Nissan R32 Skyline Tuning

"Tuning guide to the most effective Nissan R32 Skyline modifications."

The R32 Skyline is a good tuning project to carry out. We see car owners wasting money on their R32 Skyline doing the wrong mods and then having to start over. Follow our advice to avoid wasting your money.

We consider R32 Skyline tuning and show the best mods that work. Nissan R32 Skylines are popular tuning projects and with a few sensible modified enhancements you can positively maximise your driving pleasure.

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

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.

Engine Tuning.

Typically these modified upgrades are usually fitted by our members, decide how far you want to push your car before you get started.

Getting the correct grade of tuning modifications for your planned usage of the car is essential. Stage 3 motor sport parts just won't work well on the road making the car difficult to drive.

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Stages of Tune

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

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

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

• GXi Coupe and Sedan – 1.8 L CA18i I4,  90 hp
• GTE Coupe and Sedan – 2.0 L RB20E I6, 123 hp, 152Nm(112 lbft)
• GTS Type-X, S, J – 2.0 L RB20DE I6  153 hp, 154Nm(114 lbft)
• GTS-25 Type-X, S, XG – 2.5 L RB25DE I6,  178 hp), 231 Nm (170 lbft)
• GTS-t, Type-M – 2.0 L RB20DET turbo I6, 212 hp), 265 Nm (195 lbft)
• GTS-4 – 2.0 L RB20DET turbo I6, 212 hp, 265Nm(195 lbft) 4WD
• Autech GTS-4 – 2.6 L RB26DE I6, 217 hp, Autech Version (auto only) 4WD - only 188 made
• GT-R – 2.6 L RB26DETT twin-turbo I6, 276 hp, 368Nm(271 lbft 4WD; also NISMO, N1, V-Spec, and V-Spec II variants.
• NISMO S-Tune

You need to keep as much low end power as you can and aim for a wide power band rather than a narrow top end power hike.

In this article we shall give a little insight into the world to the best modifications for your car, but we'd encourage you to spend some time on the site looking into the details of each type of performance upgrade.Fast road cams offer one of the biggest performance gains for your money as far as a bolt on modifications goes on a NASP engine.

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

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

Using higher octane petrol is another option if you find you are suffering from detonation or premature ignition on your Nissan project after fitting other uprated kits. Uprating 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 R32 Skylines uprated injectors.

Intake and Exhaust Tuning.

Breathing mods are usually next up. Air induction kits only help to add performance if your air intake is restricted! Adding an induction kit to most low power engines will see NONE OF A 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.

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 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 biggest 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 head flowed (ported and polished) will allow you to get more air into each cylinder. This is definitely a job for a professional with a flow bench. A good triple plate fast road power clutch will help to keep that power going where it should. Never make false economies or assume a standard OEM clutch to cope. The best mods that we recommend for your R32 Skyline are remaps, sports camshafts and induction improvements.

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 fully release the potential power of the engine.

We've also seen some tuners experimenting with twincharged conversions and making some impressively high power hikes.

Adding forced induction will see large power gains but this is usually too expensive to be cost effective. Superchargers are often easier to add than turbos. With a turbo the power curve is related exponentially to the engine speed making it harder to map.

It is simpler to map a supercharger because the boost is directly proportional 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

Many R32 Skyline owners uprate the handling of their cars with tuning suspension mods as a priority, this will certainly increase your enjoyment of the car.

Fully adjustable suspension allows you to fine tune the handling of you R32 Skyline radically improving your drive.

We suggest that you fit sports suspension and lower the car by 27mm - 39 mm. Larger drops require arch work - especially on models already equipped with motorsport suspension.

Alloy wheel upgrades.

Due to the fact that alloys are less heavy they improve performance and they help to cool the brake disks. Don't forget that your choice of rubber greatly affects your cars grip and handling. It is not worth compromising performance with cheap tyres when you can buy track legal slick performance tyres.We should point out that although they can look cool on the R32 Skyline large 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 installed larger rims without issues we would stick to a 16 inch rim size as the maximum.

There is a more updated version of this Nissan R32 Skyline Tuning article on TorqueCars.com.

For more information on Tuning your car please join us in our friendly forum where you can discuss R32 Skyline options in more detail with our R32 Skyline 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.

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 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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