Nissan Coupe, Altima Tuning

"Thank you for reading our Nissan Coupe, Altima tuning tips."
The Coupe, Altima is a good car tuning project to try. The key to Coupe, Altima tuning is getting your choice of modification right - a lot of money can be wasted if you do it wrong.

A nice wide torque band and sweet spot of peak power at one third of your RPM range is optimum.

Sadly with smaller engine sizes you are wasting your time spending money on modifications, so if this applies to you get yourself an engine swap then apply the following mods.

Tuning modifications.

This list of the stages and sports modifications are usually installed by our members, decide how far you want to push your car before you get going.

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

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Stages of Tune

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

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

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

Peak power is good on competition cars but for a daily driven car you need a wide torque band and perhaps extending the rev range.

The aim of our articles is to give a limited introduction of customising mods and point you in the right direction, our forum is best place to go if you need more detailed advice and tips on your tuning project, the best performance upgrades and all aspects of modding cars.One of the biggest mechanical motorsport upgrades you can do to your NASP engine is to fit a fast road camshaft .

The exhaust and intake flow play a large part in your cars power band, but be careful here, getting this wrong can upset the idle and make the car hard to drive in traffic. You'd need to follow a cam upgrade with other mods and finish with a remap to fully release the power gain.

Don't forget to increase the fuelling when you are increasing the power - it makes the car more thirsty.

Frequently power losses, and erratic idling after motorsport kits are done can usually be traced to fuel delivery or timing issues.Larger injectors will enable you to supply sufficient fuel to the engine.

Uprate the fuel pump to cope with the extra fuel requirements of your tuned Coupe, Altimas uprated injectors.

Intake and Exhaust Tuning.

Now we move on to the intake and exhaust and ensure proper flow through the engine. Air induction kits will only help to increase power if your air intake is restricted! Adding an induction kit to most low power engines will see LITTLE LOW END POWER GAIN AT ALL. If you have heavily modified your engine and it's need for air INCREASES DRAMATICALLY then an induction kit is the answer and will help remove this restriction.

Induction kits can work well on turbo engines and larger engines (if supplied with a suitable cold air feed or air box), generally though we'd just recommend for Coupe, Altima engines you should just fit a high performance panel air filter preferably made from cotton.

Sports exhausts can help balance the flow of gases through the engine. But if the exhaust pipe is too large, ie: over 2.5 inches bore, you will lose much of the flow rate and end up losing power and torque.

Getting a professionally ported and polished head with larger valves can fully release the engines power. A good fast road performance clutch will help to keep that power going where it should. Never skimp or expect the standard clutch to cope. The best mods in our opinion for your Coupe, Altima are a remap especially on a turbo, a fast road camshaft and sports exhaust, with a good air intake.

Turbo engines are just begging to be flashed. You will see phenomenal power gains on most modern turbo charged cars including diesels making a remap one of the most cost effective and phenomenal modifications for your money.

We've also come across some owners toying with twin charging conversions and making some impressively high power gains.

Adding forced induction will see impressive power gains but this is usually too expensive to be cost effective. It is usually easier to bolt on a supercharger than it is to get a turbo working. Turbos give boost in exponential 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 simpler. Decreasing the engines compression ratio will allow you to add forced induction, water injection may also help prevent detonation.

Handling/Suspension upgrades

Handling modifications are top of many to do lists for the Coupe, Altima.

We found that most Coupe, Altima factory suspension setups need tweaking, a few degrees of toe out -, and slight negative camber will usually enhance your cornering and handling.

Drop the car by as much as 22mm - 39 mm and fit motorsport grade stiffer dampers, bigger drops will need other modifications in most instances.

Alloy wheel upgrades.

As alloy wheels are less heavy they improve performance and they will help to cool the brake disks. Pay attention to your choice of tyres (tyres) for your car, a good soft compound tyre can really enhance your cars handling. We should point out that although they can look cool on the Coupe, Altima 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.

Although some people have fitted larger wheels we would stick to a 16 inch rim size as the maximum.

There is a more updated version of this Nissan Coupe, Altima Tuning article on TorqueCars.com.

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

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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 Nissan. 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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