Kia Stinger Tuning

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The Stinger is one of Kia's most exciting and impressive cars to date, and already we get asked about the best mods for this in ever increasing numbers, so here is our Kia Stinger tuning guide.

The Stinger is a good tuning project to do. With the right mods your Stinger 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.

Our aim in Stinger engine tuning should be to increase peak power and Torque at the top end.

Smaller engines do not provide much of a return in terms of power so start with a bigger engine. Engine swaps are a good option if you have a small engine size.

Tuning modifications.

The following modified mods are usually installed by our members, decide how far you wish to go in your tuning project before you begin.

Engine options for the Stinger

• 2.0 L Theta II GDI turbo I4 (petrol)
• 3.3 L Lambda II GDI twin-turbo V6 (petrol)
• 2.2 L R-Line D4HC CRDi I4 (diesel)

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

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Stages of Kia Stinger Tune

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

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

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

Your goal when tuning the engine should be a wide torque curve. You want to avoid sending all the power to be at the top end of the rev range unless you are creating a competition car.

The whole point of our articles is to give a little insight into the world of modding upgrades and point you in the right direction, our forum is the place to go for detailed advice and tips on your customized car project, the best uprated kits and all aspects of modding cars.Fast road cams offer one of the biggest power gains for your money as far as a single tuning modifications goes on a NASP engine.

It improves the intake and exhaust flow and pushes up the power if done right. Ideally you'd add other mods and finish up with a performance chip. We'd also caution you not to go with a motor sports profile cam as this affects the engines idling and general town driving characteristics.

When pushing up the power you will need to uprate to the fuelling. More power needs more fuel.

Using higher octane petrol is another option if you find you are suffering from pinking or premature ignition on your Kia project after fitting other motorsport kits. Larger injectors will enable you to supply sufficient fuel to the engine.

If you've uprated your fuelling with bigger injectors you will also need to get a bigger fuel pump to supply it.

Intake and Exhaust Tuning on the Stinger.

Now we move on to the intake and exhaust and ensure proper flow through the engine. Please note that WE DO NOT FEEL YOU GET POWER GAINS FROM INDUCTION KITS, unless you have tuned your car with over 30 percent more power and are finding that the standard air intake has become a restriction.

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 largest exhaust you can get this will reduce the exhaust flow 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.

Head porting and polishing the head will allow you to maximise your air/fuel charge. Leave this to a professional though with a proper flow bench and machine tools Your clutch can seriously let you down if it starts to suffer and the standard clutches are only ever good for power gains of up to 43%. Fit an uprated clutch to avoid power losses through the transmission. The best mods that we recommend for your Stinger are a remap especially on a turbo, a fast road camshaft and sports exhaust, with a good air intake.

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 large power gains and fully release the potential power of the engine. Adding forced induction will see impressive power gains but this is usually too expensive to be cost effective. Turbos are often harder to add than a supercharger. Turbos give boost in increasing proportion to th 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. To cope with forced induction you will usually need to decrease the engines compression ratio .

Handling/Suspension upgrades

Improving the handling for many tuners first priority in your Stinger tuning project.

Setting a small amount of negative camber at the front and around 1 to 1.7 degrees of toe out, will often improve your Stinger in handling and cornering.

Drop the car by as much as 23mm - 38 mm and fit motorsport grade stiffer dampers, bigger drops will need other modifications in most instances.

Alloy wheel upgrades.

As alloys are lighter they improve performance and they can help to cool the brake disks. Get a good track legal slick tyre to improve your handling and help improve traction on your Stinger. Large Stinger alloy wheels can decrease performance. If you get big alloy wheels you will be changing your final drive ratio.

For this reason endeavour to keep the overall rolling diameter of the wheel the OEM setup. In all cases avoid going above 18 inches.

There is a more updated version of this Kia Stinger Tuning article on TorqueCars.com.

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

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