Well the 850 Turbo sedan has about worn out it's welcome. I am looking at a 98' V70 AWD wagon, (I am waiting on the VIN to plug into VADIS) but the nearest I can tell is ALL the 98' AWD Wagons without sunroofs were 2.5 turbos?
This particular car has what has been described as a MAJOR OIL leak on the passenger side upfront.

I am guessing it has something to do with possibly the OIL COOLER lines or the oil thermostat itself (have not seen more than pictures of the car)

(Don't think they are dumb enough to miss something like a doubled up oil filter seal??)

Anyway, all that aside I am sure I can figure out what the leak is. I have other questions.

#1. The 2.5 (B5254T) is a "low pressure turbo"???? or what? How different is it from the 2.3 (B5234T3) motor? I have a motor I was building for the 850 so a "bandaid" on the 2.5 for now and then a swap could be in order.

#2. How reliable is the AWD system and what type of power can it handle?

The info I can glean from VADIS makes this look a lot like the 850's setup under the hood, what major differences are there being AWD?

 

From what I know, the 2.3 is a 'high' pressure turbo used in the R & T5 models. Uses premium gas. Runs a boost of 12 vs 8 for the 'low' pressure 2.5 engine - I believe.

https://volvoforums.com/forum/sale-trade-archive-6/98-v70r-sale-45999/

If you are looking for a '98 V70R I have just decided to sell mine as I am buying a newer car from a friend of mine.

 

Yeah, the nearest I can tell is that the B5254 is a 9.0 compression ratio versus the 2.3 HPT at 8.5 and uses a 13G turbo with the large outlet on the turbine. This was supposed to help "spool up" eliminating some of the lag of the 15G.

I guess what I am looking for is help in deciding the following:

1: Is the car worth "BUILDING" as far as the drivetrain able to handle 350-400 Crank HP?

2: If I continue along building the 2.3 block and 19T turbo can I swap that into this car with little issue?

Or are there common "Bolt On" type upgrades for the 2.5LPT with the AWD that give good performance or is this kind of a "keep it stock" type of car? AWD is intriguing to me as I do work 7 days a week in CT at night so bad weather driving will be relatively common for me during the winter.

 

I have a '98 V70 AWD with the LPT engine and 13t. I have been slowly "supping" it up. As far as upgrades go, most people with the LPT cars weather AWD or not install the following parts, most of which I have done to mine.

R ECU
White or Blue injectors
16t (the same as what the HPT cars use, supposedly this is the biggest a LPT engine can take since it's higher compression ratios)
3" downpipe and exhaust (Eurosport tuning has them on sale right now)
Snabb autoparts J-pipe for the turbo intake (I highly recommend this instead of the accordion style intake pipe coming off of the airbox) http://snabb.3dcartstores.com/Intake-Pipes_c_1.html
N/A throttle body and 960 plate (a lot of guys are starting to swap these in and porting the opening of the intake manifold to increase off the line performance. N/A opening is 65 mm versus 55 mm for the turbo models)

There are a few other little things that can be done to help here and there. The most I've ever heard coming out of a LPT engine was from a guy (LookforJoe) on Volvospeed who modded out his XC70 and got it to about 270+ horsepower. I don't know what the AWD system can take though. Good luck with your decision!

 

FYI these cars cannot handle 350 to 400 horse power unless you heavily mod them and basically bulletproof them.

You'll be lucky to see 320hp before your transmission starts going.

 

What he said :-). For what it's worth, there isn't a car out there that will withstand an 50+% power increase without modifications to the drivetrain - engineers don't overbuild by that much, so this isn't a special limitation of the V70.