Volvo B5254T2 Tuning

We look at B5254T2 tuning and provide tips on the greatest upgrades. Volvo B5254T2 are popular tuning projects and with the ultimate uprated upgrades like a remap, turbo upgrades and camshafts you will substantially improve your driving enjoyment.

History of the Engine

Best B5254T2 parts

When talking about the best ultimate for your B5254T2 engine, we are going to focus that give the biggest return for your cash.

Significant gains can be made from cam upgrades. Altering the cam profile alters the intake and exhaust durations on the engine and can dramatically change the power band and power output.

Fast road cams normally push up the torque through the rpm band, you could sacrifice a little low down power but your high end rpm power will improve.

Competition cams, push up the high end rpm power band but as a result the car will not idle smoothly and low end power nearly always suffers.

On a road car must carefully try to match your power band to your driving style.

You'll never have thought a Race camshaft is a pleasure to live with when driving around busy urban areas.

Each engine responds better to less aggressive cam durations so set your engine up on a rolling road.

The engine timing and fuelling also have a large bearing on the power gains you'll achieve.

A longer valve duration can alter the power band and on most engines the exhaust and intake durations do not need to match, although most cams and tuners use matched pairs there are some advantages to extending the intake or exhaust durations.

Please watch TorqueCars Video tutorial on car tuning. And be sure to subscribe and support our new channel.

Stages of Tune

Stage 1 mods: Intake headers, Drilled & smoothed airbox, Remaps/piggy back ECU, Panel air filters, Fast road camshaft, Sports exhaust manifold.

Stage 2 mods: Ported and polished head, Fast road cam, high flow fuel injectors, Sports catalyst & performance exhaust, fuel pump upgrades, induction kit.

Stage 3 mods: Competition cam, Crank and Piston upgrades to alter compression, Engine balancing & blueprinting, Adding or Upgrading forced induction (turbo/supercharger), Internal engine upgrades (head flowing porting/bigger valves), Twin charging conversions.

Mapping should help to release the full potential of all the tuning parts you've fitted to your B5254T2.

It will usually give around 30% more power on turbocharged vehicles and 15% on NASP engines, but you mileage will vary depending on the tuning parts you've done and the condition of your engine.

It is the main goal to any tuning task to shove more air into each cylinder

Headers carry the air from the filter and allow it to be fed into the engine and mixed with fuel.

The bore size, shape and flow rate of the Headers can make a noticeable improvement to fuel atomisation and engine efficiency on the B5254T2.

I usually find intake headers are crying out for aftermarket tuning parts, although a few manufacturers provide reasonably good intake headers.

Fitting big valve kits, carrying out port matching and head flowing will also raise torque, and importantly will allow you to get a better torque increase on other modifications.

Turbo upgrades

NASP engines need quite a lot of work when you add a turbo, so we have a separate guide to help you take into account the pros and cons of going this route on your eeee

The more air to get into an engine, the more fuel it can burn and uprating the induction with a turbocharger upgrade makes massive power gains.

If an engine is turbo charged upgrades are going to make more power and you will discover turbo charged engines are built with strengthened components.

There are common areas of failure for every engine, with some being over specified and some only able to handle stock power

It is important to find these limits and upgrade to more solid crank and pistons to handle the power.

We see many people spending a loads of money on turbo charger upgrades on the B5254T2 only to see the engine throw a rod when it's completed.

Large upgraded turbochargers commonly suffer low end lag, and small turbochargers spool up quickly but won't have the top end engines power gains.

Thankfully the range of turbo units is always increasing and we now see variable vane turbo units, where the vane profile is altered according to speed to lower lag and increase top end power.

Twin scroll turbo units divert the exhaust flow into 2 channels and push these at differently designed vanes in the turbo charger. They also increase the scavenging effect of the engine.

You'll commonly see there is a limit in the air flow sensor AFM/MAF on these engines when considerably more air is being sucked into the engine.

We see 4 bar air sensors coping with quite large power gains, whereas the OEM air sensor limited performance at a much lower level.

Adding a supercharger or additional turbo will make large performance gains, although more complex to configure. We have a twincharger performance adding guide if you want to read more.

Fuelling

When you increase the torque you will need to uprate to the fuel system.

More torque needs more fuel. It is important to over specify your injectors flow rate.

As a rule of thumb add 20% when specifying an injector, this allows for injector deterioration and allows a bit of spare capacity should the engine need more fuel.

We think this one is common sense, but you'll need to match your fuel injector to the type of fuel your car uses as well.

All the following flywheel power targets will assume an injector duty cycle of 80% and a base of 58 psi of fuel pressure at idle.

4 Cylinder turbocharged engines

• 58 PSI 340cc/min 200hp
• 58 PSI 511cc/min 300hp
• 58 PSI 682cc/min 400hp
• 58 PSI 1022cc/min 600hp

5 Cylinder turbocharged engines

• 58 PSI 273cc/min 200hp
• 58 PSI 409cc/min 300hp
• 58 PSI 545cc/min 400hp
• 58 PSI 818cc/min 600hp

4 Cylinder NASP engines

• 58 PSI 285cc/min 200hp
• 58 PSI 426cc/min 300hp
• 58 PSI 568cc/min 400hp
• 58 PSI 853cc/min 600hp

4 Cylinder supercharged engines

• 58 PSI 312cc/min 200hp
• 58 PSI 468cc/min 300hp
• 58 PSI 625cc/min 400hp
• 58 PSI 937cc/min 600hp

Exhaust

You may need to upgrade your exhaust if your current exhaust is actually causing a restriction.

On most factory exhausts you'll find your flow rate is still good even on modest power gains, but when you start pushing up the power levels you will need to get a better flowing exhaust.

Sports exhausts increase the flow of gases through the engine.

But if your exhaust is too big, ie: over 2.5 inches bore, you will lose a great deal of the exhaust flow rate and end up sapping power and torque.

Common exhaust restrictions are traced to the catalyst installed, so adding a freer flowing high performance alternative will help avoid this restriction.

Weak spots Issues & problem areas on the

The engines, if regularly serviced and maintained, are generally very reliable and have few issues.

Regular oil changes are vital on the , particularly when the engine has been modified and is putting down more power than the manufacturer intended.

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

We need your help improving this article, so please send us your feedback in the comments box below and pass on any tips, points or facts we have wrong or have not 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 guides and tips are kept up to date.

Please Check out my YouTube channel, we're regularly adding new content...

Click to accept YouTube Cookies & Play.

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.

If you liked this page please share it with your friends, drop a link to it in your favourite forum or use the bookmarking options to save it to your social media profile.