Suzuki Jimny Tuning

"Tuning guide to the most effective Suzuki Jimny modifications."

The Jimny is a good car tuning project to play with. We see car enthusiasts wasting money on their Jimny doing the wrong mods and then having to start over. Follow our articles to avoid ruining your car

We review Jimny tuning and outline the ultimate mods that work. Suzuki Jimnys are popular cars and with a few sensible tuning mods you can substantially increase your driving opportunities.

 

Tuning tips and articles

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

Top end torque should be your overall aim with a nice fat wide peak torque band.

Jimny make good sleepers if you debadge them and fit the most powerful engine upgrades and handling mods you can !

The best power gains come from larger engine sizes. The more you start with the bigger the return on investment so engine swaps are good value mods for small engined cars.

Power mods.

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

Getting the best modified upgrade kits for your planned usage of the car is essential. Stage 3 competition upgrades just won't work well on the road and will make the car undrivable.

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

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

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

Your goal when tuning the engine should be a nice flat torque range. You want to avoid sending all the torque to be at the top end unless you are creating a motor sport car.

The whole aim of our pointers is to give a limited introduction of tuning 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 modified car project, the best performance parts and all aspects of modding cars.Fast road cams offer one of the biggest performance gains for your money as far as a stand alone uprated mods goes on a NASP engine.

The intake and exhaust 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 remap to fully release the power gain.

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

Frequently power losses, flat spots and erratic idling after sports mods are done can usually be traced to timing or fuelling issues.Improved 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 Jimnys 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 are only beneficial to boost performance if the air intake is restricted! Adding an induction kit to most small engines will see NO 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 performance 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 get 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.

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. A good fast road power clutch will help to keep that power going where it should. Never skimp or think that the standard OEM clutch to cope. The best mods that we recommend for your Jimny are remaps, sports camshafts and induction improvements.

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

We've also seen some tuners toying with twincharged applications 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. It is often cheaper to bolt on a supercharger than it is to fit a working turbo. Turbos give boost in increasing proportion to th engine speed and this can make mapping difficult.

It is simpler to map a supercharger because the boost is directly proportional to engine speed on a linear curve. To cope with forced induction you will usually need to decrease the compression ratio of the engine .

Handling/Suspension upgrades

Many Jimny owners uprate the handling of their cars with coilover suspension upgrades as a priority, this will certainly increase your enjoyment of the car.

If you set the toe out to degrees on the front, and add some negative camber then cornering will often benefit.

Drop the car by as much as 23mm - 37 mm and fit sports stiffer dampers, bigger drops will need other modifications in most instances.

Alloy wheel upgrades.

As alloys are less heavy they improve performance and they can help to cool the brake disks. If you are serious about performance then you will need to carefully choose your tyres - ideally with a track legal slick tyre. Please note that although they can look cool on the Jimny large alloy wheels 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 with bigger wheels we would stick to a 16 inch rim size as the maximum.

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

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

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