Volvo M90 transmission
Encyclopedia
Volvo 700 series
The 760 was Volvo's attempt to cement a place in the prestige market, after building a reputation for being solid and safe rather than out-and-out luxurious cars. Jan Wilsgaard, head of Volvo's Design and Styling team, proposed over 50 new designs for the new car. It was introduced to the US in...
.The M90 RWD gearbox and the M56 FWD gearbox are considered to be brother and sister because they are built on the same gearbox platform and have many parts in common. All turbocars have the m90 gearbox as standar from 1995.
The gearbox is made by Getrag
Getrag
Getrag is a leading manufacturer of automobile manual transmissions. The company was founded on 1 May 1935, in Ludwigsburg, Germany, by Hermann Hagenmeyer; as the Getriebe und Zahnradfabrik Hermann Hagenmeyer GmbH & Cie KG...
in Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
and it is of a 3-axle design, deriving from the Volvo
Volvo
AB Volvo is a Swedish builder of commercial vehicles, including trucks, buses and construction equipment. Volvo also supplies marine and industrial drive systems, aerospace components and financial services...
M56 gearbox of the front wheel driven 850 series. It is rumored that the gears between these gearboxes can be swapped.
There are three variations of the gearbox. There is a version for the cast iron 4 cylinder engines of the 940 (redblock), the all aluminum 6 cylinder of the 960 (whiteblock
Volvo Modular engine
The Volvo Modular engine is a family of straight-4, straight-5, and straight-6 automobile piston engine produced from the first year Volvo 960 appeared with the B6304F engine . It has an aluminium engine block and aluminium 4-valve DOHC cylinder heads and uses SFI fuel injection and has...
), and the version for the Volkswagen
Volkswagen
Volkswagen is a German automobile manufacturer and is the original and biggest-selling marque of the Volkswagen Group, which now also owns the Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, SEAT, and Škoda marques and the truck manufacturer Scania.Volkswagen means "people's car" in German, where it is...
6 cylinder diesel engine D24TIC. The differences are the bell housing bolt pattern and the output shaft flange with a 3-bolt flange for the redblock/diesel engines and a 4 bolt flange for whiteblock engines.
The variant for the 6 cylinder Volvo engine will fit on all 4/5/6 all aluminum Volvo N/RN-series engines.
The clutch is hydraulically operated by a master/slave cylinder setup with a normal clutch
Clutch
A clutch is a mechanical device which provides for the transmission of power from one component to another...
fork and throw out bearing. The flywheels used with these gearboxes are dual mass versions (petrol engines) to eliminate the noise that 3-axle (3-shift) gearboxes can make in neutral, and a regular (single mass) flywheels for the diesel engine.
All gears, including the reverse gear, are synchronized.
The M90 gearbox is available with different gear ratios.
| Gear | M90H1 | M90H2 | M90L1 | M90L2 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3.54:1 | 3.54:1 | 3.91:1 | 3.91:1 |
| 2 | 2.05:1 | 2.05:1 | 2.20:1 | 2.20:1 |
| 3 | 1.38:1 | 1.38:1 | 1.38:1 | 1.38:1 |
| 4 | 1.00:1 | 1.00:1 | 1.00:1 | 1.00:1 |
| 5 | 0.81:1 | 0.70:1 | 0.81:1 | 0.70:1 |
| Reverse | 3.00:1 | 3.00:1 | 3.00:1 | 3.00:1 |
This gearbox is the strongest manual transmission that Volvo fitted to their rear wheel drive cars. The H2 and L2 versions are stronger than the H and L versions.
There is a common disbelief that H is stronger than L, but the only difference between H and L is the gear ratio.
In 1997, M90 H2 and M90 L2 where introduced.
This revised model of the M90, had an improved design of the 3rd gear synchronous ring; to prevent premature failure of the transmission.
It is possible to modify the synchronous ring of the M90 H and M90 L gearboxes, to eliminate the problem.
To do so, one must open up the transmission and weld the synchronous ring in its place.