Project 480: Off to the races

So I’m really going to do it… Honest, promise, well at least try, hopefully, possibly.

I have been going on about building a car or racing a car for a long time now. But this time I’m actually going to get past planning and buying a few parts. Before I was trying to do it on too much of a shoe string budget with no real place to build it. Now I have the Lab (garage) I have somewhere to build it in the dry and as for the budget, that’s not really changed, but I hit it lucky, and got a great deal on a car.

One of the my weak points when it comes to projects like this, is my obsession with unlikely car choices. More specifically with the use of a Volvos. Although on the face of it, a group of cars renowned for there ‘wardrobe on wheels’ look might not first seem like a good choice I maintain it is. Volvo make a lot of brilliant engines (well at least they used to) which have been used in some very fast cars, across multiple brands. Volvo’s 850 did fatalistically well in British Touring car racing (Wikipedia Volvo 850 in Motorsports), and the current C30 and S60 are winning in Scandinavian Touring Car Racing and SCCA Pro Racing World Challenge. I also have a bit of an ace up my sleeve with the Volvo I have chosen, it’s the Volvo 480, not really your typical Volvo. It’s a sleek two door coupe.

The Volvo 480 Turbo was the first car to have a full electronic ECU and had better or similar performance and handling then the Golf GTi of the same era (There some great test videos of the 480 against the GTi here). But by no means is this going to be an easy car to race. After speaking with the people who run the series I’m looking to race in, any other choice then a BMW M3 is going to be hard work. The problem is that the 480 unlike the M3 was never meant to be a full on race car and it was never entered into any race series during it’s production. This means that there are no aftermarket parts available within the race series rules. Where as the M3 had aftermarket part homologated for the race series.

The way I look at it, if the only option is the BMW M3 you might as well race in a BMW championship and all drive them, and not in a mixed car championship.

After looking around I found that the CTCRC (Classic Touring Car Racing Club) would be the best fit for the type of racing and cars I’d like to use. More specifically after looking at the rules, and selecting the car that I have, I’ll be trying to race in the Classic Thunder Championship. Classic Thunder has fewer restrictions and rules, on what parts you can use, and what you can do to the cars. This appeals to the mad-scientist and bodger in me. This does come with one down side, most if not all of the people in the series are seasoned professionals and the cars, they’re quick and at the top of their game.

If it was easy, it wouldn’t be fun now would it?

Lets find out more about the trusty steed and what we need to do to get it to championship spec:

	Volvo 480	Championship
Power	120bhp	230bhp
Weight	995kg	854kg

The weight is not going to be an issue, just removing the seats, carpets and trim has to be getting close to 100kg reduction I would need. But I will have to weigh things as I remove them, to get a better idea.

Power wise the 120bhp is looking a bit bleak for the little Volvo. But 120bhp is not the true capability of the Volvo. From research, I found out that the 480 when first built by Volvo had 190bhp but was reduced down before release, as Volvo thought that 190bhp might be too much for there clientele. So 190bhp to 230bhp is less of a jump.

I got my Volvo 480 from eBay. It’s a 1993 Volvo 480 Turbo, in blue. It’s in great condition no rust that I can find, even the info center still works. Only issue is that the front tyres have a slow leak and keep going flat, but as I’m removing the wheels and tyres anyway, it should not really be an issue.

A good base for what is going to be a fun, if hard project.