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Dyno'd a ported 530 head with a T-cam and a 16T

DailyDriverMods

DailyDriverMods

Member
Joined
Aug 23, 2020
Location
Netherlands
I finally got around to put my car on the dyno today for polishing the MegaSquirt tune and producing some power numbers. These are crank-hp numbers from an eddy-brake dyno with rolling-resistance correction. Fuel was LPG this time, petrol torque and horsepower would typically be 5~10% higher. The T-cam carried on better than expected, it matches quite nicely with the ported 46/38 530 head. Turbo spoolup was a bit slow down low due to boost control shenanigans.

dyno LPG 16T 9-7-2023.jpg

This was done with the following setup:
- '91 B230F 8.8:1 CR
- Ported 530 head with 46/38 SS valves
- T cam 5* retarded
- KLRacing Intercooler (940)
- Stock intake manifold
- 16T-6-Angled @18PSI on an unported 90+ manifold
- 3" downpipe with 2.5" exhaust system (two mufflers)
- MS3x ECU

The power numbers themselves (263HP/402NM) aren't that impressive on their own but the wide powerband is better than expected, having 250hp+ from 4800rpm all the way till 6800rpm. Exactly what i was looking for with this setup. Now i'm kinda curious what this setup would do with a V-cam and a Pulsar G25-550 turbo...
 
hessam69 said:
From what I've seen here the gain from the k-jet manifold isn't worth the trouble fitting it.
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Ditto.... all that labor... in addition to welding on fuel injector bungs for absolutely minimal gains. Dyno plots were posted here not that long ago and the kjet intake didn't seem anywhere near as impressive as it has been touted to be. If I were going to swap an intake manifold in it would be something like the klracing intake.
 
Good job and good numbers. I'd be interested to hear why running LPG has a reduced power output VS. gasoline, as I understand LPG is pretty high octane. Loss of evaporative cooling properties of liquid fuel perhaps? Will you fit a better camshaft next? No doubt there's still more power to be made.

As for the K-Jet intake manifold (as I am fitting right now); it's more helpful the more power you make. ~200-250 WHP with great drive-ability and mid-range torque? The "F" manifold will do that easily. The more power you make, the more the "F" manifold will hold you back, encouraging you to keep raising the boost without too much further increase in mass air flow, but certainly with an increase in intake air heating, encroaching on the knock limit for pump gas users.

EDIT: I'm running the "V" camshaft as well, very happy with that upgrade. If you can't find a "V", the "A" is almost as good with just ~5 degrees less duration and half a millimeter lift.
 
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Oyvind Ryeng said:
Good job and good numbers. I'd be interested to hear why running LPG has a reduced power output VS. gasoline, as I understand LPG is pretty high octane. Loss of evaporative cooling properties of liquid fuel perhaps? Will you fit a better camshaft next? No doubt there's still more power to be made.

As for the K-Jet intake manifold (as I am fitting right now); it's more helpful the more power you make. ~200-250 WHP with great drive-ability and mid-range torque? The "F" manifold will do that easily. The more power you make, the more the "F" manifold will hold you back, encouraging you to keep raising the boost without too much further increase in mass air flow, but certainly with an increase in intake air heating, encroaching on the knock limit for pump gas users.

EDIT: I'm running the "V" camshaft as well, very happy with that upgrade. If you can't find a "V", the "A" is almost as good with just ~5 degrees less duration and half a millimeter lift.
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LPG can be pretty high octane, but here in the Netherlands LPG is a mix between propane and butane. Propane is high octane (~RON112) but butane is more like RON95. In the winter we get the good stuff here with an 80/20 propane/butane mix, but in the summer we get a mediocre mix that's about 20/80 propane/butane which is more like RON98~100.

The power loss is probably caused by the lack of evaporative cooling, it's dry gas injection. A few years ago i dyno'd the car when it was still NA on both petrol and LPG, the outcome was that LPG reduced torque by about ~5% and power by about 8%. LPG is also a slower burning fuel that seems to be producing less power at higher rpm's.

Regarding the K-Jet manifold, i've got one laying around but i'm still contemplating between that and the KLRacing manifold since it's quite a lot of work to adapt the K-Jet manifold. It would be nice to see what kind of performance uplift you get from wapping to the K-Jet one.

Cam choice.... The dyno graph shows that the T-cam currently offers enough airflow with the ported head for maximizing the 16T turbo. I could possibly scrape another 10hp out of it by tightening the wastegate but that's not really what i'm after. The low-down power and response of this setup is diesel-like whilst still revving out to 6800, very nice for daily driving. I've also got the A and V cam laying around for when i want to push more power, but a larger turbo will also be needed for that. I'll be sacrificing low-down torque and response with a larger cam and turbo, still contemplating if that's worth it to me. Higher peak numbers are nice but having a broad powerband is even nicer for a daily, even if that sacrifices 10~20hp up top. Idle smoothness and fuel consumption are also factors i'm looking at.

I'm doing some more dyno work this evening again, i'll try to get some performance numbers on petrol this time, that'll give a nice comparison to the LPG powered dyno run.

EDIT:
A week or 2 ago we (me and @Swedbrick) did a 0-60 run with dragy and it measured 6.5s. That was on a hot 32°C day (89.6°F) with a suboptimal launch, normal-ish 2nd gear shift and two people in the car, on LPG. Could be worse.
 
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TurboDutch said:
Sounds good :) are you using liquid or vapour injected lpg? Or cockring lpg? (last one seems unlickely)

Did you change something in timing? Coz on lpg you could benefit from sharper timing
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I digged a bit more into the timing tables. It seems like LPG doesn't need as much timing, in the 40~120kpa region at least. It will take more timing without knocking but that doesn't give any additional power, it won't hurt power either. LPG just seems like a very forgiving fuel. It doesn't care that much about mixture or timing, as long as it's in the ballpark you'll get the power. Petrol on the other hand... I'll do some extra dyno runs on LPG tomorrow evening where i'll add some timing in the 200~240kpa regions just to be sure.

This is the final result of today on petrol, 280hp/422nm, 6.5% more power and 5% more torque. It still reacted quite good to additional timing (the last 1 degree step i added gave an additional 8hp) but it was getting late and i didn't want to break it yet. I'm going on a vacation trip next week and the car has to do about 1500 miles then. Reliability and drivability was the main goal of these dyno sessions, boooring i know...

240 dyno petrol 16T.jpg

The green line is the correction for drivetrain losses and tyre/roller resistance, this is measured during coastdown after the run.

EDIT:
No, my LPG does not have a cockring :pat: It's vapour injected, liquid injection would do better (probably just as well as petrol) but there aren't any real aftermarket parts for that available unfortunately.

EDIT2:
Some pictures of the combustion chambers of the cylinder head, just to make clear that these aren't results from a stock head:

Yqa9s0yKtRoOo3AJgBHv3dT4.jpg

Slhk3HsXpKYYYXKQizvu4AP2.jpg

(second picture was made before the valve/bowl work was done)
 
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Just got some additional info for this thread. I recently swapped to a V-cam (timed straight up) and surprisingly the bottom end didn't really suffer compared to the T-cam with 5* of retard on the cam timing, idle quality also didn't really change. The mid-range feels quite a bit stronger on the highway, it doesn't need as much boost to produce the same amount of torque. Top-end feels the same as with the T-cam, but it revs a bit smoother. The 16T did need a bit of additional wastegate duty cycle to produce the same amount of boost as with the T-cam, probably due to the improved head flow and increased overlap.

The 16T is now serously bottlenecking the performance of the engine in the upper rev range, so i've decided to buy a new turbocharger since i quite like the V-cam so far. I went looking for something with a friendly pricetag and modern design for high efficiency and a broad operating range. Which should result in quick spoolup and a broad powerband.

In the end i went with a Pulsar 4849G, which is basically a budget friendly and high quality copy of the G25-550. I'm going to run the .72 dual V-band IWG housing with a V-band/T3 adapter so it can be mounted on the 90+ manifold with a bit of machining. This seemed like the easiest route to make things fit. The IWG housings on the G series look wayy nicer than the older Garret-style IWG housings and look more like the Mitsubishi TD04HL IWG housings. Which have proven to flow quite a lot for the size they are.

I'll keep you guys posted with progress and eventually dyno-data. :cheers: My expectation is that it would make 350hp at the crank without too much trouble, maybe a bit more. We'll see...
 
302ftw? said:
@DailyDriverMods Where did you get the head work done? Local shop or someone specific to the volvo community?
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The port/cc work was actually done at home with just a dremel, using a carbide burr and a flapper wheel. It was my first attempt at porting a cylinder head so i'm pretty happy with the result. It did take many hours of work since i wanted to do things slow and steady to avoid large differences across the chambers and other mishaps. Valve seat cutting and cylinder head shaving (pretty much all the machine work) was done by my brother. The turbo upgrade should really show if it flows as good as it looks, haven't had it flowbenched or anything like that. The only thing that's been checked is the combustion chamber volume to make sure the compression ratio is equal across all cylinders.
 
Really interested to see what gains you make with the 4849G. That turbo, and the Garret G25-550, gets a lot of praise online for having instant spool and a broad power band. Should hopefully be a winning combo on your motor!
 
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