Volvo XC60 Tuning

"Thank you for reading my XC60 tuning tips"

We review XC60 tuning and summarise the best mods that offer good returns when tuned and with carefully picked parts you can definitely maximise your driving enjoyment.

A very practical and well designed SUV the XC60 has wide appeal and is versatile enough to fulfil all your car needs.

The XC60 is popular among our members for tuning projects With the right mods your XC60 can be transformed into an awesome motor. Don't waste money, do your homework and follow our unbiased guides to each performance upgrade to avoid wasting money.

Handling/Suspension upgrades

Handling modifications are high on most peoples lists for the XC60, the ride is somewhat soft, certainly not as sharp and crisp as the Volvo brochure would have us believe.

The air suspension is quite complicated so unless you particularly like the soft ride it offers, stick with the conventional setup and uprate it with coilovers.

Good suspension tweaks that dramatically benefit handling for the XC60 include a couple of degrees negative camber and 1-1.5 degrees of toe out on the front wheels.

We suggest that you fit uprated suspension and lower the car by 30mm - 45 mm. Larger drops require arch work - especially on models already equipped with motorsport suspension.

Turning our attention to the engine we need to get a bit more power out of the top end.

Sadly with smaller engine sizes you are wasting your time spending money on modifications, so if this applies to you get yourself an engine swap then apply the following mods.

Tuning modifications.

A wide selection of engines have been offered on the XC60 over the years in a number of different power bands, and states of tune.

• Petrol:
  2.0L I4
  2.0–2.5L Inline 5
  2.9–3.2L Inline 6
• Diesel:
  2.0L Inline 4
  2.0–2.5L Inline 5

In  2019 Volvo XC60 offered 3 engine options:  T5, T6, and T8. They share a 2.0L displacement, T6 = supercharged & the T8 = supercharged plug-in hybrid.

The following modified upgrades are usually fitted by our members, decide how far you wish to go in your tuning project before you begin.

Getting the best tuning upgrades for your planned usage of the car is vital. Stage 3 competition upgrades just don't work well on the road and will make the car undrivable.

Please watch our introduction Video tutorial to car tuning. Be sure to subscribe and support our new channel.

Modifying to Stage 1:

 Sports exhaust, Alloy wheels, Panel air filter, Lighter flywheel, Suspension upgrade (drop 30-45mm), Remap.

Modifying to Stage 2:

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

Modifying to Stage 3:

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

You really need to keep as much low end power as possible and aim to get a wide power band rather than a narrow top end power spike.

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

The exhaust and intake flow play a large part in your cars power band, but be careful here, getting this wrong can upset the idle and make the car impossible to drive in traffic. You'd need to follow a camshaft upgrade with other mods and finish with a performance chip for the best performance gains.

Don't forget to pay attention to the fuelling when you are increasing the power - it makes the car more thirsty.

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 modified kits. Improved 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.

Breathing mods are usually next up. Contrary to popular belief there is generally very little if any power gain reached by fitting an induction kit, they only become beneficial and are recommended after you boos the engines power to the point where the standard air intake box cannot cope!

Maximum power gains come from a full induction kit with a cold air feed on heavily tuned engines, this can be sited within an air box but a panel filter should suffice for most applications. TorqueCars suggest you use a panel air filter as these are easy to clean and maintain and generally perform better than paper ones.

Do not go with the biggest exhaust you can find this will slow up the exhaust flow rate - the best exhausts for power gains are usually between 1.5 to 2.5 inches. It is the shape and material more than the bore size.

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. Your clutch can fail as you increase the power if it starts to break and the standard clutches are only ever good for power gains of up to 45%. Fit clutch to avoid power losses through the transmission. The best mods we would do for your XC60 are remaps, sports camshafts and induction improvementsRemaps offer impressive power gains on all turbo charged cars. On NASP engines the benefits are doubtful. However a flashed ecu on a NASP engine will help unleash the potential if you have done a lot of mods.

We've also seen some tuners toying with twincharging conversions and making some seriously high power gains.

Despite the large cost involved adding forced induction to a NASP engine will give large power gains. It is usually simpler to add a supercharger than it is to bolt on a turbo. Turbos provide boost in exponential proportion to increasing engine speed and this can make mapping difficult.

Superchargers however will give a boost which is proportional to engine speed so is simpler. To cope with forced induction you will usually need to decrease the engine compression ratio .

Alloy wheel upgrades.

The benefits of alloys 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 tire. Please note that although they can look cool on the XC60 large alloy wheels will actually decrease your performance. The larger you go the lower your acceleration will be - this to the change in your effective final drive ratio.

Due to this aim to keep the overall rolling diameter of the wheel the recommended OEM sizes. In all cases avoid going over 16 inches.

For more information on Tuning your car please join us in our friendly forum where you can discuss XC60 options in more detail with our XC60 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.

This article was written by Waynne Smith on TorqueCars, and I appreciate your feedback and suggestions. This entry was filed under Volvo. You can leave a response below or join TorqueCars 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.

Check out TorqueCars new YouTube channel, and see their awesome new content...