Nissan S14 Silvia Tuning

"Tuning guide to the greatest Nissan S14 Silvia modifications."
The S14 Silvia is a good car modification project to carry out. We see DIY mechanics wasting money on their S14 Silvia doing the wrong mods and then having to start over. Follow our tips to avoid making the common mistakes

Tuning tips and articles

Engine tuning Transmission tuning Care care Intake & exhaust mods Improve handling Forums

 

Our aim in S14 Silvia engine tuning should be to increase peak power and Torque at the top end.

With our guides your S14 Silvia can become an awesome performer and prove to be reliable daily driver.

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.

Power mods.

These mods modified modifications are usually carried out by our members, decide how far you want to push your car before you begin.

Getting the correct grade of sports upgrades for your planned usage of the car is a time and money saver. Stage 3 motor sport parts just won't work well on the road difficult in stop start traffic.

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Guide to the Best Tuning Mods & Upgrades

  1. Mods that Remove a Restriction

    If the intake or exhaust are restricted in any way this will have an impact on your cars performance, so use an induction kit/filter upgrade and better flowing exhaust whenever your tuning creates a flow restriction.

  2. Mods that Improve Handling

    Braking, Suspension and general alignment of the suspension components is vital for any tuning project even before you start increasing power.

  3. Fit Stronger Parts

    Tuned cars will show up weaknesses, typically in the turbochargers, clutch and internal engine components. Whilst most engines can cope with mild tuning mods, TorqueCars recommend that you upgrade the internal components before these weak spots manifest themselves.

  4. ECU Tunes & Remapping

    While some cars can be easily remapped, others may require piggyback ECU's or aftermarket ECU's but this is the most vital step of your tuning project as it fully releases the power from all of your mods and upgrades. Expect 10-20% on NASP engines and 30-40% on turbocharged units.

  5. More Power Needs More Fuel & Air

    Every tuning project will aim to increase the air supply, but fuel supply is just as vital and will need to match the air the engine can utilise. Fuel to Air ratio is vital so upgrade the fuel pump & injectors. Also you can look to perform head mods (flowing and porting), bigger valves, fast road cams and forced induction upgrades to improve fuel.

Stages of Tune

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

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

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

These mods uprated parts are usually fitted by our members, decide how far you want to push your car before you begin.

Your targets when tuning should be a nice flat torque output. You don't want all the power to be at the top end unless you are creating a motor sport car.

In this article we shall give a little insight into the world to the best upgrades for your car, but we'd encourage you to spend some time on the site looking into the details of each type of performance modification.A fast road camshaft is generally one of the best NASP power mods you can do from a single upgrade to your engine.

The intake and exhaust durations 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 performance chip to fully release the power gain.

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

Using high octane fuel is another option if you find you are suffering from pinking or premature ignition on your Nissan project after fitting other performance 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.

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

For most S14 Silvia engines TorqueCars would suggest you just go with a washable panel air filter. On heavily tuned engines and turbo vehicles an induction kit will help release the power providing you address the problem of supplying cold air.

Sports exhausts generally help improve 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.

Airflow through the head can be dramatically increased with some professional flowed (porting and polishing). These should match and be setup to take into account any other engine mods. When you heavily modify your S14 Silvia you will usally see that the standard clutch starts to fail so get an uprated clutch. The best mods that we recommend for your S14 Silvia are Remapping or piggy back ecu, fast road cam and air intake and exhaust.

Remaps offer big power gains on all turbo charged cars. On NASP engines the benefits are doubtful. However a remap on a NASP engine will help unleash the potential if you have done a lot of mods.

We've also seen some tuners toying with twincharged conversions and making some very high power gains.

Adding forced induction will see significant power gains but this is usually too expensive to be cost effective. Turbos are usually harder to add than a supercharger. Turbos give boost in increasing proportion to rising engine speed and this can make mapping difficult.

It is more straightforward to map a supercharger because the boost is correlating to engine speed on a linear curve. 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 usually your first port of call for the S14 Silvia.

If you set the toe out to 0.8 to 1.3 degrees on the front, and add a tiny bit of negative camber then cornering will usually improve.

Drop the car by as much as 30mm - 37 mm and fit modified stiffer dampers, bigger drops will need other modifications in most instances.

Alloy wheel upgrades.

Alloy wheels will help the brake cooling and are generally less heavy than steel ones. Pay attention to your choice of tyres (tyres) for your car, a good directional tread pattern tyre can really enhance your cars handling. The downside to large alloys on your S14 Silvia is that you alter your effective final drive ratio so this will have a detrimental effect on acceleration and performance.

Although some people have installed larger rims without issues we would restrict ourselves to a 18 inch rim size as the maximum.

There is a more updated version of this Nissan S14 Silvia Tuning article on TorqueCars.com.

For more information on Tuning your car please join us in our friendly forum where you can discuss S14 Silvia options in more detail with our S14 Silvia 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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