Josh's $300 Volvo 242
Josh of Yoshifab is well known in the Volvo community for his Volkswagen TDi powered 245. He's also well known for his $300 242 and what he's accomplished with it on a reasonable budget. The goal for the 242 is simple: make the most power and go as fast as possible while keeping build costs low. This meant no part would be added or purchased unless it was absolutely necessary to make more power. My duties in the project involved installing and tunig a donated MegaSquirt ecu. The ecu started off as a MegaSquirt I on a 2.2 board. The board had been upgraded with a MegaSquirt II processor to take advantage of the higher injector pulse width resolution and extended mapping. In addition to fuel and spark, the 242's MegaSquirt is also configured for boost control and cooling fan control.

The engine configuration is modest: Stock Volvo 2.3 "redblock" bottom end mated to a Volvo 16v head. The stock 8v exhaust manifold is mated to the head via Yoshifab adapter plate. The intake manifold is stock 16v runners with a modified sheet metal plenum. The engine runs on E85 delivered through a single bank of 1600cc injectors. The special part of the engine is the turbocharger, a $150 "eBay" Chinese t3/t4 "50 trim" clone. Josh keeps a build thread on Turbobricks covering the details of this project.

As of 9/18/09 the 242 has been tuned to 348.39whp / 336.85tq and has quite a bit more room to go.
As of 2/28/10 the 242 has run a best 1/4mi time of 12.42 @ 107mph