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Project BPU! DD 945 turbo

For the displacement I think the 940s have a pretty large radiator. Maybe the radiator is all scaled up.

I'd try to add some ducting around the ic and a fresh fill with some HOAT coolant to help prevent build up in the new radiator. Hopefully the new rad is the same size core, I've found that a lot of aftermarket rads have thinner cores than OEM
 
it's a 91, so basically the old 740 radiator, not the larger later radiator (Which is a possibility if I change intercooler as well. I did keep the unmodified 940 e-fan shroud)
 
How big of a trailer were you pulling? I have had the same problem with an otherwise good functioning cooling system. If you start trying to tow up a steep grade especially at high altitude, I could never keep the engine cool. Air density is down at high altitude. Which also means it doesn't pull heat from a radiator as effectively.

I just gave up trying to tow anything too heavy with the Volvo. But I do like the idea.
 
not sure on the weight, it's a 6.5x12 single axle (not all that heavy, the golf cart moves it around fairly well empty, but I'm sure it's not a feather either), not sure how much weight we put on it, but it wasn't full full or anything.
 
So month of october roundup: got back on the dyno the other day, mostly just disappointment and confirmation of cam/crank timing issue.
I did finally get around to hooking up the boost control solenoid, and in open loop mode it's working very well.. got rid of my big boost spikes, and also boost by tps is nice.

The downside to that? well, now torque and hp match (lol), and are very low for the setup.
173096206.jpg


I should've paid a little more attention when I swapped the cam in to the T cam being a little down relative to what it felt like before the hg/cam swap/etc but I was ready to move on.
A closer inspection of the timing setup (unscientific) does seem to indicate it's off. I'll get into all of that sometime in november (Gonna order a cam gear, may order a whole round tooth conversion setup in preparation for what's to come to at least one of the cars). The car drives ok, not very red-blocky though if I'm honest, it's not the dog it kind of looks like it would be, it's very... NA feeling?

Another amusing note: the cam comparison was done at around 15-16psi, the numbers here recently are at 18-19psi, so adding boost has not resulted in any kind of noticeable uptick in power or torque (green line is mbc, the others are ebc.. green spiked 23-24psi and dropped back to ~17.5 or so, getting only 20 ft/lbs for a 6psi uptick is decidedly anti-8v lmao). I'd suspect a boost leak and will probably test all of that just to be sure, but it spools fast, hits hard, and otherwise doesn't have the usual hallmarks a decent boost leak gives you with the possible exception of the lack of torque. it doesn't feel lazy throughout or drop off up top (Also, not too many places to leak on this system for better or worse, cbv and idle hoses). Ah well.

So anyway, aside from maybe the kl-racing 8v intake test, where do we go from here? contemplating various swaps, or who knows, may get the kinks ironed out and be less inclined to jump ship.
 
surprise surprise the car hasn't fixed itself (I didn't expect it to, but I've also been too busy to really spend any QT with it other than the daily kid shuttle), but I think I've found a bit of a way forward that will drive interest and motivation and free me up a little to play with more things..

the blue 242 has a very similar (basically, identical) setup in it, and she needs some love. the car, not the engine. the engine is fine for the moment. I'm not realistically going to get the gold car back together any time soon if ever (more towards the ever than the soon), as working on it would take time away from the eventual wagon swap.. I just haven't had the firm jump-off point to get that ball rolling. So I'm going to throw everything up the air and shake it around:
blue 242's engine is going to come out and go in the 940 (b23f+t or ft, no idea, haven't had the head off, whatever). basically a drop in replacement for the somewhat tired and now non-performing for other reasons b230ft. Ipd turbo cam, etc. should be a swap and go affair with a brief respite to address some oil leaks. The 3076r will not be going in the 940 (yet), I still have faith the k24 can do what I want the car to do. This will give me an opportunity to test that. I will of course make sure the 242 is still making the numbers it should first, but look for that swap to happen sooner rather than later.

the 242 in turn will get some love under hood and behind the dash (heater core/hoses that are leaking will be fixed, I'm going to swap in the late model a/c components I've got for it, that sort of thing that's easier with no engine in the way), and then I'm going to plop the 16v out of goldie in there along with one of the other 16v intake manifolds I've got (And the 3076r on a 90+ exhaust manifold). Since I've basically been running it on e85 24/7 anyway, it shouldn't be a big problem, just a big drop in power and target boost, but oughta be a real fun setup, which was the point of the 242 all along. I'd like to be able to drive it, so it needs heat and a/c (working). moving back to goldie, since it's more or less a drive train and a shifter, and the th400 has been on the bench for almost 2 years, there's not a whole lot to take out of the car. the holset, intake, and those acoutrements will get shuffled onto the shelf, and I'll start actively planning the next stroker engine to go in the eventual drag wagon (Along with getting the wagon in the shop and stripping it down and starting on cage, etc).

This leaves the v8 wagon as the oddball out... it's going to get some love at some point soon as well, as it's entirely too fun to leave on the sidelines the way I have.
 
new year new me! nah just kidding. all of the above is still in play, broke an exhaust hanger the other day so I'll have it in the shop to fix that (And make some room around the trailer hitch so it doesn't bang around as much), likely going to swap the cam gear from the blue car at the same time and see if I can recoup some of the lost performance. The ol girl is getting tired though, despite the good compression numbers a few months ago it's huffing and chuffing a lot from the breather - not "blown up" a lot, but just a lot of smoke/vapor and of course the ever present slap-o pistone

the plan is still to set the blue car's b23ft aside as a hot spare if something else doesn't creep up first (16v? 16v.)
 
probably, to make sure I get it dialed in correctly. should be making at least two fiddy based on what sam's car did recently
 
did a day of work on the car yesterday (ok, more like stretched out about 2 hours of work), boogerblasted a new tip on the muffler so it clears the trailer hitch, fixed and reinforced the hanger that broke before xmas, installed a rear swaybar (Stock size)...tbh so that it's easier to strap down.. and swapped the adjustable cam gear over.

seat of the pants testing so far is inconclusive, it seemed like maybe +3 was better, +6 didn't seem quite right. 242 still remains operable but I have a feeling I'm off a tooth on it (kinda hard to line up, so who knows.. it may have been a whole tooth advanced this whole time, or it's a full tooth back now. who knows? all I'm sayin' is it still runs and drives so I can move it around while I get ready for it's shop time). oh well. one of the breather hoses popped off, so it's leaking more oil than it should currently, and is on the lift awaiting a fix for that. it's also leaking from somewhere else, will know more after it's out whenever that happens.
 
SE Came and went, finally got the car to the track, and it's still disappointing, more so in comparison with it's 200 series clone over at sam's house (ok, not a complete clone anymore, sam has a disco potato now instead of the k24). Otherwise, no real deltas lately. need to put it on the dyno and see if cam timing makes any difference.
Monday on the way to daycare I noted a fuel smell, and in the afternoon whilst pulling the car on the lift it died and would no longer crank back up. Fuel pump relay clicked on, but no real noise from anywhere. a cursory check of fuses revealed nothing out of the ordinary, so I initially thought that whatever was leaking allowed it to leak the remaining ~ 1/2 tank of fuel out over the course of driving monday, although I never noted any fuel smell strong enough to indicate that significant of a leak. Shelved that til yesterday (teus) and checked all the fittings, did some continuity testing on the fuel pump wiring and the fuse, attempted to put ~5 gallons of gas in the car only to have it basically try and come out the filler neck as the jug ran empty.. so it wasn't out of gas, the pump just stopped running. Turns out that despite the fuse not being blown and not having significant resistance, it was not lettin' em air volts through. new fuse, fuel pump operation restored, no visible leaks. noted a somewhat loose return hose, so I of course deformed the clamp further on that guy and hopefully that resolves the fuel smell. it did appear that it had been dripping on top of the runners right there, so it could've been the culprit.

To further add insult to injury regarding the performance of this car, the blue 242 in it's current form (ipd cam straight up) will dance all over the road from a 2nd gear roll on, with a much more linear (read: slower) spooling turbo, while the wagon sorta barks the tires on the 1-2 shift.

Something else has to be going on, and I've got a few possible culprits:
  • 1) boost leak somewhere. possible, wouldn't be totally surprised, but the turbo spools fast, and all the "lazy" turbo cars I've had in the past that suffered from boost leaks.. well they were lazy feeling so that kinda fits, but they also were significantly slower to spool. This would be the most desirable outcome from a financial perspective.
  • 2) intercooler is in fact not intercooler-y. My favorite thing to test is about the only thing I haven't tested on this car, and was one of the things that changed with the installation of the K24. While I'm not saying it's my prime suspect, I do have my suspicions. I might be able to test it against the stock intercooler (I've still got one or two laying around), but I will be very disappointed if the CSF version of the venerable NPR does not in fact match up to the OG
 
alright, cleared things out enough to put the ol wagon on the dyno and do some diagnosticals...

started with a baseline pull to see where things were at... aaaaaand it was bad. 165hp/176 ft-lbs. at ~14ish psi.
did a couple pulls to make sure this wasn't a fluke (it wasn't), and then set about tweaking and testing.

First thing I did was move the adjustable cam gear back to zero from 4 degrees advance, that bumped power up from 165 to 180. From there, I opted to not further adjust that for the moment (straight up has generally worked well for me), and unhook the exhaust at the downpipe (basically, a cat bypass). unlike the last time I did this, power jumped another ~20 and boost came up from around 14 to around 16-17. so, that's another thing (mmdammit). On a whim I played around with the boost and at around 20ish psi it was making 230-240hp, and around.. 230ft/lbs. So... better, but not exactly great. That was sunday.

Today I hooked up the intercooler from the blue car (wanted to make sure this CSF npr intercooler is as advertised), dropped the boost back down to a tick below what it was set at making ~14psi on sunday... aaaaand it promptly made 19psi. pulled it back some more and got things down to around 15-16, and it was right around the same power the CSF was making sunday. not one to back down from direct comparisons (and kind of feeling like I was onto something else) I hooked the csf back up, and did a couple pulls to either debunk the intercooler issue or highlight it..aaaand, it was fine. virtually identical to the other intercooler, without touching anything in the tune.
Drat.

Ok, so, back to playing with cam timing, having pulled it back 4 degrees to zero, logically, keep going.. pulled 2 more degrees out (so, -2 now), picked up 10whp, across 3 pulls. ok cool. take 2 more out.. little bit odd on the results here, it picked up 3 on the first pull, but jumped up 7 more on the next pull (but it wasn't across the whole pull, it was more of a ~ 800 rpm surge. chalked that up a bit of a difference in boost even though that didn't really come through in the log). Turned the boost up over the course of a couple of pulls, and ended up around 245hp at 19psi. (250ish in 3rd gear, not a big difference between 2nd and 3rd). But only about 220ft/lbs.

the thing that still is bothering me is that the powerband seems high, and there's a stark lack of torque down low. I might play around with timing some tomorrow afternoon, specifically down low. It might be due for a set of plugs as well, I noticed what sounded like occasional misfires at cruise (not really under power though, so... who knows). So on the "upside", nothing really seems to be crazy wrong, but on the flipside, it's not really right... and tbh it hasn't been for a while. so I'm thinking I'll probably swap in the engine that came out of the 242. May also do a quick boost leak check (yea yeah should've started with that but... meh), there's really only a couple places that could be leaking, but prudence would dictate that I check that as well.
 
well the boost leak test has revealed a few issues... some of them minor (loose idle hose on the intake manifold.. looks like it would slip almost off and then suck back down on decel.

the bigger issue though is the absolute volume of air blowing straight back out of the breather... I'm going to try and narrow down the other leaks to see what's up, but it's near broken piston amounts of air. I doubt that's what is actually going on, I suspect that the massive amounts of piston slap indicate a tired and very loose bottom end, and its just bleeding off and taking the top off the curves.
 
the current remaining largest leak is the #4 injector o-ring in the intake. I'll square that away, it's a pretty bad leak as well (wondering if the oring split and vacated?) but it's still second stringer to the amount of air coming out of the crankcase. I'll fix that, run it on the rollers again since it's strapped down already, but I'm not expecting any miracles at this point.
 
ok we're going to call this done for the time being. After further fiddling and fixing leaks and checking things this is where we're at:
215-220ish (kind of depends on the bewst fluctuations) at an honest 1 bar. not great, but not nearly as bad as what I started with.
Replaced all the injector to intake manifold o-rings, that fixed a fairly decent leak, tightened a few things here and there, the big issue is of course blowby.
Did a (very) cold compression test this morning, car's been sitting since teus I think, 125-135 across the board. not bad, but not great, and kind of in line with what I was expecting. previous tests have been done with the engine warm, so I imagine that would bump the numbers up to the 150's I've seen previously. gonna cogitate on how I want to approach this, the b23 out of the blue car is more or less in good shape and makes decent power, but it too has some piston slap. might do the ol' weekend swaparoski and kick the can down the road (by might, that really means i'm absolutely going to do that) for a bit, as I've got the 242 well underway now, and I'd like to get back into the drag car and the v8 wagon sometime this year as well.
 
it does, esp the hot numbers.. fairly normal for an ft. cold is a bit lower than desired (but really not out in the weeds like I said), the issue seems to be she loose. it runs more or less fine, the shakedown run before hooking the trailer up to retrieve an ls3(l99 really, but wtf is the difference aside from cam phasing) setup for a buddy. it is definitely faster than before, but it just still doesn't have that 8v punch. reckon one day soon I'll make a cat bypass pipe, since I know that's not working out as well as hoped (although tbh I probably shouldn't be surprised, if the engine is as tired as it seems to be, there's probably all manner of stuff getting burned as well).
 
and of course, pics or gtfo:
174229382.jpg


all at relatively the same level of boost. the odd looking lower output one is the first pull from last sunday, there was a hold on start set so it didnt start reading until that point. purple is where I left it. the blue one made a little more boost up top iirc.
 
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