De-Badging the Volvo...

[81pumagtc]

Dorothy is up north conducting for 12 days...

That means I get to play around with the Volvo in the garage!

Today, I just did a few little things. One of them is that I de-badged the deckled. I took of the "Volvo", "760 Turbo" and "Intercooler" emblems.

Much easier to surprise unsuspecting people in ponycars...

Also cleaned the fuel injectors and wanted to replace the hoses to the fuel rail. Unfortunately, they sold me a kit for the standard Turbo, and not for the special
Turbo+ engine. Everything is now clean, but the hoses are still 28 years old to the fuel rail. They are looking for the correct set.

Hard to believe, but the 760 makes about the same horsepower as my 1986 Mustang SVO. They were both 2.3 liter turbocharged and intercooled engines. The Mustang ran a lot more boost, but had a much smaller intercooler.

The Volvo has an intercooler almost 4 times larger than the Mustang.

They drive entirely different, however. The Mustang was a 5-speed, and things started to happen REALLY fast in second and third gears, especially in second, when it would hit the rev limiter, when it would shut off most of the fuel.
Combined with 20 pounds of boost, it was even quicker than the Volvo, about 5.5 seconds to 60 MPH, but the fuel cut-off made it tricky in the twistys.

The Volvo is an automatic, and just keeps pulling once it gets into the boost. Very, smooth, and just seems to keep pulling.

The big difference is that the Mustang was pokey around town when you were off the boost. It needed quite a bit of shifting to make it fun.

The automatic in the Volvo is alway in the right gear...and the seats are much better...

I could be happy with either one, but sold the Mustang.


Dave

[gokart]

I had a friend with a Turbo Buick Grand National. Scary fast. They all came with automatics. He said people tried manual trans but it slowed it down because it wouldn't stay on boost.

[81pumagtc]

That's correct. Buick did some testing with Tremac gearboxes, and found them unsuitable to sell. They experimented with them again for the Grand National GSX, which had a considerably stronger engine. They thought that it would be quicker than the automatic (which it was), and it would only be purchased by enthousias, but the extra power could blow the gearbox or rear end up if you repeatedly dumped the clutch at around 5000 rpm.

Wouldn't be a problem for me.

It would be a BIG problem for Mad Mike! (Maybe Clinton too)

Now that he has a car with a hair-dryer, he really likes them, and wants to go faster.

He also likes to go out and embarrass Mustangs and Camaros every chance he gets!

His gearbox life with a GSX and a stick would be a limited number of runs...

Did I mention he likes to go really fast?


Dave