the fuel pump that sounds a bit dodgy when it primes) the RR results were posted recently.

Also the clutch has given us issues as one fo the 3 self adjusting springs were not.....adjusting., lol so have glazed the Stage 3+ plate

Here are some current pics of the car.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v210/Ross9/102_1361-1.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v210/Ross9/102_1363.jpg



CURRENT SPEC OF CAR

ENGINE

2.0 16v Turbo S40 T4
Rebuilt bottom end with replaced liners
Forged Pistons
Forged Con Rods
ARP Conrod Bolts
Kent Cams repfrofiled OE Camshafts
GT3076 R Turbo
VMS Exhaust manifold
Tial External Wastegate
Custom 1.5" Atmospheric External Wastegate vent pipe
MBC Boost Controller
BSR Opti-Flow Cone and cold air box
Custom modified Fuel system to incorporate return line and adjustable fuel pressure regulator
RC 750cc Fuel Injectors
MTE Custom on the road mapping
Custom 3" Exhaust System
Custom Modified Crank Case Ventilation System incorporating external catch tank
Forge Motorsport Front Mounted Intercooler (dimensioned by Ross9)
Aquamist Water Injection (fitted but not yet functioning)

BRAKES

EBC Dimpled and Grooved Discs
Ferrodo Premier Pads
Dot 5.1 Fluid

SUSPENSION

KONI suspension kit with adjustable dampers and lowered springs
Rear Strut brace

STYLING

Aftermarket grill

INTERIOR

Boost guage

POWER AND PERFORMANCE

Current best RR

387.5 bhp (355 @wheels) at 5800rpm (clutch slipped at this point, hopefully more to come)

Current performance figures (Taken from speedo video, allowing for over read to best of fairness)

20-60 : 3.2 seconds
20-100 : 9.0 seconds
20-140 : 17.9 seconds
30-70 : 4.1 seconds
30-130 14.0 seconds
0-100 10.5 seconds


Well dear me, that was exhausting, hope you guys enjoyed the read lol.

Ross & Jacq

Ross9
Sunday 23rd November 2008, 01:01
Ok, so bit of an update, those that questioned the manifold were in fact right to do so, should have binned it then and saved a lot of time/money/hassle. Long and short is the cars mostly been off the road for the majority of 2008 due to the manifold continually splitting, when it did work it didnt flow right, spool up was getting worse the more the manifold was repaired, the wastegate diapragm then tore, basically it all needed redoing...so we did :D

the exhaust side of the engine now looks like this....

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v210/Ross9/102_1518.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v210/Ross9/102_1521.jpg

Had Meercat in Scotland do a full tubular manifold, turbo mounting, external wastegate fittings and mounting, wastegate screamer pipe and a full turbo back 3" system with just one box at the back.

It's night and day, the car is SO much better, much more responsive, much sharper and nicer to drive off boost, doesn't flatten at 6000rpm, just sails all the way up and through 7000rpm, map hasn't been kicked out of skew either, 1.75 bar last night when me and Jacq went out with the wideband to set it up and it was sitting at 11.5-11.8 AFR's so plenty of fuel there, it's on the move by 3800, full power at 4000 and thats still with a tear in the external wastegate diapraghm so will be a bit better again once the repair kit arrives.

It's all good, and all smiles, so yes all those that questioned the manifold...thumbs up, it was tripe n onions.

Ross

PS - was out a play in it today.., it's pretty nippy ;) , Skyline probably 330-350 bhp and feels dull in comparison, volvo would destroy it, reminds me of my old coupe at 1.5 bar and stripped out, only the volvo is a bit faster than it was, and it's full of crap, full leather interior, total daily driver

Tomcat
Sunday 23rd November 2008, 01:46
Very,very nice, shows what you can do if you know your stuff. Well done.


Fancy tuning mine?,lol.

T4FLY
Sunday 4th January 2009, 00:08
Nice read :)

Stevie-Boy
Tuesday 6th January 2009, 12:08
Oh that is brilliant, enjoyed reading that! As a T4 owner myself, I'd love to go that far and make it that powerful but having gone around that far with a car before and having all the hassles and issues, never again!!

CONDYBOY
Thursday 8th January 2009, 13:25
Nice writeup, enjoyed my cuppa aswell.LOL

Titch
Thursday 8th January 2009, 23:43
Having been a previous T4 owner I have always wondered what they could be made to do. This far superceeds what I thought was possible. Brilliant write up, always enjoy reading about the T4 mate. Keep it coming.

PS If or when you come to sell it gees a shout lol