Volvo's Rule-Bending Cylinder Head 

are you Doug de Muro? ^^ I heard his voice reading your text :D

100% agree with you on this one, pure determination to build a beast, shame that the estate never won a single race though

Well said. The engineers don’t get enough credit sometimes as to how they figured out how to work around the rules in ingenious ways.

Spoken like a true politician... or F1 team...

Powertampa Ex-Lancia Rally Team waves with greetings :)

A.k.a Adrian Newey

achmad fajar Couldn't agree more. F1 and Nascars' finest hours have been when geniuses like. Gordon Murray bother to learn the rules and move the game along by thinking outside the box.

@@mrc7966 I remember Jeff Gordon's T-Rex car

What Porsche are you referring to?

@@sonicstep from '94 ? Almost all of them 😂

Kriss subaru levorg for a few years now, in btcc as well

BTCC

Honda used the Civic Tourer in BTCC (2014 I believe) and won with it.

Kriss check out BTCC , most of the cars are like civic estates and subaru levorgs

Only proper wagon i saw was the Toyotas and Subarus, is the Toyota fwd? Whatever the 850 will be the kind of the racing wagons in my opinion just because it's an 850 and well it explains itself right there

Smokey would think what took you so long to figure it out😂

Awesome

Haven't heard or read that name in a while.

Yup.

Blunt hits!😂🤣🤭

Actually they didn't use their heads, they used their block 😉

@@bogdancondicaru7848 ok

Motor Man 11 you mean twr.

Mark Denyer true enough

Question is, what did Volvo learn and did they apply the lessons to future engines?

tell me how exactly they look like spaceships? to me they look like pimpt up normal cars of today. And no they are not made of plastic no more than the production models.

Pykezuikkeli I don't know about BTCC but Australian Supercars (just a name, used to be called touring cars) are all standardised chassis with mostly carbon fibre panels. Standard panels don't even fit.

Yes those are different ball game, btcc cars are built from standard cars

Pykezuikkeli Are? Or were? That was once the norm here too but "parity" and other complaints took over. BTCC now uses "Next Generation Touring Cars" rules. All sorts of things are standardised and are unfortunately no longer comparable to their road going origins.

www.btcc.net/about/technical-overview/ Are. Of course standardisation has happened on components used to keep the costs down but the cars are built to the original bodies and manuafacturers have the option to build their road going engines up to specs, for example the btcc avensis engine is built from the 3zr-fe used in avensis. And the cars are still mostly steel cars, not some kind of plastic spaceships. Just like they were in the 90's. If one thinks that the 90's volvos were just standard bricks with high horsepower and coilovers they'd need to look more into the cars.

not 1st... Audi I think was 1st with the 2L engine in the A4

Exactly this. Everybody else could've done the same, so it's not unfair or breaking the rules.

There's an excellent video called The Genius Rule Bending of the Volvo 850 Touring Car which explains it in a lot more depth

Esra B its volvo what do you expect?

That's the real point, they're great cars.

My mate had an 850. Not the T5 .lowered from factory and every option...

Same with mine. I love driving it. Sounds nice too.

Esra B I think it's about time you change the running in oil.

Simon I think Volvo made some doubters eat their words. The 850 estate was a fast car, it certainly gave the Vauxhall cavaliers something to think about.

I live 30 minutes from that motordrome! :D (and yes that sound is..... jgashghasgashgeagbgvsjafeyg i fuckin' love it!)

Mattias Filander I was literally sitting here debating the same thing, and was hoping someone mentioned it in the comments. Thank you.

Apparently he cant do math.

Mattias Filander Maybe more than the other 850s?

65 more Hp than the production 850s

@@YeetxBoi nope

Massive Unicorn Wang cheating is cheating

if someone beats you in a debate because your argument was full of holes, they haven’t cheated you, you just didn’t prepare properly. The same applies here, the rules were full of flaws that they used to their advantage

I love the way alfa with the Alfa 155 threw a front splitter and rear spoiler jacking kit in the boot of a production model (Silverstone - formula) to be allowed to use it😂

Not cheating. After all, the rules didn't say they weren't allowed to do it.

Phil Mitchell even better, apparently GT cars at Le Mans in the 90s had to have space for a suitcase otherwise they were considered a prototype. Since the fuel tank was empty during scruitineering, Toyota said that the GT-One's fuel tank could theoretically hold a suitcase.....

Same. I'll have an 850 one day!

Yes, at least the Peugeot 306 Maxi did rev to around 10 000 rpm to make all that power, since unlike Super Touring, the Rally F2 cars did not have mandanted revlimiter of 8500 rpm, so it was all green light to make your engines rev as high as you can, these cars sounded awesome, and the 4wd WRC teams complained that they got beaten on tarmac by cars that were perfectly designed for tarmac rallys, and weighed around 200 kgs less than the 4wd world rally cars 2. In 1999 Citroen won 2 rallys outright, Spain and Corsica, and after 1999, the f2 series was prety much gone, since both Hyundai and Peugeot moved on to the big WRC class, later followed by Citroen, Seat had already moved on after 1998, so in the early 2000:s a new series was introduced to let the wrc cars win a little easier on tarmac : The Super 2000 series, which unlike the F2 cars were 4wd, but still naturally aspirated, although they only revved to around 8000 rpm, had less aero and were heavier than the old F2 cars as well, they were still capable, but could not really beat the wrc cars anymore.

vauxhall turned the xe head 180 aswell

Volvo turned the whole motor instead of just the head from memory.

** shakes fist **

But TWR are British. The Swedes are too nice to do anything dastardly like this.

*laughs in Swedish*

This is the result when you mix the Swedes and the British together.

Check this out on Google Translate pls! -"Var det något du ville, Milky?- .. No, I didn't think so.

Agreed, it is a fascinating story. Their DTM development of the 155 is a good story too. Covered elsewhere by another RU-vid channel...

Volvo supplied some standard castings, all the late nights and machining was done by TWR in Oxfordshire.

Captain CRAYONBOX stepper intake angle and less of an exhaust angle which means better flow

Bobby Sn I'm not sure what you're trying to say mate.

Meh, I personally posted about this topic at least 10 years ago on turbobricks.com. I have a pdf copy with translation of the swedish article from 20-25 years ago about it. Fact is none of the above gets credit for "discovering this"

Thanks for the reply Notso Fresh. I couldn't find the link although I appreciate your efforts. I still feel it is not a co-incidence that Stav did a well researched piece on this a just few months back and Car Throttle literally copy-pasted his findings in video form. This is still fine if you ignore the fact that Car Throttle is "earning" from these videos while Stav gets nothing for his effort. That's the part that gets me.

Here is a 10 year old article with way more detail and pictures of the real head next to a factory one: These guys made money off of their research too. They were a print magazine. And they actually interviewed the twr engineers. My bet is Stav used this article for his findings. Did Stav cite his sources? www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0ahUKEwjsxbrE2JTcAhWzHTQIHR-ECUYQFggqMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.supertouringregister.com%2Fdocument%2F4%2F&usg=AOvVaw2xcnYSCXW2DJBmaSGUqU-5

Notso Fresh Is this from Redline magazine?

Half the reason for the head mods was for clearance for the HUGE cam they used. The lobes were way to big to fit in the factory heads. The other reason was to make the intake/exhaust runners flow better, in order to take advantage of the cam. Without the cam, the head mods are useless. Wouldn't be surprised if they played with the fuel as well. When they raced the 240s in the 80s, there was speculation they were using fuel that was up to 70% toluene to control detonation. This was in addition to water/meth injection. They ran a metric shit-tonne of boost. They got in trouble for the fuel and that year the factory stepped out of racing. The 850 was the next hurrah.

And most of the claimed HP numbers are considered conservative. That head and cam with high boost was probably good for more like 150+hp,.

it isnt "modyfying the head" they liteeally completely replaced the upper half(the part with the cams and associated moving parts)... to the tune of $20,000 and up. you could swap nearly any production twin turbo i to your volvo for quite a bit less and be faster

No way to fit 2 turbos. They moved the engine back a long ways in the car. The exhaust exits toward the firewall. Only room for 1 turbo. Plus the turbo and exhaust had to be homologated, as per the rules. It is possible to make higher peak power for sure. The question is how smooth is the power curve, and how drivable is the power. Turbo cars with a big hp but a peaky power curve can be a bear to drive. Here is a couple articles about the cylinder head and the choice of wagon, along with the homologation papers: www.supertouringregister.com/documents/model/32/

Actually the Volvo 850 Super Touring car ( used in the BTCC ) did have a 2 liter naturally aspirated 5 cylinder engine, based on the Volvo 850 2.0. Turbos were not allowed in Super touring and all cars had to use 2 liter naturally aspirated engines. www.cyanracing.com/concept-cars/volvo-850-super-touring www.supertouringregister.com/regulations/

I believe it was also Ford who spent £150,000 figuring out the best position to glue the windscreen wiper for optimum aero...