NB-V70R

On 8/9/2019 at 5:25 AM, mrtj301 said:

Is the car still with you?

Yes it is! And now is as good a time as any for an update, I suppose I finally saved up some of the money for a manual swap earlier this year. I didn't go AWD because I got sick of working on it and I drove some fast FWD cars and they were hilariously fun. Definitely a different type of fun than my 940 Turbo drift car.

Of course, COVID hit in March and I was slated to work from home for a few weeks. Therefore, I decided, my stimulus check would go to a bigger turbo now that I had time to work on it LOL. So... it got a 5-speed swap AND a GTX3582R

Where the car is at now:

• Kinugawa GTX3582R ball bearing turbo
• Shaved Japanifold
• M56LK 4.00 with Quaife LSD
• 850R Clutch
• Stock Engine w/ Chinese H Beam Rods

I've got a date with a racetrack this weekend at Street Car Takeover in Bristol, TN. It is registered for the 140mph roll class (God help us all if this brick goes 140) and I've been tuning like crazy trying to turn the car up without destroying it. The boost is currently peaking at 9psi and it is hauling ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOTOAD. I'm really curious how high I can rev the stock head because I'm running out of RPM at 7k and the turbo wants more.

Definitely need to invest in an Ostrich to put into my spare ECU. Flashing makes iterating through tunes significantly harder.

This Fiat has come so far. Looks amazing! Always inspiring to see your work

Trying to prevent the archive . I'm deep into my last year of engineering school and I'm looking forward to graduation in May so I can get back to all my plans on this car. I haven not been able to track down the running issue. I was able to minimize the problematic behavior with a bit of tuning, but it still gets me everywhere I need to go reliably so it isn't top priority.

It doesn't help that I keep spending money on computer upgrades, the racecar, and my new Motorcycle (2013 Honda CB500F) lol.

On 5/10/2018 at 11:16 PM, gdog said:

What size MAF housing are you using?  The original MAF editor just multiplies the constants in your bin maf table by whatever multiplier constant you enter.  I.e. the usual constants supplied (1.34, 1.94, 2.57) assume you're starting with a stock bin.

If you've already modified the MAF table in your bin and you need to update it again (and you're going with one of the std sizes) I recommend you use the "Alternative Mafconverter" available here:

http://m44.wikia.com/wiki/Modified_Vehicles

direct link:

http://www.meditekst.nl/M44/M44_MAF_Converter.zip

 

I recently ran into this when I switched from S90 to 540i maf housing.  To answer your question; no, if the maf conversion is done correctly, you should not have to mod other params for the maf update.

And remember, use your stock maf sensor; you're only up-sizing the housing.

BTW: I'm assuming we can all thank Piet for both of these apps? 

Thanks for the response,

I'm using a 3.5in OD MAF housing (which I think measured 3.25" ID) with my stock sensor of course. I started with 1.94 as my multiplier in that tool you linked, but I remember the car running rich mostly, but swinging to lean with the fuel trims occasionally. This was all before I bent those rods a couple months ago and I wasn't datalogging at the time. Since then, I've tried multiplying that (x1.94) table by 0.9 (which seemed too lean), 0.95,  and 0.96 which I have been running on for a couple of weeks. My idle fuel trims are not any more than they were before the upgrade. AFR at WOT was 11.7 or so before the upgrade and now dips into the high 9s. My bin is pretty far from stock though with modified injectors, load axes rescaled and so on. If those other things were done incorrectly I could see that flaring up and causing a problem.

The more I write about it, it kind of sounds like I have a boost leak. I'm gonna go check my charge piping after this.

On 5/11/2018 at 8:45 AM, gmsgltr said:

the two o-rings/seals on the maf are also very important...

I don't remember removing or keeping them lol.... I'll have to pop out the sensor to double check.

OK nvm it is 95 deg out so I'll check it later 

Kinda neglected the updates on the thread because of finals and work and yadda yadda. I've fixed the oil leak. It was a torn O-ring on the return tube - no biggie.

Car is throwing a CEL for the BCS. I had this before and installed an inline filter to solve the problem last time, but honestly I have just lost faith in the ARD solenoid and I'll be investing in a Pierburg when my bank accounts recover.

Also still have to play around with the MAF constant. Has anyone who performed a significant MAF upgrade have to change any other parameters besides the MAF map to achieve prior drivability? The more I play around with the MAF scaling, the more it seems like other things need to be modified as well such as acceleration enrichment and so on. Thanks for any insight!

Car has actually been running and driving for a few weeks. I was fighting a dying battery and the car has been pissing oil, especially under boost. Been keeping it from running low maybe once a week as it goes down. New rod bearings are staying nice and lubricated with fresh oil anyway haha. I was able to trace down the drain tube O-ring as the suspected culprit with a cell phone camera. I'm tackling that this weekend finally because work has been pretty hectic as of late (NASCAR in peak season woohoo). i'm also going to drill out the PCV "valve" as I neglected to do that initially when I installed the new intake tubing. My theory is that the larger diameter at the same general airflow has a lower velocity past that hole and it is failing to extract/relieve the crankcase pressure as effectively as stock.

I also spent some time refining the MAF constant to get the drivability to be a tad better and to reduce the LTFTs. I'm within a couple percent either way now.

On 2/8/2018 at 12:23 PM, Mesoam said:

did you spray the car with bumpers, hood e/t/c all still mounted?

Yeah most things were still attached.  The side skirts, mud guards, and trim around the trunk windows were removed and painted separately.

In more recent history, I spent a lot of time and money since then on computer parts and building a couple gaming PCs. Also, I have been battling around school work and my crazy new internship with a race team (top tier NASCAR team, pretty damn cool) to find free time. Most of which is now consumed by my other project car, a 1978 Volvo 242 that my friends and I are swapping in a truly idiotic 1.6L engine from a 1992 Mazda Miata. Shameless plug for our YouTube series on that car: Amateur Hour Racing on YT ( https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCV2_Q4fzZ55A243hlKeVJlQ ).

When I finally got some time to mess around one weekend, I installed a Snabb Intake Kit that I had sitting around. Tristan was kind enough to send me a slightly customized version to fit my new 3.5 inch MAF housing. I had noticed in my data logs that I was regularly hitting 4.9v on the stock housing and intake. So of course, I installed it and reflashed the ECU with my most recent tune. I had forgotten about (aka didn't check my notes that I always take) all of the things I had changed since my last flash. I think I had messed with a few limiters on the boost pressure (Maximum boost pressure reduction -- really should have changed that before setting my TCV and Load maps, and Vehicle Speed Threshold for boost reduction on gearbox signal -- same with this param). Long story short, I gave it too much juice and the boost shot way the f*** up faster than I could get out of the throttle. The car bucked hard and then *tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick*. Ouch. I am still kicking myself for how stupid I was being that day. So many lapses in judgement.

This was the carnage that I removed 2 weekends later:

 These two rods are far too wiggly for my taste. Luckily, a friend from work lent me some garage space as long as I need it to tear apart the entire engine. My amazing roommates are also letting me borrow their cars until I get mine rebuilt. 

I have H-Beam Rods coming with a set of Glyco sputter bearings, Hastings rings, plus all the goodies to replace everything that has been in their relative locations for up to twenty years. I am going to hit the Pull a Part (if it'll stop raining on all my free days) and see if I can grab some N/A cams and an R manifold (It looks easier to remove in car. Am I crazy?) or Japanifold (if I'm lucky). It is a real shame I'm not upgrading the turbo while I have it off, but I have made a personal commitment to manual swapping before that.

That's pretty much everything up to date. Thanks for sticking with me through that mind dump! I'll try to grab more pics and things as parts arrive and I get it going again.

P.S. Yes, I'm going to be much more careful when I finally get running again. It seems like I'm going to have to rebuild my turbo control maps from scratch again. Anyone interested in a video series on anything I'm doing?

OK time for a big update! I have still been slowly toiling away on this car, but I haven't really been active on here for quite a while. Some recent developments with the car (more on that later) have finally brought me back to share all sorts of fun with y'all. So here we go! Commence project catch up with Nick.

So we pretty much left off around JULY 2016 with the new wheels, tires and fuel line repairs (holding up well so far). I rebuilt the dashboard with fiberglass reinforcement. Overall, this was a huge, huge improvement to the day to day pleasantness of the car. It is still holding up well as of Feb 2018, but some of the cracks that were repaired with plast-aid (stuff's a miracle) in the trim piece right under the windshield are returning.

I was also thoroughly revising the tune on the car throughout most of 2016. Eventually (35ish revisions later), I had settled around 17 psi and mid 11's for WOT AFR. I rarely had some mild knock usually on hot days in the summer or cold days in winter when most of my tuning was around fall and spring time. I know if I spent more time or actually utilized ambient temp offsets I could get rid of it.

MAY 2017 - Full Color Change

My father and I embarked on a mission to revive the faded exterior of the "Black Mamba" as he called it. We spent about 6 weeks from the first tear down to driving it out of the garage paint booth. I ended up going to a single stage grey metallic color from a VW. This stuff is loaded with metal flake making it absolutely ridiculous for a couple of amateur painters to get right. We had only done one other paint job at this point, my brothers truck: an '02 Tacoma that we rebuilt for his sixteenth birthday.  I think it turned out pretty well though considering our lack of experience and short time frame.

Here are some progress pics:

Final Product:

I had never been more proud of owning this car than after this paint job. The way the colors worked (plus painted mud guards, ugh) was awesome. Makes all the time and money totally worth it. It was redubbed "gray ghost" by my dad and damn it was hot (read thicccccc). Then, literally a month after the car was finished (and 4 days before I had to leave for NC to be back at school), a "medium sized" (maybe  3-4" diameter) branch fell and smashed the windshield and leafed (left? get it? :D ) a decent dent in the roof. Crushing (wow I'm so punny). I ended up tracking down just 1 shop locally that had a windshield in stock and a free slot for an appointment (Whew., Whew., Close one!, Chat disabled.), but the dent is still there to this day.

Got it. I noticed people were just donating to last year's campaign. I had problems when donating to the 2017 one.

My dad and I will be there again this year. Looking forward to another great show!

Sad to see it go, but excited for the future! On to bigger and better things.....

I went to donate and the GoFundMe is saying that there is an error with the campaign and that I should contact the admin for it. So... if someone can sort it out, I'd love to give some of my monies. Thanks!

11 hours ago, lookforjoe said:

Unless you bought the higher quality European fuel line (Volvo #1266500 [or whatever the current # is] sold by the meter), standard American fuel line, braided or not, tends to dry rot & crack pretty quickly. It is unlikely to last more than a couple years if you are lucky. Given it's hard to access location, I wouldn't risk generic fuel line personally...

 

OK well that sucks. We used some decent quality, but def not Volvo line so I am not going to rip it out now.I will definitely keep an eye on it. The job to replace it wouldn't be too bad now really, might even get away without having to lower the tank. The next solution will have to be better. Thanks for the heads up.

Finally fixed my e brake yesterday. Only issue was some incorrect retainers on one side. Replaced those and readjusted, works like a charm.

On 6/28/2016 at 3:34 PM, lookforjoe said:

You can buy nitrile fuel line splices with barb fittings. Using standard fuel line is not good at all. How many feet of it did you run ?

We ran about 3.5 feet from the driver's side across the front of the tank to the hard lines on the passenger side. What issues could the hose cause?

Another update:

Fixed the fuel leak. It was a return line from the FPR. Ended up making a rubber hose to replace it as the line wasn't available from the dealer or aftermarket. Been DDing it ~40 miles a day since I was able to get it inspected. This is the longest my car has been back on the road without a reflash or tune in a while so I'm getting fully used to the service light again haha. Had a few more little issues pop up that will be taken care of in the coming weeks. Nothing exciting feel free to move along with your day....

Brief update:

-Continuing the wastegate dilemma, I talked for a while with Customer service who eventually set me up with the shorter rod end which worked perfectly. Now everything is running great.

-The caR developed an exhaust leak from the center ball joint. Fixed right before Carlisle.

-The stupid caR also decided to start pissing out power steering fluid so a new rack is on the to do list.

-Final breakage, it spRung a small fuel leak from a crossover line up and over the tank. Really annoying because the whole damn thing was out just a year ago when pump, sender, and seemingly every other line was replaced. In addition, this line isn't sold by Volvo so it has to be made DIY style. Should be sorted out soon.

-Several other little preventative maintenance/restoration items are being taken care of this summer as well including timing belt and water pump plus cam seals. The axle boots need to be replaced soon and the PCV system will be serviced too. Basic preventative stuffs....

-I also have to get a TCV filter because the ARD unit I bought just 2 years ago is already throwing codes which can be cleared with some "gentle" tapping. I think it is just getting contaminated and needs some dirt protection.l

Onto more interesting items:

After retiming the cams (which were way off from the recommended specs, but now sit at a more reasonable +4 exh, +0 int), I will be retuning the car to improve power a tad more.

I purchased a new set of wheels. I am getting rid of my slightly ghetto 18 inch setup which I have run for a couple years for a nicer set of Enkei YS5s of the 17x7.5 inch variety. This time around the tires I am running are Continental ExtremeContactDW tires in 225/45r17. I am also running 5mm spacers, but I am looking into investing in better 10mm spacers (the IPD-H&R ones) to make installation easier and ensure that the wheels are 100% centered on the hubs.

The 18s were just a bit too crashy over bumps and the Verde gravity cast wheels vibrated quite violently at certain speeds despite being balanced a few times. The new set looks much more classy imo and should ride and handle much better. I do think it needs to be lower in the front now though. The smaller wheels seem to exaggerate the lack of low :( Soon enough...

Coming soon is hopefully a big order from EST for an intercooler, CAI, and Forge CBV. And.....last performance part on the list for a while is the Snabb intake pipe in black (of course).

P.S. Sorry about this being so unbrief, it was supposed to be so much shorter lol.

Thanks! That looks like a better solution than what I ended up with. I wanted my installation to be more OEM appearing than that, but that unfortunately fell though so I will look into doing that when I revise the mounting.

Right now I am looking at just buying a custom length rod from Kinugawa, considering I butchered my other one anyway: http://shopping.kinugawaturbo.com/kinugawaadjustableturboactuatorrod.aspx

Still curious about the knock control. Has anyone found a good solution to preventing the adaptive knock from pulling timing before knock is sensed?

Alright, I suppose I owe everyone an update (not that anyone is anxiously awaiting this thread), but it has been a while and a bit has happened. Firstly, my A/C finally failed. The culprit was a seized blower motor so I ordered a genuine Volvo one from Tasca. So far, it has been 2 and a half weeks and no package. Apparently, it wasn't in stock and had to be special ordered from the OEM. Can't wait to get that installed, I am hating this NC weather without A/C lol.

On the performance side of things, everything is great. I ended up purchasing the Kinugawa wastegate actuator with the 0.8 bar spring, but it included both the 0.5 bar spring as well. I installed the heavier 0.8 bar spring and put the assembly in the car. After installation, I noticed that the rod could not be adjust short enough to apply any preload and instead held the wastegate open by about 1-2mm. Also, the design of the rod does not suit itself to threading further down the shaft, but I made due and cut the shaft down so that the end could be threaded on slightly further. This setup doesn't allow for use of a locking nut so I would like to search for alternative options in the future, but it works for now.

Pic of the new WGA w/ shortened shaft:

I ran on wastegate pressure for a while and did a few datalogs. The new actuator allows for boost to build much quicker than with the worn factory wastegate. The car feels like it should have before this mod. I am able to hit full boost by 2300rpm (best case scenario in 4th gear). The old actuator definitely didn't have the balls to hold the gate shut and build boost as quickly as I wanted. After a while of running at wastegate pressure (which it could hold nicely to a 6500rpm redline producing a nice feeling pull), I decided to play around and see what I could do with it. My tune is still a work in progress, but I am currently running around 17psi. Unfortunately, I have had to turn adaptive knock control off because I was experiencing "ghost" knock all over the place. I would really like to turn it back on, but I'm worried about losing performance for no reason.

Example of this "ghost" knock:

In this picture, at part throttle, the ECU is pulling a lot of timing with no sign of knock from BITS or KRCOUNT. This is just one of a couple dozen accounts in this 30 minute log where the same thing was happening. After logging with adaptive knock turned off, there was no knock registered anywhere. I know some other people on the 4.4 thread were experiencing the same issue, but I didn't see a final fix anywhere. Did anyone sort this out or have any tips? While I am running in this configuration (adaptive off), will the ECU still react to real knock as indicated by KRCOUNT or BITS?

Upcoming mods include the Forge CBV, a fix for the wastegate rod, and installing the tint that has been sitting under my bed since Christmas.

     Happy building/tuning/modding/fabbing!

          -Nick

1 hour ago, lookforjoe said:

Think about it. Any play there means the TCV cycling to modulate boost is inaccurate due to that slop. While you're consideirng other options, just grab a barrel end off any other Volvo TD04 turbo....

OK I will. There is a pick n pull near me that should have one to hold me over for now.

Thanks so much

Here is the picture of the wastegate rod end. This looks like excessive play that won't be getting better over time, but I could be wrong. That gap is probably 1.5-2mm. I did remove the locking clip just for the picture.

I have been researching the Kinugawa adjustable wastegate actuator for the P80s and I have been seriously tempted. NEU did a great write up when he first got his in 2012:

I was looking at getting it to upgrade and replace the current wastegate. I would probably get either the 7.35 or 11.7psi spring. Since I will be sticking with the 16T for a few years, I think this will help make it the best it can be.

Any other people on here running these with some thoughts? @NEU What are your long term thoughts on the actuator? Have you had any issues or failures since the end of that thread?

2 hours ago, lookforjoe said:

Shoiuld not be any play in WGA barrel end that drops over the WG pin. Get another from any other Volvo unit. Easy enough.

Use dropbox to save all you tune related files - that way it makes no difference what happens to your laptop. I had to do this as I was constantly switching between laptops. 

OK will look into a solution. Thanks!

Yeah I am definitely going to do something like that going forward for backup at least. It has been good practice and I will do it better this time. I did take fairly comprehensive paper notes as I was going so I can mostly reconstruct from that.

Sorry for not updating recently. I had to reset my laptop and lost my 18psi tune with all of my log files so I have been rather busy reconstructing those for the past few days.

I did manage to tighten my WGA preload and it seems to have helped bring the boost onset slightly sooner in the Rev range. I am a bit worried ( I know, huge surprise) about the elongation of the wastegate door pin hole. It is definitely an oval with a few mm of play around the pin in the actuating direction. This doesn't seem like the way Volvo would have designed it but idk. I will try to snap a pic and post it up later.

6 hours ago, Midnight Caller said:

You can do the inspection simpler. Just connect the boost gauge to the CBV, and floor it a little. Remember your boost onset start, and the approximate boost vs rpm you have prior to doing this. Then just look at the boost gauge, if it starts raising when you hit the throttle, there you go, your CBV is teared up. That's what happened to mine, I never reached 15PSI on my 16T and lo and behold, after 4000rpm the CBV leaked almost 5 or 6 PSI ! You could reach max boost but the turbo is and TCV are struggling to maintain it.

Ahh good tip! I will try that and see if there are any issues there. Thanks!

I went out to adjust my wastegate actuator this morning, but it was very rusted up. I tried to hold the shaft from spinning with a pair of pliers, but the assembly (nut and rod together) spun inside the wastegate diaphragm housing. Now they can do full revolutions. I assume this is not correct and that my actuator is now broken and in need of replacing. Is it normal to have the rod spin or is it attached directly to the diaphragm inside that  However, when I took the car out for a drive didn't seem to affect boost pressure or onset all that much. This makes me think that something was wrong earlier than this incident. I am considering just buying the Forge Piston CBV and a Kinugawa Wastegate actuator. They can be used later on in the build as well as right now so I think it is a worthwhile investment.

At least with Volvos (all cars really) there is a really simple formula to budgeting: More $$ = More 

Have a great day everyone! Thanks

9 hours ago, lookforjoe said:

If the cbv is blown, it cannot create positive pressure, since until there is sufficient volume / pressure to negate the leakage and some to continue to the intake, it will simply dump back into the intake side of the compressor. You need to remove the diaphragm and flex it looking for cracks. 

Back pressure is required to create intake pressure. So cam timing, manifold leaks, etc all play a part.

This is all very basic stuff though - Live & learn - all this should have be checked from the start. Stage 0 really. 

So, since I am still hitting peak boost, I shouldn't worry about the diaphragm? My thinking was that, at some point, a tear can only flow so much through it; therefore, boost would still develop, but later than usual.

I really don't want to take out the CBV without removing the turbo just to inspect it. I have heard of what a PITA that job it is to do with the turbo in and the angle gear on. If I can assess its condition just by behavior, I will attempt to do that first.

I am going to try adjusting my wastegate actuator tomorrow and see if I can improve on my issues. I will report back later with anything I come up with.

I have been meaning to go through and document all of the settings such as cam timing to create a spreadsheet that I can reference in the future. I am hoping everything is correct now, but as you said this should have been checked earlier.

Living and Learning seems to be all I do nowadays, but that isn't a bad thing I suppose.Thanks for the advice!

So many of you have probably seen my question in the tuning thread, but as it was deemed to probably not be tuning related, I will continue the conversation here.

The problem is that my boost onset has been too slow for what is expected from a TD04-16t ie. peak is around or after 4000 rpm. I feel like the boost should be hitting a lot sooner than that. If anyone has ideas about what the problem might be please share. The existing thoughts thus far have been:

-Improper Wastegate Adjustment (disabled wastegate and boost onset was still slow until 3500 rpm so this probably isn't the sole reason)

-Small Misfire in very low rpm preventing spool

-Worn Turbo (136,000 miles)

-Torn CBV? (not sure if this would cause such an issue, but I am trying to push 18psi through the stock one. It is on the list to upgrade soon anyway)