Modding tuning and best performance upgrades on the Volvo B5244 engine!

The Lowdown on "B5244 Modifications"

How to modify and upgrade the Volvo B5244

"Comprehensive guide to performance tuning the Volvo B5244 engine!"

Our friends at TorqueCars are always getting messages requesting information on how to improve the B5244 from people wanting to know what are the premier B5244 power upgrades. So let us look into Volvo B5244 parts and outline the best modifications on this great engine and point out some frequent tuning mistakes along the way.

The Volvo B5244 are fantastic to work on and with carefully picked parts like remapping, turbo improvements and camshafts you will dramatically enhance your driving experience.

Our aim here is to examine the options for your B5244 tuning and provide tips on the best modifications for your car.

When talking about the ultimate parts for your B5244 engine, we are going to focus on the parts that give the best power gain for you money.

B5244 induction kits

Improving air intake on the B5244

You need air matched to fuel for an engine to work. If there is little supply of fuel then it will run lean, if there is too little air it runs rich sapping power and potentially damaging the engine. We'll pick up on fuelling later in this article but for now we shall look at air supply.

So Feeding fuel and air into each cylinder is the whole point to any car tuning job.

It is common that there's a limitation in the air flow sensor AFM/MAF on the B5244 when a lot more air is being drawn into the engine.

When tuning you may well find you need to get an air sensor or flow meter capable of upto 4 bars to cope with quite large power gains, whereas the OEM air sensor limited power at a much lower level.

Intake headers flow the air from the air cleaner and allow it to be drawn into the engine and mixed with fuel.

The bore size, shape and flow rate of the Air Intake manifolds can make a substantial effect on to fuel atomisation on the B5244.

We often see plenum chambers are in desperate need of performance upgrades, although some makers provide reasonably good plenum chambers.

Larger B5244 valves, getting port matching and head flowing will also increase performance, and significantly will make space for raising the performance increase on other mods.

B5244 performance cam tips.

Each engine responds better to different camshaft durations so set your engine up on a rolling road.

The ECU mapping and injectors and fuel pump also will make differences on the power gains you'll get.

Longer valve durations can alter the power band and on most engines the exhaust and intake durations do not need to match, although most cams and tuners use matched pairs there are some advantages to extending the intake or exhaust durations.

Altering your B5244 cam will make a dramatic difference to the engine torque. Choosing a higher performance cam profile raises the torque accordingly.

NB: Fast road cams commonly push up the bhp and torque across the rev band, you could sacrifice a little low end torque but your high end rpm power will be better.

Competition cams, push up the high end rpm power band but as a result the car will not idle smoothly and low end power nearly always suffers.

A Competition cam makes it harder when in heavy traffic.

You should ideally optimize your torque band to your preferences so for a typical daily driver stick with a fast road B5244 cam

Stage 1, 2 and 3 mods for the B5244

Before we break the best tuning upgrades down into stages of tune, let's list the most effective tuning upgrades for you.

  1. Suspension Upgrades - always improve your cars handling
  2. Brake Upgrades - Even before adding power improve those brakes
  3. Intake - make sure the intake is not restricted, use filters and intake upgrades to improve this
  4. Exhaust - as with 3 ensure there is not restriction in the exhaust, cats are the usual bottleneck
  5. Tunes - remapping, piggyback ECU's and aftermarket ECU's can all make decent gains
  6. Fuelling - when you've increased power you'll need to match this with more fuel
  7. Turbo upgrades - Improving the intake with a large turbo and better flowing intercooler will be the biggest power gain you'll see (but one of the most complex).

This video guide to tuning cars is a great starting point to work from in your project.

Stage 1 B5244 parts:

Intake headers, Sports exhaust manifold, Panel air filters, Drilled & smoothed airbox, Fast road camshaft, Remaps/piggy back ECU.

Stage 2 B5244 parts:

Ported and polished head, Sports catalyst & performance exhaust, fuel pump upgrades, induction kit, Fast road cam, high flow fuel injectors.

Tuning tips and articles Engine tuning Transmission tuning Care care Intake & exhaust mods Improve handling Forums

Stage 3 B5244 parts:

Competition cam, Engine balancing & blueprinting, Adding or Upgrading forced induction (turbo/supercharger), Twin charging conversions, Internal engine upgrades (head flowing porting/bigger valves), Crank and Piston upgrades to alter compression.

The B5244 units respond well to mods and we see that there is a lot of mods and performance parts out there.

ECU mapping helps unlock the full potential of all the tuning mods you've done to your B5244.

You will typically expect to see gains of approximately 20-30% more power on turbocharged vehicles and you can expect to see around 15% on NASP engines, but your results may vary depending on the tuning mods you've carried out and the condition of your engine.

Turbo modifications on the B5244

To get a turbo working on a NASP engine there is a lot involved, from lowering compression ratio to improved fuel supply and mapping, so we have found a great guide to helpavoid the common pitfalls or end up with an unfinished project because you were not told what you were getting into by doing this on the B5244.

The more air you can get into an engine, the more fuel it can burn and uprating the induction with a turbocharger upgrade makes massive power gains.

If a car is fitted with a turbo parts are more reliable and most turbo charged engines are built with better components.

There are practical limits for every engine, with some being extremely strong and some only just able to handle stock power

It is important to find these limits and upgrade to more solid crank and pistons to survive the power.

It's not unheard of people spending a loads on turbo charger upgrades on the B5244 only to suffer the humiliation of seeing the car catastrophically fail just after it's first rolling road session.

Big turbos commonly suffer no power at low rpm, and low capacity turbos spool up quickly but don't have the high rpm torque gains.

Thanks to progress the range of turbo chargers is always developing and we are seeing variable vane turbo chargers, permitting the vane profile is altered according to speed to lower lag and increase top end torque.

Twin scroll turbo chargers divert the exhaust flow into two channels and feed these at differently angled vanes in the turbo charger. They also improve the scavenging effect of the engine.

Beefing up the air intake by adding a supercharger or additional turbo will help you achieve very large bhp gains, although more complex to setup. We have this feature on twinchargers if you want to read more.

Tips about fuel supply on the B5244

Don't forget to ramp up the fuel system when you are increasing the bhp - it makes the car more thirsty. It is important to over specify your injector capacity.

The accepted safe increase is to add 20% when fitting an injector, this allows for injector deterioration and affords a bit of spare capacity should the engine require more fuel.

Don't forget that different fuel grades will usually require different settings, a high octane fuel will burn more efficiently than lower octane fuel for example. A car will trim fuel supply to keep within the ideal air fuel mix but at the extreme ends you may need to adjust your injector capacity, or the mapping or you'll get flat spots and potential lean or rich fuel issues..

Recommended B5244 performance exhaust upgrades

Only look to uprate your exhaust system with an upgraded one is if the current exhaust is creating a flow problem.

On most factory exhausts you'll see the flow rate is fine even on modest power gains, but on a serious tuning project with a big boost in power you will certainly need to get a better flowing exhaust.

Do not go with the biggest exhaust you can source you'll reduce the exhaust flow rate - the best exhausts for power gains are usually between one and a half to two and half inches. Your exhaust design, the bend angles and construction are what have more effect on flow rates than your pipe width to a certain extent. So the exhaust design is a big factor.

Usual exhaust restrictions are in the catalyst and filters installed, so adding a faster flowing performance alternative will help avoid this restriction.

Cat bypassing (NB:catalysts reduce harmful engine emissions) is illegal in most countries and regions.

Faults issues and things to look out for on the B5244

Like most engines an B5244, should have few issues if it gets properly serviced and looked after.

We cannot stress enough the need for oil changes with the correct grade of oil on the B5244, failure to do this will exacerbate engine wear, on a tuned B5244 this is more important than ever and close attention should be paid to your maintenance schedule.

If you are interested in learning more or getting impartial tuning advice for your B5244 why not pop over to the forums at TorqueCars where you can chat about B5244 tuning options and read about others projects who may be planning to do similar modifications on their B5244.

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