Peugeot 508 Tuning

"Tuning guide to the best Peugeot 508 modifications."

Replacing the 407 it shares much platform wise with the Citroen C5 the 508 was released in 2010 and later face lifted in 2015.

The car won car of the year in 2011 and best large family car and other awards, so Peugeot had a successful car on their hands.

"Thank you for reading my Peugeot 508 tuning guide."
The 508 is a good project car to try. We see loads of people wasting money on their 508 doing the wrong mods and then having to start over. Follow our articles to avoid wasting your money

Top end power should be your overall aim on the 508 with a nice fat peak torque band.

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.

These are the tuning parts are usually carried out by our members, decide how far you want to go before you get going.

Getting the best performance upgrades for your planned usage of the car is a time and money saver. Stage 3 competition upgrades just don't work well on the road hard to control in slow traffic.

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Stages of Tune

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

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

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

First generation  Petrol engines

• 1.6 L I4 (petrol)
• 1.8 L I4 (petrol)
• 2.0 L I4 (petrol)
• 2.3 L I4 (petrol)

Diesel engines

• 1.6 L I4 (diesel)
• 2.0 L I4 (diesel)
• 2.2 L I4 (diesel)

Second generation Petrol engines

These came with turbochargers meaning that a remap yields quite impressive power gains. The transmission was also offered as an impressive 8 speed unit (EAT8 instead of the earlier EAT6)

• 1.6 PureTech (180PS) 1,598 cc 180 PS (178 hp) @ 5,500, (184 lb.ft) @ 1,650
• 1.6 PureTech (225PS) 1,598 cc 225 PS (222 hp) @ 5,500, (221 lb.ft) @ 1,900

Diesel engines

• 1.5 BlueHDI (130PS) 1,499 cc 130 PS (128 hp) @ 3,750, (221 lb.ft) @ 1,750
• 1.5 BlueHDI (130PS) 1,499 cc 130 PS (128 hp) @ 3,750, (221 lb.ft) @ 1,750
• 2.0 BlueHDI (160PS) 1,997 cc 160 PS (159 hp) @ 3,750, (295 lb.ft) @ 2,000
• 2.0 BlueHDI (180PS) 1,997 cc 180 PS (179 hp) @ 3,750,(295 lb.ft) @ 2,000

Peak power is all well and good but for a daily driven car you need a long torque band and perhaps extending the rev range.

In this article we shall give a little insight into the world to the best mods for your car, but we'd encourage you to spend some time on the site looking into the details of each type of performance part.One of the biggest mechanical performance modifications you can do on 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 camshaft upgrade with other mods and finish with a performance chip to fully realise your gains.

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

If you find you experience flat spots and power surges after your kits you should check the fuelling and try a higher octane fuel as well. Uprated 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 508s uprated injectors.

Intake and Exhaust Tuning.

The next area for modification is the intake and exhaust. Please note that WE DO NOT FEEL YOU GET POWER GAINS FROM INDUCTION KITS, unless you have tuned your car extensively and are finding that the standard air intake has become the bottleneck.

For most 508 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 can usually air flow out of the engine but avoid an exhaust that is too big or you could will reduce the flow rate. Stick to 1.5 to 2.5 inches for best results.

Getting a professionally ported and polished head with larger valves can fully maximise your power gains. When you tune up your 508 you will see that the standard clutch starts to suffer so get an uprated clutch. The best mods in our experience for your 508 are fast road camshaft, remap, induction and exhaust, suspension.

Remaps offer impressive 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. Adding forced induction will see big power gains but this is usually too expensive to be cost effective. Turbos are usually harder to add than a supercharger. Turbos increase power 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 directly proportional to engine speed on a linear curve. Alternatively you could add water injection to control knock.

Handling/Suspension upgrades

Handling modifications are usually your first port of call for the 508.

Fully adjustable suspension allows you to fine tune the handling of you 508 greatly enhancing your drive.

We suggest that you fit performance suspension and lower the car by 29mm - 38 mm. Larger drops require arch work - especially on models already equipped with performance suspension.

Alloy wheel upgrades.

Alloy wheels can help the brake cooling and are generally lighter than the steel ones. 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 directional tread pattern performance tires.We should point out that although they can look cool on the 508 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.

With this in mind aim to keep the overall rolling diameter of the wheel the same as supplied from the factory. In all cases avoid going above 16 inches.

There is a more updated version of this 508 Tuning article on TorqueCars.com.

For more information on Tuning your car please join us in our friendly forum where you can discuss 508 options in more detail with our 508 owners. It would also be worth reading our unbiased Peugeot tuning articles to get a full grasp of the benefits and drawbacks of each modification.

We need your help improving this article, so please send us your feedback in the comments box below and pass on any tips, points or facts we have wrong or have not covered. We really do love seeing our visitors car projects and which mods work best for them, this site is very much a community effort, and we remind our visitors of our non profit non commercial approach to running this site. All of your comments are used to improve the accuracy of these articles which are continually revised, tweaked and updated.

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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 Peugeot. 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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