Acura ZDX Tuning

"Tuning guide to the best Acura ZDX modifications."

Let's review ZDX tuning and summarise the ultimate modifications for your car. Acura ZDXs are fantastic to work on and with the ultimate performance parts you can greatly maximise your driving pleasure.

The ZDX came with the 3.7L J37A5 V6 engine, a great package in the ZDX's SUV body. It came to fruition in 2009 and was a very good attempt by Acura to blur the lines between Coupe, Family sedan and the SUV.

The ZDX is a good car tuning project to have. We see many people wasting money on their ZDX doing the wrong mods and then having to start over. Follow our articles to avoid wasting your money

Don't just look at the peak power figures, you need to see the whole torque curve when determining if a mod is right for you ZDX.

The best power gains come from larger engine sizes. The more you start with the bigger the return on investment so engine swaps are good value mods for small engined cars.

Power mods.

These are the performance mods are usually carried out by our members, decide how far you wish to go in your tuning project before you begin.

Getting the right uprated mods for your planned usage of the car is a time and money saver. Stage 3 (competition) mods just don't work well on the road difficult in stop start traffic.

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Stages of Tune

Stage 1 mods: Lighter flywheel, Suspension upgrade (drop 30-40mm), Alloy wheels, Sports exhaust, Panel air filter, Remap.

Stage 2 mods: Ported and polished head, high flow fuel injector, Power/Sport clutch, Fast road cam, fuel pump upgrades.

Stage 3 mods: Adding or upgrading forced induction (turbo/supercharger), Internal engine upgrades (pistons/head/valves), Engine balancing, Competition cam, Sports gearbox.

Your aim when modding the engine should be a flat and wide torque curve. You don't want all the power to be at the top end of the rev range unless you are creating a competition car.

The point of our guides is to give a brief overview of tuning upgrades and point you in the right direction, our forum is best place to go if you need more detailed advice and tips on your customized car project, the best uprated modifications and all aspects of modding cars.Fast road cams offer one of the biggest power gains for your money as far as a bolt on parts goes on a NASP engine.

It maximises the intake and exhaust flow and pushes up the power if done right. Ideally you'd add other mods and finish up with a reflashed ECU. TorqueCars would caution you not to go with a competition cam as this upsets the engines idling and general town driving characteristics.

You will need to ensure that the engine is not starved of fuel so will need to increase the fuelling.

Using high octane fuel is another option if you find you are suffering from pinking or premature ignition on your Acura project after fitting other motorsport parts. To get sufficient fuel you may need to increase the injectors on your engine.

If have increased your fuelling with bigger injectors you will also need to get a bigger fuel pump to supply it.

Intake and Exhaust Tuning.

The next area for modification is the intake and exhaust. Please note that WE DO NOT FEEL YOU GET POWER GAINS FROM INDUCTION KITS, unless you have tuned your car massively and are finding that the standard air intake has become the bottleneck.

Maximum power gains come from a full induction kit with a cold air feed on heavily tuned engines, this can be sited within an air box but a performance panel filter should suffice for most applications. TorqueCars suggest you use a panel air filter as these are easy to clean and maintain and generally perform better than paper ones.

Do not go with the widest exhaust you can find this will slow the exhaust rate - the best exhausts for power gains are usually between 1.5 to 2.5 inches. It is the shape and material more than the bore size.

Getting the cylinder head polished and ported will assist in flowing more air into each cylinder. This is definitely a job for a pro with a flow bench. When you heavily modify your ZDX you will usally see that the standard clutch starts to slip so get an uprated clutch. The best mods we recommend for your ZDX are Remapping or piggy back ecu, fast road cam and air intake and exhaust.

NASP engines do not achieve big power gains if you remap them, unless you have done extensive modifications. With turbocharged engines this is another story. A remapped turbo will give impressive power gains and take full advantage of the strength of the block.

We've also come across some owners playing with twincharged applications and making some impressively high power figures.

The most phenomenal power gains for NASP engines usually involve the addition of forced induction. Superchargers are generally easier to add than a turbo. It is difficult to map fuelling with a turbo as the boost comes on exponentially with revs.

Superchargers will give a boost which is correlating to engine speed so is easier to map. Decreasing the engines compression ratio will allow you to add forced induction, water injection may also help prevent detonation.

Handling/Suspension upgrades

Many ZDX owners uprate the handling of their cars with suspension parts as a priority, this will certainly increase your enjoyment of the car.

Good suspension tweaks that radically improve handling for the ZDX include a couple of degrees negative camber and 1-1.5 degrees of toe out on the front wheels.

We suggest that you fit modified suspension and lower the car by 28mm - 40 mm. Larger drops require arch work - especially on models already equipped with motorsport suspension.

Alloy wheel upgrades.

As alloys are lighter they improve performance and they will help to cool the brake disks. We can't go into too much detail here about tyres but they are how the car puts the power down on the road so are a critical choice. directional tread pattern tyres work well on ZDX, and make a big difference over budget tyres. We'd like to point out although they can look cool on the ZDX big alloys will actually decrease your performance. The larger you go the lower your acceleration will be - this to the change in your effective final drive ratio.

Due to this fact aim to keep the overall rolling diameter of the wheel your OEM settings. In all cases avoid going larger than 16 inches.

There is a more updated version of this Acura ZDX Tuning article on TorqueCars.com.

For more information on Tuning your car please join us in our friendly forum where you can discuss ZDX options in more detail with our ZDX owners. It would also be worth reading our unbiased Acura tuning articles to get a full grasp of the benefits and drawbacks of each modification.

We need your help improving this article, so please send us your feedback in the comments box below and pass on any tips, points or facts we have wrong or have not covered.

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This article is flagged for an update, so please pass on specific tips below that I can include. All articles, and content was written by me, Waynne Smith TorqueCars founder. Some outlines are just too general so I appreciate your feedback and suggestions. This entry was filed under Acura. You can leave a response below or join our forum to discuss this article and car modification in detail with our members.

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