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Made a few more miles with the new setup. All in all I think near 500 miles or so. Had some minor issues like a wastegate gasket blowing out and a few bolt coming loose but most has been sorted out now. The boost curve needs some a djustemnt. I will receive a new chip tomorrow with higher boost settings over the mid rpm band. This way the torque will be back on the level where it was with the T3/T04 turbo. The higher rpm band is extreme. The car just keeps pulling all the way to 7200 RPM. At this moment there still is a small boost dip near 5200 rpm but after that the boost just keeps building up to 18 psi at 7000 RPM. Made 2 round trips into Germany last week and had the cat flatout for over 20 miles on a nice piece of Autobahn called the A31. End speed was 174 mph before I had to exit the Autobahn. Was held up by a BMW Bangle 530d doing 152 mph for some time but managed to overtake and leave him behind in the mirror. So, now I hope the midrange will be on par again with the new chip. Oh, forgot.. ordered a rear spoiler finally after experiencing some lift at higher speeds.. So, to solve the "between the ears, problem I decided to install it regardless. Unfortunately the car loses a bit of it's sleeper image.

Last Wednesday evening I finished the turbo conversion on the V70R. After some initial test runs the wastegate wasn't working properly. Car went in to fail safe much to quick. Yesterday I drove the car to RICA HQ in the Netherlands, a 135 mile drive for me. Traffic was extrem and it took me a long time to get there. There was a major computer crash in what is believed to be the hart of the Dutch railroad system. During the morning the public railroad systems went flat so every commute decided to take the car clogging up the highway systems in the hart of the Netherlands. Another reason not to try and floor the car. Kept the car mostly off boost during the trip. Took some diagnostics equipment with me which I used twice during the trip to reset DTC's and failsafe. Arriving at RICA Mr. RICA and his son were present. There wasn't much on their agenda for the day so they had some time to work on the R. Pretty soon we discovered that the suggested external wastegate schematics weren't suitable for the Volvo solenoid setup. We changed the vacuum line setup and things were working properly. Not having any experience with external wastegates made be a bit hesitant to use a different setup but it showed that the wastegate is functioning 100% now with extreme stable boost control. The boost mappings in the ECU were zero'd and retuned from there. A/F and ignition was pretty much spot on already. After a few dyno runs the complete boost map was finished, not to high at the moment though because I want to run the car "Low profile" with the new setup for a while before taking it a step further. Tidy up first and proceed later. After that came the load testing on the dyno. The car was tortured to the extreme resulting in teh Haldex system overheating and shutting down. A scary moment since all the power is tranferred to the front wheels which started slipping the rollers instantly cause a lot of smoke to enter the dyno room. The shutdown happened just above 6000 RPM WOT.. A cool down period further and the last steps were performed including a final run to plot the new so called GT30 baseline. Torque is kept low for now. Engine output broke the 400 HP barrier. Yippee!

Took the T3/T04, downpipe and manifold of the R. Cut the downpipe and fitted the downpipe to the GT30 using a kind of mould/dummy setup. This is the same setup used when I mounted the T3/T04. I connected the cut parts using tape. When all is in shape it will be tig spot welded. After that is will be test fitted when the turbo is in the car and when all turns out OK it will be welded using backing gas. After removing the T3/T04 it was nice to see that the parts looked pretty good for the time they have been on the car. The original manifold almost looked like new while it has done 33K miles of hard work already.

I've had plans to change my R's turbo to a GT3071R for some time already. My house has been rebuild between August '04 and Februari this year. In Februari all the furniture and stuff had to be moved back. Also a lot of small things to do in the house. Late last year I decided to buy an old Datsun for a new tuning project. During the winter I have been working on the engine, suspension and drivetrain while prepping the car for approval. Last monday the car was finally approved so now I can start with the engine transplant.. While working on the Datsun during winter time I didn't have much time to work on the GT30 project. Also the Demon 850 didn't receive the attention it should have had.. Maintaining 3 cars isn't that easy when married with 2 children.. I prepared a new B5254Tx manifold to fit the GT30. Made an exhaust flange to fit an external Tial 38 mm wastegate. The oil return and feed lines were made to fit. Some small things like intake CBV etc. have been prepared also. To finish the project I need to remove the downpipe from my R and make it fit the GT30 exhaust flange. This means I will not have my daily driver available for some time. Since the Demon has been fixed up lately I think I'm going to use it for daily drive now and start working on the R. If all goes as planned the project should be near finished by the end of this week or the week after.

Picked up the R from the dealer today. Car received 2 modifications. One mod to prevent the famous sidestep issue where the rear of the car can make a strange sideways movement when driving over road irregulariities. Tested the car on the way home on a not so nice piece of road. Car went smooth all the way up to 137 mph. The second modification is an attempt from Volvo to fix the front brake noise. My car started making a lot of noise during light to mild braking during the summer. During the winter time the noise was less. Volvo release a kit with some sort of strengthening bar which needs to be mounted against the front calipers. Wait and see how it goes when temps go up.