Volvo V90 Tuning

"Tuning guide to the most effective Volvo V90 modifications."
The V90 is a good tuning project to execute. With the right mods your V90 can be transformed into an awesome motor.

We examine V90 tuning and summarise the greatest modifications for your car. Volvo V90s are popular tuning projects and with a few sensible modified parts you can greatly improve your driving opportunities.

Don't waste money, do your homework and follow our unbiased guides to each performance upgrade to avoid disappointment.

Don't just look at the peak power figures, you need to see the whole torque curve when determining if a mod is right for you V90.

The best power gains come from larger engine sizes. The more you start with the bigger the return on investment so engine swaps are good value mods for small engined cars.

Tuning modifications.

These mods parts are usually installed by our members, decide how far you wish to go in your tuning project before you start.

Getting the right tuning mods for your planned usage of the car is a time and money saver. Stage 3 motor sport parts just don't work well on the road making the car difficult to drive.

Stage 1 modifications: Alloy wheels, Remap, Suspension upgrade (drop 30-40mm), Lighter flywheel, Panel air filter, Sports exhaust.

Stage 2 modifications: fuel pump upgrades, high flow fuel injector, Ported and polished head, Power/Sport clutch, Fast road cam.

Stage 3 modifications: Sports gearbox, Internal engine upgrades (pistons/head/valves), Adding or upgrading forced induction (turbo/supercharger), Engine balancing, Competition cam.

Peak power is all well and good but for a daily driven car you need a wide power band and perhaps extending the rev range.

Power mods.

• Petrol:
  2.0L i4 (140kW–235kW) (T4 T5 T6)
• Diesel:
  2.0L i4 (110kW–173kW) (D3 D4 D5)
• Hybrid:
  2.0L i4 petrol (234kW–235kW + 64kW)

In this article we shall give an overview and introduction to the best upgrades for your car, but we'd encourage you to spend some time on the site looking into the details of each type of performance upgrade.A fast road camshaft often proves to be one of the best NASP power mods you can do with a single part fitted to your engine.

It improves the intake and exhaust durations and increases the power if done right. Ideally you'd add other mods and finish up with a reflashed ECU. We'd also caution you not to go with a motor sport cam as this upsets the engines idling and general town driving characteristics.

When pushing up the power you will need to uprate to the fuelling. More power needs more fuel.

Using high octane fuel is another option if you find you are suffering from pinking or premature ignition on your Volvo project after fitting other tuning mods. To get sufficient fuel you may need to increase the injectors on your engine.

A fuel pump will only deliver a finite amount of fuel, so you may need to uprate this if your injectors are demanding more fuel.

Intake and Exhaust Tuning.

The next area for modification is the intake and exhaust. Please note that WE DO NOT RECOMMEND INDUCTION KITS, unless you have tuned your car with over 30 percent more power and are finding that the standard air intake has become the bottleneck.

For most V90 engines TorqueCars would suggest you just go with a washable panel air filter. On heavily tuned engines and turbo vehicles an induction kit will help release the power providing you address the problem of supplying cold air.

Sports exhausts will certainly help air flow from the engine but avoid an exhaust that is too wide or you could will reduce the flow rate. Stick to 1.5 to 2.5 inches for best results.

Head work including a gas flow (ported and polished) and 3 or 5 angle valve job will really help to release the potential of the engine. In nearly all cases of V90 tuning your clutch will start to suffer and this needs an upgrade - read our tips on clutches for more information. The best mods in our opinion for your V90 are Remapping or piggy back ecu, fast road cam and air intake and exhaust.

NASP engines do not achieve big power gains if you remap them, unless you have done extensive modifications. With turbocharged engines this is another story. A remapped turbo will give impressive power gains and fully release the potential power of the engine.

We've also come across some owners experimenting with twincharging applications and making some impressively high power hikes.

The most phenomenal power gains for NASP engines usually involve the addition of forced induction. Turbos are generally harder to add than a supercharger. With a turbo the boost curve is related exponentially to the engine speed making it harder to map.

The nice proportional boost and rpm characteristics of the supercharger make them more straightforward to map. To cope with forced induction you will usually need to decrease the compression ratio of the engine .

Handling/Suspension upgrades

Many V90 owners uprate the handling of their cars with coilover suspension kits as a priority, this will certainly increase your enjoyment of the car.

If you set the toe out to 1 to 2 degrees on the front, and add some negative camber then cornering will radically improve.

We would go to a maximum drop of 26mm - 35 mm on most models. You risk rubbing on the arches if you go lower than this.

Alloy wheel upgrades.

The benefits of alloy wheels include lowering your unsprung weight and more efficient brake cooling via the extra air flow they allow. Further improvements can be made to your cars handling with the addition of directional tread pattern tyre. The downside to large alloys on your V90 is that you alter your effective final drive ratio so this will have a negative effect on acceleration.

Because of this we would advise sticking to a maximum wheel size of 18 inches, although we know some of our members have gone larger than this with no problems.

There is a more updated version of this Volvo V90 Tuning article on TorqueCars.com.

For more information on Tuning your car please join us in our friendly forum where you can discuss V90 options in more detail with our V90 owners. It would also be worth reading our unbiased Volvo tuning articles to get a full grasp of the benefits and drawbacks of each modification.

Please help us to improve this article, we need your feedback in the comments box below which is there for you to pass on any tips, pointers or facts we might not have covered..

We really like hearing from our readers, and hearing about which upgrades were the most effective for them, it helps us improve our recommendations and articles to reflect current trends in modifications and ensures that our EZ engine guides and tips are kept up to date and we remind our visitors of our non profit non commercial approach to running this site.

All comments received are used to improve the accuracy of our site and these articles which are continually amended, tweaked and updated.

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This article is flagged for an update, so please pass on specific tips below that I can include. All articles, and content was written by me, Waynne Smith TorqueCars founder. Some outlines are just too general so I appreciate your feedback and suggestions. This entry was filed under Volvo. You can leave a response below or join our forum to discuss this article and car modification in detail with our members.

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