BMW X7 Tuning

"Tuning guide to the best BMW X7 modifications."

The X7 is a good project car to do. With the right mods your X7 can be transformed into an awesome motor.

Don't waste money, do your homework and follow our unbiased guides to each performance upgrade to avoid wasting money.

We examine X7 tuning and provide tips on the optimum modifications for your car. BMW X7s are popular cars and with a few sensible tuning mods you can dramatically improve your driving fun.

Turning our attention to the engine we need to get a bit more bhp out of the top end.

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.

Tuning modifications.

The following sports kits are usually fitted by our members, decide how far you want to go before you get started.

• 3.0 L B58 i6 turbo (petrol)
• 3.0 L B57 i6 turbo (diesel)
• 4.4 L N63 v8 twin-turbo (petrol)
• 3.0 L B57 i6 quad-turbocharged

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.

Tuning modifications.

The following sports kits are usually fitted by our members, decide how far you want to go before you get started.

Getting the correct grade of sports mods for your planned usage of the car is vital. Stage 3 motor sport parts just don't work well on the road difficult in stop start traffic.

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

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

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

You should keep as much low end torque as possible and aim to achieve a long power band rather than a narrow top end power spike.

In this article we shall give an overview and introduction to the best performance parts for your car, but we'd encourage you to spend some time on the site looking into the details of each type of performance mod.Fast road cams offer one of the biggest performance gains for your money as far as a stand alone mods goes on a NASP engine.

It improves the intake and exhaust flow and increases the power if done right. Ideally you'd add other mods and finish up with a performance chip. TorqueCars would caution you not to go with a motor sports profile cam as this affects 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.

Frequently power losses, and erratic idling after tuning parts are done can usually be traced to timing or fuel delivery issues.Increasing the injectors is another beneficial modification and will deliver sufficient fuel.

Uprate the fuel pump to cope with the extra fuel requirements of your tuned X7s uprated injectors.

Intake and Exhaust Tuning.

Breathing mods are usually next up. Please note that WE DO NOT FIND IMPROVEMENTS WITH INDUCTION KITS, unless you have tuned your car extensively and are finding that the standard air intake has become limited.

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.

Sports exhausts will certainly help air flow from the engine but avoid an exhaust that is too big or you may end up will reduce the flow rate. Stick to 1.5 to 2.5 inches for best results.

Getting the head flowed (ported and polished) will help get more air into each cylinder. This is definitely a job for a pro with a flow bench. Your clutch can lose you loads of power if it starts to break and the standard clutches are only ever good for power gains of up to 45%. Fit a competition clutch to avoid power losses through the transmission. The best mods that we recommend for your X7 are Remapping or piggy back ecu, fast road cam and air intake and exhaust.

Remaps offer significant power gains on all turbo charged cars. On NASP engines the benefits are doubtful. However a remapped ECU on a NASP engine will help unleash the potential if you have done a lot of mods. Adding forced induction will see significant power gains but this is usually too expensive to be cost effective. Turbos are generally harder to add than a supercharger. Turbos give boost in increasing proportion to increasing engine speed and this can make mapping difficult.

Superchargers, however will give a boost which is correlating to engine speed so is easier to map. Alternatively you could add water injection to control knock.

Handling/Suspension upgrades

Handling modifications are top of many to do lists for the X7.

Putting slight negative camber at the front and a degree or two of toe out, will often improve your X7 in handling and cornering.

We would go to a maximum drop of 21mm - 38 mm on most models. You risk rubbing on the arches if you go lower than this.

Alloy wheel upgrades.

The benefits of alloy wheels include lowering your unsprung weight and better brake cooling. Pay attention to your choice of tyres (tyres) for your car, a good soft compound tyre can really enhance your cars handling. The drawback to large alloy wheels on your X7 is that you're altering your final drive ratio so this will have a detrimental effect on performance and acceleration.

With this in mind try to keep the overall rolling diameter of the wheel the OEM setup. In all cases without going over 18 inches.

There is a more updated version of this BMW X7 Tuning article on TorqueCars.com.

For more information on Tuning your car please join us in our friendly forum where you can discuss X7 options in more detail with our X7 owners. It would also be worth reading our unbiased BMW tuning articles to get a full grasp of the benefits and drawbacks of each modification.

Please help us to improve this article, we need your feedback in the comments box below which is there for you to pass on any tips, pointers or facts we might not have covered..

We really like hearing from our readers, and hearing about which upgrades were the most effective for them, it helps us improve our recommendations and articles to reflect current trends in modifications and ensures that our EZ engine guides and tips are kept up to date and we remind our visitors of our non profit non commercial approach to running this site.

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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 BMW. 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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