B230 & 900 horsepower...

anyone herd the rumor someone ran a 940t or b230
volvo motor up to 900 horsepower before it melted
down?.......amazing if 1/2 true...lets see...400hp
i should be safe boosting to 200+.....?????

 

Should be fine, I upped my manifold pressure from 5 to 11psi with a valve to
bleed air from the wastegate control pressure line. I think it was worth
about 240bhp and knocked 1s off the 0-60 time (standard 194bhp). No other
mods apart from decent shocks and tyres. I read somewhere 13psi is possible
without reliability worries, however my drive shaft complained after a while
with some vibration, on reverting back to normal pressure the symptom is not
there.

 

You want to know anything about tuning the Red Block turob volvo engine,
then have a look at the forums at www.turbobricks.com and yes there is a B20
with a 16v head convertion and a bug turbo running 950bhp (its a drag racer)
doing 7's in the 1/4.

The volvo fuel system (LH2.4) found on some of the cars can also cope with
up to 30% larger than stock injectors without any other mods, and allows
lots more boost to be used, however the Turbos small and is done for at
14/15psi, but a 15g from an 850 turbo can be dropped in, and silly power
easy to get.
The volvo engines are good for 300bhp (crank and rods are strong), the
gearbox is the weak point.

Griz

 

i found this...


"Everton Biggs in West Palm Beach, Florida has a 1982 Volvo 245 that
runs 10.1 1/4 mile and has made 942rwhp on a B230FT 16V and a G-Force
5-speed. In fact he won the NHRA dyno shootout at englishtown with an
aenemic high 500hp pull."

 

Mention of Florida on this thread brings to mind my interest of a former
life - Corvairs. Here was an air cooled engine that a Florida outfit
forced to produce over 700hp some 35 years ago. They drove a "large"
turbo with the exhaust of a JATO unit, so it was strictly for dragging.
Obviously!

Had a friend who played with Corvairs (remember that the engine as about
the same size as the iron Volvo, at just under 2.4 liters) and got a
unit up to 30# boost, at which point one of the wrapped and otherwise
insulated exhaust manifolds turned soft and collapsed . . .

bob noble
Reno, NV, USA

 

30 lbs of boost in a corvair would have wiped
the grin off of ralph naders face...i would bet.....

 

No, I think he would have shook his head, and muttered, "Unsafe
at any boost".

 

yea...that is not much metal to "wrap around a tree"....
what was the big "beef"...fuel tank location on the corvair?

 

Caveat emptor - I haven't owned or driven a Corvair, so all my
statements come from reading about it. The Corvair was far ahead
of its time for an American car - unibody construction, four wheel
independent suspension. Very early model Corvairs supposedly had
a problem where the rear suspension was weak and could collapse
or cause spinouts. This was fixed in 1964, and the suspension
was redesigned in 1965 - the year that Nader's book was released.

However, by then the damage was done. I think Nader's desire to
be in the public eye is best indicated by his interview with
British comic Ali G - who made him look like a total git.

 

The problem with the early Corvair was in the design of the independent
rear suspension. There was no universal joint at the outer end of the
driveshaft, so suspension movement changed the camber that the rear tire
contacted the road greatly. Factor in the bias ply tires with sharp
corners, rear carrying much more weight than the front (requiring a
large tire pressure differential from front to rear for neutral
handling), and a suspension that tended to "jack up" the rear of the car
under cornering forces, and you had a recipe for sudden, uncontrollable
oversteer. Or the rear could jack so high that the sidewall was no the
road, causing the rim to dig in.

--
Mike F.
Thornhill (near Toronto), Ont.

NOTE: new address!!
Replace tt with t (twice!) and remove parentheses to email me directly.
(But I check the newsgroup more often than this email address.)