New projects

It seems kind of odd announcing new projects after spring break considering the amount of free time I have is significantly less, but since the events that inspired these projects occurred during spring break this is how it must be.

Inspiration:

Over spring break a few friends and I did some racing. We all had a good time, but I noticed a few things. My car despite having the heater on full bore still managed to gain some significant amount of heat even after we had stopped. We all know heat is the enemy of both engines and transmissions because the oil in both breaks down and causes parts to fail early. The following projects address this.

Project 1: Instrumentation

It's no secret that I like information and that new cars with very view gauges upset me because I like to know exactly what my car is doing. This is particularly important when driving the car hard. Hard cornering can cause a drop in oil pressure as the pump becomes starved. Cornering is one thing my car impressed the group with. Temperatures are obviously of concern as mentioned above. The car has a lot of vacuum operated and controlled systems maintain the correct level is important for peak performance levels. Fuel pressure must be maintained in order for the sustained performance. The following gauges are going to be added:

• Water temp
• Transmission temp
• Fuel pressure
• Oil pressure
  
• Boost/Vac
  

Project 2: Cooling

Heat is a tricky subject. Too little is bad, and too much is worse. Overheating various components reduces their lifespan dramatically. When excessive heat forms in the engine the head can warp leading to expensive machining and repair costs. Excessive heat in an automatic transmission leads to varnishes, hardened seals, and ultimately a slipping transmission also known as junk. I will be adding an auxiliary transmission cooler to augment the stock cooler which is built into the radiator. By adding the extra cooling capacity the reliance on the stock cooler and the temp of the engine is reduced. This will also allow for longer and harder runs. In addition to the temp gauge addition above an "idiot light" will be added to provide an early warning as to when the trans is getting hot. This light will be located in the stock instrument cluster.

Project 3: Filtration

Metal particulate is harmful to mechanical systems. If this weren't the case engine oil wouldn't be filtered. Most transmissions are filtered as is The Silver Bullet. The Chiseled Brick on the other hand doesn't have a filtration system. There is an internal filter that is non-serviceable, and with more than 210,000 miles I'm going to write that off. Along with the cooler a filter will be added to extend the life of the transmission.

It never ends

As with most projects that I start I always end up finding another. This time was no exception. While I had the wheels off my car I decided to take a look at the flexible brake lines and was horrified to find that the two lines that went to my front calipers had huge gashes in them.

I figured that since I was on such a performance kick and the front OEM rubber lines were $50 a pop from the dealer that I would upgrade to stainless steel braided lines.

Replacing the front lines was easy, it took a little PB nut blaster but they came off with out any major trouble. This sadly was not the case with the rear lines.

I ended up having to fabricate 3 of 4 hard lines for the rear of the car after trying for 3 days to get the flexible lines off with no avail. This required a bubble flare tool which was harder to get than I expected, but a small auto shop near me came through and got it with minimal fuss.

These are the lines I needed to remake.

Rear sway bar

Continuing our handling upgrade we have the rear sway bar. This does the same thing as the front bar. Now it is important to note that Volvo did not put a rear sway bar on the 855s with a naturally aspirated engine. This little upgrade was left for the Turbo, T5-R, and R versions of the 855 line up. The trailing arms are the same between the different models so the mounting points are there which makes this upgrade as easy as the front if not easier.

Again IPD came through with good directions and it was only my shear idiocy that made me attempt to put the one end of the bar in the wrong spot which it obviously didn't belong. This job only took an hour or two and that was mainly because of stubborn bolts.

Front sway bar

So as I said a long time ago there aren't a whole lot of engine upgrades that I can easily do with a naturally aspirated engine so that leaves visual (cosmetic) and handling upgrades. One large component in vehicle handling is the sway bar also known as the anti-roll bar (further explanation).

This job was pretty straight forward the directions that IPD included were excellent for the most part, a little hicup now and then but overall the job was easy. I took my time, so I forget how long it actually took but I know it wasn't a multiple day project. I also took the time to replace my end links again an easy job.

My only complaint with the IPD links is that they are harder to tighten than the OEM ones because griping the stud is harder since there is no torx insert on them which the OEM features.


Since I'm paranoid when working under the car I had it supported at 4 points. Two jack stands on the front lift points and two hydraulic jacks on the center jacking points. The blue scissor jack was used to lower the rear of the sub frame.






Look at that she lowered just fine. You can also see the old sway bar with it's stupid non replaceable bushings.










Here we can see the new bar and end link, so pretty.

Upgrades

I must apologize for the lack of updates to the site here. I completed all of the upgrades that I had wanted to before I came back to RPI. By the end of the week I'll have a lot more to show here for your viewing pleasure.

A few updates

Alright I've got a few updates from good ol' Michigan. First, I finally bought the IPD sway bar kit. I plan on installing this over the course of my winter break. Everything that I've read says it should only take a few hours, but since my track record isn't that good I'll say I need a day or two.

Second, I'm due yet again for an oil change as The Chiseled Brick has hit 208,000 miles. I doubt I'll get to it this weekend though.

Finally, my car is completely covered in salt. If only a brilliant chemist could figure out a way to make salt a anti-rusting compound while retaining the deicing abilities.

Strut brace installed

Well apparently the factory brace isn't designed for cars before the 1996 model year. All this really meant was that I needed to modify a bracket and reroute a harness on the driver's side strut tower. The whole process took about an hour since I had to make a trip to Lowe's and Autozone once I realized that I needed to make some modifications. I didn't realize this until I had undone all the nuts first though.



This is how the strut tower on the driver's side looked before the strut brace.










This is how it looks now. I unplugged that wiring connector and rerouted the one end back underneath a wire tunnel on the strut tower and back up to where it is shown in that picture. Since I modified the bracket that it was originally attached to I zip tied it to the ABS module and what was left of the bracket.

Strut Brace

As in my last post I mentioned that I was going to put a strut brace on the front of my car in addition to a few other performance modifications. Today ladies and gents is when I'm going to put the strut brace on the chiseled brick.

There are a lot of different strut braces out there, but probably the two most common are the OEM and OMP braces. I went with the OEM brace. I was a little concerned when I got it because it had some dents in it, but the guys on the Volvo Speed Forums lent me a hand.

Here is the plan. I'm going to take a quick drive around the apartment complex and see how the car handles before the brace is installed then repeat the same loop when the brace is installed.

Performance

Volvo's that are have NA (naturally aspirated) engines are pretty limited in their performance abilities. That is unless you do some major work which typically involves swapping the engine and tranny out, something I don't plan on doing. The one area that can be improved is the handling, and to be completely honest I almost prefer better handling to raw power. Now again you can go crazy in this area too. Right now my car has a 100% stock suspension from a 1995+ 850 since the dealer was an idiot. So technically I could replace just about every component with performance components (shocks, springs, control arms, bushings, ect...).

I will be replacing the following components:

• Sway bars (front and rear)
• Sway bar end links

I'm also putting a strut brace in the front and possibly the rear.