Seat Arona Tuning

"Thank you for reading this Seat Arona tuning article."

Great styling, practical design and a good range of engines all mean the Arona is a good tuning project car to play with.

Sharing many of the VW group engines you have a wide base of performance parts to choose from, so we outline your best mods, and pass on some tips we've picked up when tuning the Arona.

With the right mods your Arona can be transformed into a stunning project. Don't waste money, do your homework and follow our unbiased guides to each performance upgrade to avoid disappointment.

Top end torque should be your overall aim with a nice fat wide 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 modifications are usually fitted by our members, decide how far you want to go before you get started.

Getting the correct grade of sports parts for your planned usage of the car is a time and money saver. Stage 3 (competition) mods just won't work well on the road making the car difficult to drive.

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Stages of Tune

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

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

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

You should keep as much low end torque as possible and aim to achieve a wide power band rather than a narrow top end power hike.

The point of our advice is to give a starting base of car tuning upgrades and point you in the right direction, our forum is the place to go for detailed advice and tips on your car tuning project, the best performance kits and all aspects of modding cars.

Fast road cams offer one of the biggest torque gains for your money as far as a bolt on performance modifications goes on a NASP engine.

The exhaust & 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 impossible to drive in traffic. You'd need to follow a camshaft upgrade with other mods and finish with a reflashed ECU for the best performance gains.

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

Using higher octane petrol is another option if you find you are suffering from pinking or premature ignition on your Seat project after fitting other sports upgrades. Uprated 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.

Breathing mods are usually next up. Contrary to popular belief there is usually a small power gain obtained by fitting an induction kit, they only become beneficial and are recommended after you boost the engines power to the point where the standard air intake box cannot cope!

Derestricting the airflow into the engine is a primary goal of performance tuning so get a freer flowing air filter if you find that the car is running lean only if you find the car is running lean. Induction kits can sound fun but due to the warm air in the engine bay they will not do much to increase power and often rob you of power on most cars.

Sports exhausts can help equal out the flow of air through the engine. But if the exhaust is too large, ie: it's over 2.5 inches bore, you will lose much of the exhaust flow rate and end up sapping power and torque.

Head work including a gas flow and 3 or 5 angle valve job will really help to release the potential of the engine. A good multi plate fast road sports clutch will help to keep that power going where it should. Never cut corners or think that your standard clutch to cope. The best mods that we recommend for your Arona are a remap especially on a turbo, a fast road camshaft and sports exhaust, with a good air intake.

Remaps offer phenomenal 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. Despite the large cost involved adding forced induction to a NASP engine will give large power gains. Superchargers are generally easier to add than a turbo. Turbos provide boost in increasing proportion to rising engine speed and this can make mapping difficult.

Superchargers, however will give a boost which is directly proportional to engine speed so is simpler. Alternatively you could install water injection to reduce the risk of knock.

Handling/Suspension upgrades

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

Setting a little negative camber at the front and around 1 to 1.7 degrees of toe out, will dramatically enhance your Arona in handling and cornering.

We suggest that you fit modified suspension and lower the car by 25mm - 36 mm. Larger drops require arch work - especially on models already equipped with performance suspension.

Alloy wheel upgrades.

The benefits of alloys include a lower unsprung weight and more efficient brake cooling via the extra air flow they allow.

We can't go into too much detail here about tyres but they are how the car puts the power down on the road so are a critical choice. directional tread pattern tyres work well on Arona, and make a big difference over budget tyres.

Please note although they can look cool on the Arona 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.

Due to this fact we would advise sticking to a maximum wheel size of 16 inches, although we know some of our members have with bigger wheels with no problems.

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

For more information on Tuning your car please join us in our friendly forum where you can discuss Arona options in more detail with our Arona owners. It would also be worth reading our unbiased Seat 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.

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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 Seat. 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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