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max boost for 16t turbo

dutchm0n

dutchm0n

New member
Joined
Sep 29, 2014
hi i have a volvo 940 i put a 16t turbo what is the max amount of boost i can run before i blow a head gasket i have a wide band so i can monitor if i run lean or not i am just afriad i might break something on the engine its self.
 
Boost doesn't kill these engines. That being said, port the he'll out of the exhaust housing and run it at 17Psi and be happy.
 
so the head gasket and the internals will handle 17 psi of boost, what will porting do just better flow
 
"if you know what you're doing" can't stress that enough. Look on here Swedes making 400hp on B18s because they know what they are doing. Murikans getting over 300hp on redblocks reliably because they know what they are doing. If they were Swedish, probably 600hp.
 
I can over come detination with bigger injectors As long as I don't run lean I should be good to go right
 
I'm probably about to answer this by giving you way more information than you actually want or were looking for but :

*I hardly ever contribute to the site so... here!
*A lot of people on this board probably just want to tell you "SEARCH OR GTFO" but...
*There is a lot of information on this site that is either outdated or contain links from early 2000's to pages that no longer exist or pictures that have long since exceeded their bandwidth, so I understand why people give up on searching

I'm not claiming to be more knowledgeable than anyone else on the board when it comes to working with these cars, but I will say that I've had my fair share of mostly stock B230FT's with the td04HL-15g/16t/19t that were stupid fast for what they cost me to build, and surprisingly reliable despite how hard I've driven them EVERYDAY with almost no problems other than ones that were the result my own incompetence. Any advice I offer is from my own experience of modifying cars that have almost always been my daily driver or customers cars who are still driving today! No one can guarantee for sure that your motor will survive even one extra pound of boost,but there's a few things you could do that would definitely help it.

The first thing I would do if it was my car is a compression test with the vehicle at operating temp, to establish that the motor is at least properly sealed before you consider adding more power. If there is more than a 10% difference between any of them, STOP. You more than likely already have a serious problem that adding more boost with a larger turbo will simply make worse, and possibly damage your motor beyond you or your bank accounts ability to repair it. Head gaskets are relatively straightforward to replace on the redblocks, and a whole lot cheaper than a new motor.

If your compression test was in the acceptable range, a full stage 0 is absolutely necessary to make sure the motor is running well BEFORE you begin to add more boost and start bringing out all the little issues that these cars love to hide under 20+ years of dirt and road grime. If you create a problem when you start turning the boost up, it 's much easier to identify and correct the issue if you've already covered the basics. My stage 0 usually involves:

*NGK #4644 plugs gapped around .26-.28
*factory bougicord wires
*Bosch cap and rotor
*in-tank sock filter and in-line fuel filter
*transmission-differential-coolant flush
*replace any cracked or dried vacuum lines including the larger line from the brake booster to the back of the intake (which is almost always collapsed or leaking on cars I get, but not visible unless you really get your head in there)
*clean and adjust throttle plate/tps sensor
*clean/replace PCV system- if it's already bad, it'll be worse on high boost :nod:
*If you have an air compressor and a few pieces of PVC piping,you can save yourself a lot of headaches by doing a boost leak test. Set the regulator a few psi higher than what you plan on running as far as boost, because at least one of the 20+ year old intercooler couplings is sure to fail


dutchm0n said:
I can over come detination with bigger injectors As long as I don't run lean I should be good to go right
Click to expand...

Yes, you might manage to keep the AFR's in a safe-ish range and avoid some of the detonation by installing oversized injectors and hoping the ECU can keep up. Even if that works, the 940's all have an electronic fuel cut at 14.5 psi that will quickly get on your nerves. However, there are drop-in chips that will fix this by actually changing the fuel tables in the ECU to account for the new turbo and the extra fuel it needs as well as removing the fuel cut completely. Most of the time you also gain a little low end torque, as well as 1 or 2 mpg over the stock ECU mapping. I personally like the drop in chips for the ECU and EZK from a member here named TheLostArtOf, they are reasonably priced and have worked well for me on several cars. There are other ways of tuning on your own with a laptop in real-time like Megasquirt/AEM/TunerPro, but these are generally more expensive and do require hardwiring new components into parts of the engine harness which might be too much for what you want.


If you wish to skip a tune and try your luck, you can find info here on the site about placing a diode or resistor into the MAF signal wiring to disable the fuel cut by limiting the signal that the ECU receives, to I believe 5.1 volts. I don't remember what color wires they were. I don't recommend this because it is removing the ability of the vehicle to protect itself from boost levels that it can't compensate for without a tune. I tried this on my 765 and it did work for a while,but it gave me more problems than solutions. I removed it, ordered chips from TLAO, ran 19-22 psi of wastegate pressure on an open downpipe and drove like I stole it for over a year without any issues. I then sold the car to a friend years ago who put a bigger turbo on it, and still drives it to this day if that has anything to say about the longevity and reliability of a well maintained and properly tuned redblock.
 
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