MENUTuning the Volvo S60
"Tuning guide to the best Volvo S60 modifications."
The S60 is a great car modification project to fill your spare time. Think carefully and research S60 tuning to avoid making the usual expensive mistakes we typically .
Handling/Suspension upgrades
Many S60 owners uprate the handling of their cars with uprated suspension kits as a priority, this will certainly increase your enjoyment of the car.
We found that most S60 factory suspension setups need tweaking, a few degrees of toe out for cornering or toe in for stability, 1 to 2, and slight negative camber will substantially improve your cornering and handling.
We would go to a maximum drop of 23mm - 40 mm. on most models. You risk compromising your handling if you go lower than this.
Top end power should be your overall aim with a nice fat wide peak torque band.
Smaller engines do not provide much of a return in terms of power so start with a bigger engine. Engine swaps are a good option if you have a small engine size.
Engine tuning mods.
The following modified upgrades are usually fitted by our members, decide how far you want to push your car before you get going.
Getting the correct grade of tuning modifications for your planned usage of the car is vital. Stage 3 competition upgrades just don't work well on the road making the car difficult to drive.
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How to tune your car
- Improve the handling
Focus on Suspension improvements, such as coilovers and make sure the bushings are in good order and that the alignment is correct. Then focus on improving the brakes, with a big disk brake conversion kit and fast road brake pads.
- Remove restrictions
Focus on the intake and exhaust with filters being the common point of restriction in a tuned car. Intercoolers may also become restrictive on turbo engines so this may also need to be uprated.
- Burn more fuel & air
Increase the fuelling so it matches the air coming into the engine. The ratio is important so you need to improve the fuel pump and injectors, so the head mods, big valve conversions, fast road camshafts and forced induction upgrades extra supply of air is adequately met.
- Test and replace any weak parts
Weak areas are commonly the clutch, the turbocharger and pistons and crankshaft in a highly tuned engine. Makes sure these components will cope with your power aspirations.
- The Tune or Remap
A cars ECU controls the fuel, timing, spark and even the turbo in some cases, so to fully extract your gains you should remap the car last and this will fully release the power. Some cars are easy to map, and others require piggyback ECU's or aftermarket ECU's but this is the most vital step of your tuning project.
Modifying to Stage 1:
Suspension upgrade (drop 23mm - 40 mm.), Panel air filter, Alloy wheels, Sports exhaust, Lighter flywheel, Remap.
Modifying to Stage 2:
fuel pump upgrades, high flow fuel injector, Fast road cam, Ported and polished head, Power/Sport clutch.
Modifying to Stage 3:
Adding or upgrading forced induction (turbo/supercharger), Sports gearbox, Competition cam, Internal engine upgrades (pistons/head/valves), Engine balancing.
Peak power is nice in motorsport but for a daily driven car you need a long power band and perhaps extending the rev range.
The whole aim of our articles is to give a starting base of modding upgrades and point you in the right direction, our forum is the place to go for detailed advice and tips on your car tuning project, the best sport parts and all aspects of modding cars.Fast road cams offer one of the biggest performance gains for your money as far as a solitary uprated upgrades goes on a NASP engine.
It maximises the intake and exhaust flow and increases the power if done right. Ideally you'd add other mods and finish up with a reflashed ECU. TorqueCars would caution you not to go with a competition cam as this affects the engines idling and general town driving characteristics.
You will need to ensure that the engine is not starved of fuel so will need to look at the fuelling.
Using high octane petrol is another option if you find you are suffering from detonation or premature ignition on your Volvo project after fitting other modifications. Upgraded injectors will enable you to supply sufficient fuel to the 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.
Now we move on to the intake and exhaust and ensure proper flow through the engine. Please note that WE DO NOT FIND IMPROVEMENTS WITH INDUCTION KITS, unless you have tuned your car with over 30 percent more power and are finding that the standard air intake has become a limitation.
Derestricting the air flow into the engine is a primary goal of tuning so get a freer flowing air filter if you find that the car is running lean. Induction kits can sound sporty but due to the warm air in the engine bay they will not do much to increase power and actually rob you of power.
Sports exhausts equal out the flow of air through the engine. But if your exhaust pipe is too big, ie: over 2.5 inches bore, you will lose much of your flow rate and end up losing power and torque.
Head work including a gas flow and 3 or 5 angle valve job will really help to release the potential of the engine. In nearly all cases of S60 tuning your clutch will start to slip and this needs to be uprated - read our article on clutches for more information. The best mods in our opinion for your S60 are fast road camshaft, remap, induction and exhaust, suspension.
Remaps offer massive power gains on all turbo charged cars. On NASP engines the benefits are doubtful. However a remap on a NASP engine will help unleash the potential if you have done a lot of mods. Despite the large cost involved adding forced induction to a NASP engine will give large power gains. Turbos are usually harder to add than a supercharger. With a turbo the boost curve is related exponentially to the engine speed making it more challenging to map.
Superchargers however will give a boost which is correlating to engine speed so is simpler. To cope with forced induction you will usually need to decrease the compression ratio of the engine .
Alloy wheel upgrades.
Alloy wheels will help the brakes cool down and are generally lighter than steel ones. Don't forget that your choice of rubber greatly affects your cars grip and handling. It is not worth compromising performance with cheap tyres when you can buy directional tread pattern performance tires.Large S60 alloys can decrease performance. If you get big alloys you will be changing your final drive ratio.
Although some people have gone larger than this we would stick to a 16 inch rim size as the maximum.
For more information on Tuning your car please join us in our friendly forum where you can discuss S60 options in more detail with our S60 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 improve these tips by sending us your feedback in the comments box below.
We love to hear what our visitors have got up to and which mods work best for them on each model of car. Comments are used to improve the accuracy of these articles which are continually updated.
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