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The red 1986 745 build

The steel for the rear brakes arrived a few weeks ago:)
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I added some welds to the parking brake stoppers
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Got all of it fit up to check if it was correct, managed to not break a single tap whilst creating the m10 threads, although the stress in the steel was noticable:-P
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Got started on the aluminium dust shields (2mm thick sheet)
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These turned out pretty good, just need to make a tool to roll the edge, I have some bearings and 3d printer v-wheels so a solution should be easily made. I'll just have to now make the attachment for the brake shoes and get them sandblasted tonight ready for paint
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The front dust shields have also been made to approximate size, I'm just waiting to finish my 3d printer enclosure to be able to create certain parts in abs without warping of the material, to create the original seal surrounding the hub's bearing
 
A few weeks ago I sold off my second intercooler and tubing kit and exchanged it for all of the silicon hoses I'll be needing for the turbo engine, only the cooling silicone left to go.
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With the new wheels a spare had to also be sourced, so I got one of these 17 inch v60r spares on the advise of Lankku.
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I also got around to sandblasting and welding up the last bits for the rear brakes, so the parking brake was now part of the assembly:)
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With a very warm autumn day, I got onto the process of bolting it all on, and hoping I got my tolerances right
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Starting with the parking brake cable replacement for the correct type for my new setup, which required this little ziptie trick to get the pin into place
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I was in luck and everything received a bit of love from the torque wrench and loctite. The aluminium dust shields required a few changes so those will follow soon
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For the rear brake lines I mirrored the original design from the fuel tank side, and connected it up after a new connection was added to the copper line. New brackets will be installed as soon as I receive my rivet nut tool:nod:
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Your project is coming along quite nicely!
Thanks!

What pads are you using with the XC90 brakes?
I'm currently running the oem pads on the calipers, as the size of rotors should keep heat to a minimal and bite is decent. I'll be looking at printing airducts from the fog light splitter I have laying around to add some cooling, and might invest in EBC pads and rotors as they are available, but only if the oem's start to fade
 
Finally march again, so I got the car back from storage, and immediately put it on the dyno with a fresh tune I worked out at home during the winter. Great thanks for klr142 for providing his mappings, they helped a lot in getting it worked out!

I switched to more appropriate 218cc ev6 injectors off my brothers second b6304, and burned a chip for a e-fan enabled tune to work with the 984 casing I had laying around. I ended up making 135whp at 190Nm, which suprised me greatly, pretty stoked on this last hurray for the N/A engine of this chassis. It will be sold off, or end up in another project eventually:)


Dyno plot below, without lambda unfortunately, as we couldn't get it to work with the volvo S shaped exhaust tip, which I will change soon. Pretty nice and smooth exept for the start around 2000 rpm, possibly an issue with idle/temperature enrichment and the high overlap of the K-cam. I might slightly modify that still, as wel as raise base idle rpm a bit to 8-900, but all in all the tune starts and idles nice, and is well behaved.
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To repeat a small summary of the setup for reference:
10.3:1 b230k with stock 530 head
kg004 aka k camshaft
buchka wasted spark
218cc ev6 injectors
bigger J-pipe with turbo exhaust system
Chipped lh2.4 (own tune)
 
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The fixlist

In anticipation of what it coming for the car, I got myself a turbo gauge with a Dave Barton front, ready for boost
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The car itself received a thorough cleanup after storage, and I decided to get it back to classy, by getting rid of the stickers, and cleaning up the look by doing an antenna delete:oogle:
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Next up fix the 50% ackermann and put it back to 100% where it belongs with the stiffer sidewall
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If you run these, clamp and weld in place to avoid movement, and torque to the specified spec for the stonger bolts they come with. Volvo spec will make these go loose on you due to the difference in bolt grade!
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I also use the winter to make up these ezk chipping boards, which do not interfere with the chips already on the ezk like those of others. A few demo's are out, and after a solid bit of testing, I'll start selling them to those interested.
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Next up, longer brake lines for the xc90 conversion, and a little shuffle of the brakelines. I now moved to RR, FF split on the junction block, as that felt safer. I put the front of the junction block to the rear brakes as I read that the bores on that end are smaller. My ABS booster has equal pistons sizes, so that should now result in the correct bias. From testing the system, it appears to be correct now.
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Whilst bleeding the system, I also got to installing my KL racing braided clutch line, as the stock line was slightly expanding under the sachs racing cover plate. I even had enough dot 5.1 left to bleed both of my mountainbikes, rad:-P
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Turbo time

From my engine building thread, I finally finished the turbo engine, ditching the twin turbo's for a single 13c for now, with a custom 18t for the future after run in
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It left my room in all its glory after 2 years
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And received some vaseline loving to get the automatic transmission support bushing out
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I made a little wooden jig to get the whiteblock internal, redblock external m90 transmission rear flange of to get to the seal and replaced it
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The shifter seal also got refreshed
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Along with all other seals
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The lever balljoint also got replaced as well as its counterpart and shimmed by 4mm for the dogdish flywheel I'm using
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Old engine came out, as did the old trans, heading for slovakia after a re-seal to Simon, along with all other goodies for his turbo project
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The flywheel and clutch look mint still, given the trashing it receives, pretty good for a little sandblast flywheel cleanup before install
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P.O. of my m90 internals hit the front of the splines where the pilot rides with a hammer as it appears, so I spent an hour carefully getting it back to spec with a diamond file:grrr:
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The new engine received the usual coolant bypass at the back of the head, to save the heater core, and to make the back of the head run cooler, due to the blocked port that used to go to the carb manifold in early b230's
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And it's in
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Only two casualties, due to me having to take the engine out twice past the grill retainers, with the crane not being on it's longest setting and the head hitting my expensive wasted spark ignition module, due to me not removing it like an idiot:roll:
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I quickly put in oil, cranked it without spark until it made pressure shown by the banjo on top of the turbo, and used the old NA tune for now, with the NA intake to get a first start going. In short, it lives!
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Next up, get the air filter, maf and intercooler tubing made up
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First drive

Since the previous video of the car running was still on the N/A injectors and map, I got a fresh 148 EZK ready with buchka spark and remapped my 984 Motronic ecu to the stage 1 turbo mapping me and Redblockpowered offer:-P
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I also got the MAF wiring extended to move it to the other side next to the turbo
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The ignition module got a new bracket to move it to the drivers side strut support to prevent future issues with head's bashing it on the way in, so a little rewire and bracket and it sits in a much better position now.
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Whilst on my bracketry adventures, I got the funk out, and made up this very tight fitting bracket for my 2x2 coil, to mount in where the original distributor went for maximum stealth. It also retains the seal in the back of the head:)
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The grill support brackets I wrecked on the way in got a little epoxy and fillet, and are now suprisingly strong again. If they don't hold, I can always get a new set.
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With that fixed, the intercooler got installed, a little cutting required, and two holes in the radiator support. Rubber couplers are used in between, and keep in in place isolated from the frame, the lower bracket will follow soon and will tie in the stock intercooler mountings.
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I got lucky and found the perfect tube to extend my downpipe with, and got the exhaust sorted as well
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The old exhaust side on the turbo I originally installed got replaced with this mint one I managed to get from a friend who's upgraded to a 15g. Another weak point removed, this should do much better:cool: Whilst under the car again I added these plummer seals to the shifter, which tightened up the shift nicely, as the fork was slightly wider, and the o-ring from the bushing kit had perished.
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Thanks to my dad I got access to a bead roller and worked out the intercooler piping to perfect lengths, after ditching the thin chinese couplers for Silicone Hoses versions of the same bends, to take the abuse.
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I love the look of my engine bay now, nice and clean!
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Since the motor sounded like it ran in to piston slap at the first run in, I got the boroscope out and inspected the bores. Not perfect, but I'll take it.
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With the safety of the block confirmed, I ran it in. The slap dissapeared, coolant bled well, all good. Next up reshimming, swapping from the spare X cam to a T cam, retorqueing the stronger head bolts and putting in new seals on both ends.
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Faith restored, I went on the first drive, it makes nice noises with the pod filter and stronger spring in the recirc valve, and pulls well.
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Unfortunately, I did not reach my 50km goal for break-in, as the car started to smell of oil, my PVC print for the crankcase breather had split (Overtorqued it like a dummo), making a big mess, and the car stall on decel. Made it home, got it torn out, and replaced it with the tried and true TB breather mod. I will make another print, this time in PA12 nylon, just to try, it should work, I think:roll: Science!
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I also heared a hard ticking sound after the drive home, fearing rod knock, it scared me plenty. Turns out I never tightened the water pump pulley bolts, or my shim plate made it come undone. Either way, when I tightened them the sound went away, luckily I have a spare and will be swapping it in, since this one took alot of abuse on the bearings.
 
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Engine ready for first 500km

Since I had my old pre-painted water pump left, which was different in pulley size from the volvo 360 unit I had previously, I mounted it to make sure the pump was good again. I chose aluminium spacer plates over steel for this one, just to make sure it tightens up to the pulley correctly. The old pump for sure took a beating, the bearings could be heard when spinning it by hand, for a almost new unit.
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I also ran into my throttle being off from the last time I drove the car, turns out several throttle cable brackets exist, so that one got swapped for the one on the old engine
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The notorious oil seal of doom got me on the drain pipe, so I took the turbo clamp off once more, along with all other stuff keeping it from rotating and got it sorted.
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I finally got to finalize the run in accel/decel procedure, and got to replacing the break in oil. Apart from cuts from the filter after using the tin can opener, no steel bits or large non-ferrous chunks, with only a little coal from it running a bit rich initially. Turns out my EZK board does not work yet, and will cause a rich condition with the chipped ecu as my EZK is a different model than the chips make it to be.
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Whilst replacing the plugs I got the compression tester and boroscope out, and inspected the cylinders. Walls still look great.
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The compression test ended up showing great correspondence between cylinders:
Cyl1: 180psi
Cyl2: 172psi
Cyl3: 180psi
Cyl4: 172psi

I'm still suspect of a little issue, possibly to do with the pod filter in front of the MAF, as my car stalls when slowing down from boost, and then runs fine afterwards. If I slow down more gently, it does not die, I also re-filled the fuel tank, that didn't solve the problem. The PCV also returns in front of the turbo, so I might briefly try venting to atmosphere to see if it is crank pressure related with my b20 oil cap with a breather mounted on top, as I have removed that currently. Apart from that, time to add miles!
 
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Sort sort sort

With the engine now broken in, and doing well on the LPT 0.3bar setting, I got around to doing all of the sorting required to get it inspected. Starting off by these intercooler brackets, with rubber supports on the intercooler side, annoyingly the stock intercooler bosses are not in the center, but it will do:-P
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I also sorted the stalling issue, it turned out not to be the pcv system, but a bad throttle body. When compared the throttle body on the old engine was much better, so that got a shine up and got installed:) Now the issue was only present when slowing down from boost, leading me down a path of debugging, figuring out my chipping board still had a few issues. Since the chipset uses a 219 ezk bin instead of the original 148, it was running very rich resulting in the stalls due to load signal mismatch. I fixed my board, but decided to run the stock mappings for now, with the stock 148 ezk and de-immobalized 984 motronic, as that was my backup ecu set.
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Whilst tearing down the old engine for a re-fresh of the seals and timing drivetrain (will be for sale if the dutchies are interested in a 135whp redblock;-)), I discovered that the b230k pulley is also bigger, but will fit my b230fk waterpump. Interesting that these higher compression engines were given less water flow, but fortunate for me, that will allow me to put this pulley on the new engine to prevent waterpump cavitation. I also finally found a decent downpipe that wasn't cut trough where the catalitic converter mounts, like the 3 I had laying around, so I put the whole exhaust back to stock 940 turbo spec with a cat
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Since due to my 16V timing gears, that allow me to run a 24mm timing belt, the plastic cover did not fit anymore. I designed up some TPU spacers that will widen the original protection, keeping the dirt out, whilst squishing a bit for a good seal. The top has to still be completed, but hopefully it will it up nicely
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Now for the most dreaded job of the summer, the giant hole in the wheel well, along with the cracked paint revealing a sloppy bondo job
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First up, the rear pockets, which were previously repaired with a piece of steel siliconed into place. The seam was partly eaten away, so I had to cut out a lot, but it ended up being okay, and allowing me to keep the original rubber drain location
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The next thing to fix was the right side wheel wheel, which had clearly been previously repaired, but they only put a plate over the rust, instead of adressing it properly. A quick cut, drill and cleanup later (very happy with my new spot welding drill bit) and it cleaned up nicely
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A few plates and the section was back together in a nice coat of zinc chassis paint
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I then took out the nearly an inch thick piece of bondo, and decided given my panel beating skills to leave it as is with a good sand and paint. I also discovered that this side of the car has been painted 5 times, if I ever decide to paint this thing properly, it will all have to go back to metal for once:omg:
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A bit of sanding of the primer later, and a spray with motip autolack 14355, which was a suprising good match in comparison to the expensive color matched volvo 173-2 I previously bought, it looks a lot better again without the weird black corner
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Everything seems to be falling into place. I really like the progress of this build, and I can wait for it to be finished. By the way, you may consider checking HD wheels Spinout model in gloss black with red face because this mag will complement the color of your car.
 
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Thank you! Those wheels are pretty interesting looking, not necessarily my cup of tea, but a really cool option for a VIP style build. I might at some point get some 17x8 Steelies made up for a set of semi slicks if I get to that point, with a big 3d printed cap on them to make them look like the oem volvo 'omega' wheels, which are one of my favorite 80's wheel designs.
 
Registration unlocked!

In preparation for the inspection finished up my 3d printed cover extenders and glued them in place with loctite 401, which worked well, although 403 would be better for the high heat application. It was a pretty tight fit, at the bottom a little trimming was needed, but it hasn't made any marks on the cover yet
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Spent a tense couple of hours at the dutch DMV equivalent, and ended up going home with the new engine registered to the chassis. I got a few comments about the brakes being different and the suspension being altered, but after an inspection, they gave me the go ahead:)
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Since my dad's hometown was along the road from the inspection location, I payed the place a little visit
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In order to get an idea of how the car would do with some added boost I installed a simple narrowband gauge, to see if I was slightly in the ballpark, and not running out of fuel
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I also discovered that one of my spare old NA computers had the daughterboard inside, so I added a buchka board to it for my wasted spark and put in the stage 1 tune I sell along with Cameron (Redblockpowered). Since I slightly bumped compression I ran the 95RON tune, with 98RON fuel for safety. Additionally I answered a question I had for myself, the OEM daugherboard equipped ECU's do not run without a chip installed, so in case of the chip failing, no accidental knock should occur:-P
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As an excuse to do a little endurance testing on the new chips and boost control I installed, me and my brother took part in the rally organized by our motorsports association, going all across the Netherlands, including Assen TT circuit
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The 18T hybrid also got a new actuator bracket, ready to install after I get the 25 row oil cooler in, and find a conical 6cm3 housing for the TD04HL.
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Also got my new favorite picture with the car, more to come!
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Since I had some time left after the roadtrip, I decided to fix the alignment, as I noticed the new weight on the car gave it some toe out, instead of my usual 2mm toe in. Whilst under the car I also installed the caster correcting shims (1359607), I only dared to go with two as otherwise very little of the control arm was still in the second busing.
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It was pretty tight, but a ratchet strap solved my issue without having to pull on it all like a maniac:-P
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After a drive, I noticed that the shims were rubbing together making a audible noise, but the caster felt great. So for those planning on doing this mod, only run one shim with a later 390,5mm strut. My control arms are the old 385mm version, so I had to use 2 to get to the 396 of the optional taxi struts. I just decided to bite the bullet and ordered two of these from skandix, which should allow more adjustment, and fix my new noise.
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Quick reference from skandix for lengths:
Volvo 3530789 = Length 390,5mm for Standard Chassis
Volvo 3530790 = Length 385 mm for vehicles with 16" wheels
Volvo 3530791 = Length 396mm, genuine Accessory part
Volvo 6819079 = Length 388,5mm. Volvo Service part for vehicles with rubbing brakes. Caution: special bushings which are discontinued.
 
I went from 5? to around 7?, so we'll see what the adjustables allow.

Also just tried the blue kinugawa 10lbs bov spring, still stuck at around 13psi, so either a boost leak, which it does not appear to be since it spools and idles well, or the 13c is out of juice pushing through the Chinese intercooler. Dyno is planned in a month, so hopefully the air temperatures drop a bit by that time:p
 
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