2013 C30 T5 M66 Polestar R-Design

240 · 2019-03-18T11:28:01+00:00

Looks good. Is the IPD bar thicker? I think your car already has sports suspension, so the RSB is probably already 22mm.

carnut222

Nice - the Whiteline LCA bush holder is pretty compared to the black steel one on the SuperPro one. :)

240

Discovered today that the inside edge of the front tyres are bald AF

@timbo do you remember how the alignment was when you put the suspension in?

I'm surprised because they were nowhere near this bad 6 ish weeks ago when I painted the brakes

carnut222

240
Discovered today that the inside edge of the front tyres are bald AF
@timbo do you remember how the alignment was when you put the suspension in?
I'm surprised because they were nowhere near this bad 6 ish weeks ago when I painted the brakes
https://cdn.ozvolvo.org/uploads/620/9A7FVKTQIZJL.jpg

The exact thing happened on my C30! I had done a visual on the tyres and thought they looked fine...then I got a hoist and put the car up on it and the front tyres had worn down to the belts in spots on the inside. F**K and I had been driving it like that? Yikes! Replaced the tyres and re-set the toe-in as it seemed way out...new tyres started wearing a bit funny to so I replaced the front lower control arm rear bushes. I think that's made a big difference. The bushes were really bad, allowing a lot of motion (so the toe would change when accelerating or braking)...I think that can lead to super fast wear of the tyres...my theory anyway!

240

My first thought was camber but your probably right about toe in, my LCA bushes are new though so I guess it just needs another alignment

carnut222

240
My first thought was camber but your probably right about toe in, my LCA bushes are new though so I guess it just needs another alignment

Well yes, extreme negative camber can wear the inside of the tyres...on C30s I think that's more common on the rear though...camber is pretty easy to check. I think mine was fine in front and a bit close to the limit in the rear...but it was the front tyres that were rooted for the most part. I do rotate them front to back occasionally...probably not enough LOL!

timbo

I can check the front alignment again I would have set toe to around 0/+.5mm

Could be too much neg camber in the front from lowering but not much we can adjust without camber tops/roll centre adjusters

We will need to re set it anyway when we replace the steering rack ends. The tyre wear looks kinda feathered which could be from the free play in steering rack ends

240

Ok yep that make sense we can adjust it when doing the rack ends.

I didn't know the roll centre adjusters allowed camber adjustment?

Also I picked up a set of Midir wheels that I was going to paint but they have 215/45/18 tyres instead of 225/40/18, I may replace the tyres but not sure yet, do you think that would affect the alignment much? (ie does it matter which tyres I have on for the alignment)

timbo

Short answer is control arm length dictates camber sweep (increase/decrease in camber during suspension travel)

Lowering effectively shortens the lower control arm so the camber sweep increases for the same amount of suspension travel.(relative to stock ride height)

Roll centre adjusters reset the control arm to stock length/bump characteristics.

( Usually you aim for parallel control arms at ride height)

240

Ok yes that makes sense thanks. For mine not being lowered much, maybe I will just get a roll centre adjust kit and not worry about strut mount camber adjustment unless the mounts actually wear out

240

Keen to hear people's thoughts on something, since upgrading to the 320mm brakes I've never been 100% happy with them, mainly because they feel a bit 'mushy' and if I have to brake very hard, the pedal just feels horrible (not just the usual gravelly feel you get with ABS, hard to explain in writing) and the car doesn't actually stop that quickly (compared to other ABS cars I've driven).

I think it does stop better than before I put the 320mm brakes on but people always talk about how this upgrade improves the pedal feel, and my pedal definitely felt better before the upgrade.

All I can think of is that the lines are no good - they are braided lines but they were from an S40 that was sitting for about a year before being put on the C30 so I wondered if that could have affected them.

I also get brake fade pretty quickly when I drive the car hard, this might be due to the pads but they are Bendix Euro Plus which are meant to be good.

c30c30

C30 brakes are mushy. Doesn't matter if you have 300 or 320mm rotors. I don't think anyone has figured out the cause, but I would speculate that it's due to the dynamic bias control system.

I think pads make more of a difference with regards to the feel and performance around town. I've got Remsa pads and the bite is very good. No issues pulling up at any speed.

240

Yeah I know what you mean about them being mushy but the pedal felt way better with the old brakes

c30c30

Might be a bit of air in the system, or just softer pads.

240

The car has received a bunch of performance upgraded over the past few months

Milltek 3" downpipe

3" Snabb intake pipe and Simota filter system

Do88 intercooler and piping

And got a Hilton stage 2.5 tune, did a sub 5 second 0-100 run today which I was pretty happy with

When I first got the tune I was pretty disappointed and there was actually less low rpm power than with ththe polestar tune, I emailed Rob Hilton and he modified the tune and the result is incredible.

The car has noticeably more power now and pulls super hard in all gears at all rpms, pretty happy with the performance, keen to do a dyno run at some point.

The only issue is traction control kicking in and cutting power when I send it hard around corners, so next mod (and probably the last big mod) will be an LSD and new clutch

BenyBoy

240 Does anyone know of a short shifter kit made for these? I've seen a couple online but they don't seem to be available anymore.

Are you still looking for short shifter kit? I found a guy who is making his last batch in US for $110 plus postage (I'm waiting for him to give me a shipping quote).

Otherwise Vivaperformance have started taking orders of the Snabb one with stock expected on 3rd May.

240

Yeah I saw the fb post from that guy in the US, I ended up making my own one though:

240
I installed a short shifter in the C30 today, I should have taken more photos but hopefully this will still be helpful.
It was fairly involved and involves some cutting and modification but the result is pretty good.
This will of course be the same for P1 S40 and V50 as well.
I used a kit from a Focus XR5/ST, there is some modification required to use this which you can avoid by getting a proper Volvo one (there is a guy in the US who sometimes offers them as a copy of the old Snabb ones) but they're like $200usd compared to about $60 I paid for the XR5 one on ebay, plus you'll need to get an XR5 one anyway because there is a piece that the Volvo one doesn't include.
Start by removing the waterfall console and centre console trim piece, there are guides online of how to do this. Remove the screws for the main centre console but don't take it out of the car since I found it useful to have in place at times for test fitting etc. Disconnect the shift cable.
Towards the back the shift cable passes through a black plastic thing and this needs to be raised up, otherwise extra stress is placed on the shift cable. The piece to do this is included in the XR5 kit but not the Volvo one, probably because it's not a direct fit. However to achieve this you need to cut out the plastic directly above it.
https://cdn.ozvolvo.org/uploads/475/X8Z42FCEKDQQ.jpg
Remove the blue plastic clip and pull the shift cable out (I did this before the above photo obviously), this is easier to do with the centre console pulled out of the way.
This assembly sat too high, making it so I couldn't reinstall the coin tray. To fix this, I cut a few mm off the bottom of the metal piece, and also cut the top corners off the U-shaped cutout in the yellow plastic:
https://cdn.ozvolvo.org/uploads/648/JHIC0CKUUIUD.jpg
https://cdn.ozvolvo.org/uploads/551/DWKYGG5O8WOK.jpg
This makes the cable sit nicely but it still sticks up slightly too high so I tried to cut out a bit of the bottom of the coin tray a bit. You could probably cut all the way through if you want since there is a rubber piece on the other side. Note that you can avoid all this if you don't care about the coin tray.
https://cdn.ozvolvo.org/uploads/019/HXAYCLB44OSX.jpg
Now you can install the back part of the shifter cable so it looks like the first picture.
Next is adapting the Focus part which is shorter than the Volvo one. I extended it by using a 25 x 3mm piece of aluminium. This picture is just a trial piece I made but shows the concept. This step can be avoided if you get hold of the proper Volvo kit from the US.
https://cdn.ozvolvo.org/uploads/566/B8BW30BBVLNO.jpg
The final one I used was about 60mm long, and I bent it to match the angle of the stock plastic shifter connector below. Because the two holes that secure the aluminium to the main piece are very close, I had to file down the bolt heads. Then connecting the shift cable to the ball is very easy.
https://cdn.ozvolvo.org/uploads/266/1T69VC8NAU84.jpg
I mounted the ball about 10mm further away from the shifter (ie towards the front of the car) than it technically needs to be, this makes it so that the shifter is closer to you in the driving seat. The photo below shows it in 3rd gear, it pretty much looks like how it normally would in neutral. Not sure if I'll keep it like this, but if you don't want it this way, just make the aluminium piece more like 50mm long. It's a bit of a trial and error process.
https://cdn.ozvolvo.org/uploads/458/PG6GHXC5EP7Y.jpg
And this is the finished product:
https://cdn.ozvolvo.org/uploads/713/6SDMTXCNWTQF.jpg
After that it's just a case of putting it all back together.
I found that the coin tray behind the waterfall console still doesn't fit perfectly but I can live with it.
If I've missed something let me know, I'm sure this thread will get lost but hopefully it'll be useful

If you buy his, you should still get an xr5 shifter kit for the piece that raises the cable at the back (you'll see what I mean in that thread)

BenyBoy

Ah yes, you wrote a whole post about it ??

Thanks, will look into it

240

Thought I should do an update since we installed an LSD and Focus RS clutch kit a couple of months ago.

Also did a couple of upgrades at the same time like Hardrace gearbox mount, do88 silicone coolant hoses, Focus RS oil cooler, whileline front swaybar links, etc.

Had some dramas at the end since the car wouldn't start. We pulled the starter out and bench tested it and it was fine. Tim had a spare starter from an old V50 which we compared it to and it was slightly different. I then grabbed the old flywheel and compared the teeth on it to the ones on the RS flywheel (which were visible with the starter removed) and they were slightly different.

We solved this by replacing the starter with the V50 starter but the connection from the wiring loom was different so we had to modify it to work.

Basically it turns out that for the very last of the C30's, volvo changed the flywheel and starter to a different part number (the part number for my old flywheel comes up for the newer models like XC60 and V40). Of course the RS flywheel we installed was the same as all the older ones (probably up to 2012) which is why it worked fine with the old V50 starter.

Tim was gonna dig out an older/regular style flywheel at some point and we'll grab some pics comparing to my old one and do a proper post. There's literally nothing online about this difference, so it seems that nobody has started modifying these very late model C30's using different clutch kits yet.

(V50 starter on left, c30 on right, note different wiring terminal posts)

Anyway the car drives way better now than it ever did before, I can accelerate through corners much faster and on twisty back roads there is so much more confidence that the car will go where you point it. Even in a straight line the car pulls a bit harder because there's less chance of wheelspin and less chance of the dtsc kicking in and slowing me down.

I also have a spare set of rims and Jax had a sale on so I got a set of Hankook RS4's to see what they're like, I'm planning on doing a track day sometime so they should be pretty helpful there. (Even with the LSD the car is still limited by the traction of the tyres under hard acceleration)

Anyway the bulk of my upgrades are done so the car's going on the dyno tomorrow!

BenyBoy

Good to know about the RS clutch as am thinking of doing the same. Coolant hoses look sweet, waiting for mine to be shipped. Which LSD did you go for?

240

What year is your c30? If an earlier one you should be fine but if the same as mine it looks like your only option is to change the starter or use a genuine volvo flywheel for a 2013 model, I think I found the part number in vida if you need it

I used the mfactory lsd, it was the only one I could easily get in Aus but I think they're all fairly similar

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