Brand New S80 Owner (2000 T6) Mods?
 

Hi Everyone,
Well I finally bought myself a new toy this weekend a 2000 Volvo S80 T6 with only about 73k miles on it. It is the moondust color. I have an Infiniti G35 that is my normal daily commute car but I got a great deal on this car and jumped on it to have a weekend luxury sedan, albeit a fairly old one. I was looking into upgrading some of the equipment on the car.
The first upgrade I was looking into was PIAA light bulbs? I have heard some horror stories about the bulb life on these and especially with daytime running lights I am afraid does anyone have any first hand knowledge?
The second upgrade I was looking into was a body kit. I know the s80 wasn't built to be tuned but I was wondering if anyone knew where body kits were available?
The third upgrade I was looking into was Parktronic. I was hoping to find some aftermarket sensors that were of good quality and would look semi decent against the moondust color of the sedan. Can anyone recommend a good brand? All i see is that the market is flooded with products under 100 bucks but I am wary of anything that cheap.
The last upgrade I was looking into would be an aftermarket stereo. The s80 I bought came with the navigation system built in and I was wondering if anyone knew if I got a double DIN system whether or not I could feed the video from the nav system to both the pop up screen on the dash as well as any type of screen I might install in the future?

Thanks for any help anyone can provide

Kyle

No experience with the PIAAs, but I've tried Silverstar in my lights and I was replacing them about once every other month compared to about once a year with standard Halogen. The DRL really shorten the life of the bulbs, but I guess it's a sacrafice for safety.

No clue on this one, I've never seen one personally.

I find a parking system pretty pointless on a sedan, the S80 is not that long/huge and really has pretty good visibility all around.

I've heard horror stories about trying to swap out the radio with other systems mostly because of how integrated all the electronics are in the car. You might be able to play with the video imports of the screen, but again, these are very "fussy" cars when it comes to aftermarket items.

Thanks for any help anyone can provide

Kyle[/QUOTE]

1. Check out Sharphid.com, I've heard good things about them but don't know personally.
2. There is one body kit that I've seen out there but honestly you'd just be wasting your time putting one on one of these. Lowering is and putting some wheel spacers will look better imo.
3. I agree jlewis on this one, it wouldn't be worth the trouble and money to get them on an s80.
4. There aren't too many after market head unit options for this car. Bluepower.se has a few you can look at.

Cheers

John is great to work with at SharpHid, the kits are reasonably priced, but you may have difficulty with them. Volvos are notorious for being sensitive to aftermarket lighting and will either throw an error code or throw and error code and disable the lights. The former is more an annoyance then harmful, the latter just makes it impossible.

I worked with John for about 2 months in trying different combinations of HIDS with my car with ultimately no success. That said, for the few seconds they would stay on and not throw a code and shut off, they looked really good.

I would say avoid the HID kits just because these cars are so moody you may never get it to work...
If you really want to give the HIDs a go, www.ddmtuning.com has the same kits as www.sharphid.com but significantly cheaper.. But I still wouldnt bother either way

PIAA has a great reputation for providing excellent lighting and I would definitely reccomend over the Sylvania Silverstar Ultra...
That said, the stock lighting on these cars is surprisingly good..

I tried installing an aftermarket stereo on my s80 and it caused my airbag service dummy to pop up. got the airbag module fixed. when i took off the stereo cause it looked so tacky and stupid with the dash kit. it caused the light to go on again which is a 200 dollar fix

you consider your g35 a daily driver and this s80 as your weekend luxury car ?

whats wrong with you man ? The VQ engine in your G is a bulletproof train heading straight from japan, that car will outlast any 2000 s80 on this forum...and its more luxurious than your s80

im not hating on s80's im just saying i know that engine and i know that its a killer of a car, you should switch it around and drive the s80 day to day and leave the G as a weekend fun car..!!!

I agree with tranny/engine bit of the G, but the S80 interior is better IMO then the G. The G's is very hard inside IMO, cheap feeling. The cars are powerful no doubt.

idk about the vq motor being strong. i have a friend who blew his motor on a stock g35 auto under a 100k miles. who knows maybe he was unlucky. the tuners around here dont mess with them because they say theyre too weak for mods. they could also be crazy though who knows.

are you kidding me ?

thats just not true, The VQ engine has been on the Wards top 10 engines every year till this day since its production in the 1995 nissan maxima, it has since grown from a 3.0L V6 to a 3.7 L V6. it has been turboed and modded to the extremes, all you have to do is check out maxima.org and you will see why

that engine is known to go up to 500.000 KM with simple oil changes. there have been guys who threw a rod or two back then, but thats the odd ball, everyone agrees that engine is bulletproof, yes over the years nissan has tried to cut costs ( ie the year 2000 coil pack issues, and early 3.5 oil burning piston rings) but its nothing compared to weak honda V6 engines or toyota sludge monsters...

they just dont know that motor. its a high compression engine that uses a good ecu tune, the volvo 2.8 T6 engine is strong but not as reliable. the 3.5 VQ N/A runs around 250 HP and in the g35 its a killer of an engine...uses a chain and has an actual pcv valve that you can change (lol) no sludge boxes under the intake hehe, and with a simple y-pipe it breathes to an easy 260-265 HP same as the volvo 2.8 T6 engine which is boosted

oh thats cool i guess just not too many people believe in it around here. one of my friend has a 04 350z auto and my s80 will take him every time but i doubt he knows how to drive. hes been wanting to do performance to it but scared to blow his motor. all i can do is get my car a tuner and who knows how long it will last i got it at 98k miles but its still running smooth. i know the newer vq s have better cams or some sort of vvt called rev up or something? that i probly wouldnt try to run.

Chip\ECU from IPD is the best bang for buck. Brings it up to around 305BHP I think, but the biggest improvement is in the (already impressive) torque. After that you are talking big bucks from what I can tell and you'll probably want to upgrade the want to upgrade the internals in the tranny too. An aftermarket TCV from IPD might give a slight improvement depending on how "tired" your TCV is now.

Even in stock form dont beat on it too much though. The (modified) GM tranny in the T6 is designed to handle 286Ft\lbs, stock form the T6 puts this out however it starts at 1800 RPM (or so)!

Did you ever find a body kit for your 99 s80. I have looked basically everywhere.

I have looked at a new ECU upgrade ( Volvo S80 T6 272Hp 1999-2005 Stage 1 - Tuning kit, performance parts, ecu upgrade )

But.. I sounds like, the transmission can´t handle the torque? Has anyone tried the ECU upgrade before? Don´t want to trash my transmission :-)