I have a Volvo 850 T5. Current project: changing it back to a stock turbo from a badly done tuning failure. Now, I’m not any kind of an expert on these things, not by a long shot, so my cousin and his friend are the ones doing most of the work on it and I can’t tell you a lot about the technical side of things, but I thought there might be some interest in the story anyway.
Some previous owner installed a bigger turbo, I honestly don’t even know much about it other than “it’s bigger” and it’s got disgustingly bad welds on the part that connects to the exhaust, for example, and some of the hoses are like spaghetti and garden hose and generally a weird mess. A lot of it looks like some gorilla took up a hobby of tuning cars.
It was dynoed at 280 bhp, but the torque curve goes like “nothing… nothing… nothing… HERE; HAVE ALL THE TORQUE AT ONCE close to the rev limit”. So, it goes like a rocket, but only when making the motor scream. But since this is not a race car but a daily driver, I’d rather have the standard 210 horsepower and some torque available at low revs, too.
While we do this, we’re gonna fix some other stuff too. A better air filter (it had a cheap “tuning” filter that was too restrictive), a new straight muffler, all new belts and that kind of stuff.
I didn’t remember to take pictures of the horribleness that was the previous turbo job, but I did snap a couple random pics while I was at the garage, showing the stock turbo that was going in.
