Hi Peter,

Good thoughts on the 99 and up cars! I didn't know that! It sounds something like the "hardware signature" that Windows XP uses to register your copy of their OS. You can go along and upgrade your hardware until you get to the motherboard - if that burns up and you have to rebuild your computer, you have to call up Microsoft and beg them to register your OS for you and promise that you're not a software pirate. So it could be that each sensor on a car has it's own serialized signature that the ECU reads. If that's the case, you could get away with a swap if you re-used all of the old sensors together. Then again, it could be that the ECU has its own trend analysis it records for the engine and when it senses a sharp change in the data it knows that it's got a new engine. Very sneaky sort of stuff implemented by Volvo! Perhaps in the name of warantee claims for those of us who like to "tamper" with our cars.

So will owning a car be like owning software someday? "You don't own the car, we do... you only own our permission to use it."

When I do this project, it certainly won't include a factory ECU. In terms of engine management they are too slow and need to be piggybacked and fooled into doing the job necessary for a modified engine. Fortunately there are plenty of great aftermarket programmable ECU's out there (Motec being the most powerful and most expensive). Tuning is part of the fun!

Good info also on the flywheel! I'd like to get one for measurement and examination. It sounds like a stock flywheel would be useless for a hardcore clutch and a free-revving engine. A quick search of the popular clutch makers shows that nobody I know of makes a Volvo clutch. IPD doesn't carry flywheels either. I'm sure there is some kind of other flywheel out there that will work (like BMW or something else) without reinventing the wheel.

I signed up on turbobricks. I'm sure somebody there has some experience searching for special parts.

Steve