Tuning the Toyota 1ND-TV

"Comprehensive guide to tuning and performance parts on the Toyota 1ND-TV engine!"

We are always getting posts asking how to improve the 1ND-TV from people wanting to know what are the best tips for 1ND-TV mods that work. So let us look into Toyota 1ND-TV modifications and outline the best modifications on this great engine and point out some frequent tuning mistakes along the way.

The Toyota 1ND-TV are popular engines and with carefully picked performance tuning mods like remapping, turbo upgrades and camshafts you will greatly maximize your driving enjoyment.

Let us provide a guide to 1ND-TV tuning and highlight the optimum modifications for your car.

When talking about the optimum parts for your 1ND-TV engine, we are going to focus on the parts that give the best power gain for you money.

Significant gains on the 1ND-TV can be made from cam upgrades. Altering the cam profile alters the intake and exhaust durations on the engine and can dramatically change the torque and power output.

NB: Fast road camshafts commonly increase the torque across the rev band, you might lose a little bottom end bhp but your top end will be better.

Motorsport camshafts, increase the top end band but as a result the car will not idle smoothly and low end power nearly always suffers.

A Competition camshaft is not great on the daily commute.

You should ideally match your bhp range to your preferences so for a car used daily stick with a shorter duration 1ND-TV camshaft

Different 1ND-TV engines respond better to different camshaft durations so view each engine as unique.

The ecu map and injectors and fuel pump also have an effect on the bhp gains you'll hit.

Extending exhaust or intake durations can alter the bhp band and on most engines the exhaust and intake durations do not need to match, although most cams and tuners use matched pairs there are some advantages to extending the intake or exhaust durations.

1ND-TV Tuning Stages

Stage 1 1ND-TV modifications: Remaps/piggy back ECU, Fast road camshaft, Panel air filters, Drilled & smoothed airbox, Intake headers, Sports exhaust manifold.

Stage 2 1ND-TV modifications: Ported and polished head, Fast road cam, fuel pump upgrades, high flow fuel injectors, Sports catalyst & performance exhaust, induction kit.

Stage 3 1ND-TV modifications: Engine balancing & blueprinting, Adding or Upgrading forced induction (turbo/supercharger), Twin charging conversions, Competition cam, Crank and Piston upgrades to alter compression, Internal engine upgrades (head flowing porting/bigger valves).

ECU flashing allows a tuner to unlock the full potential of all the mods you've done to your 1ND-TV.

It will usually give around 30% more power on turbocharged vehicles and you can expect to see around 15% on NASP engines, but your results usually differs on the mods you've carried out and the condition of your engine.

Forcing more air into the 1ND-TV engine is the main goal to any engine performance tuning job.

Intake transmit the air from the air cleaner and allow it to be drawn into the engine cylinders with fuel for the squish phase.

Design and flow characteristics of the Intake can make a large change to fuel atomisation on the 1ND-TV.

I usually find intake manifold are in desperate need of performance upgrades, although some car makers provide decently flowing intake manifold.

Larger 1ND-TV valves, doing a bit of 3 or 5 angle valve jobs and porting and head flowing will also improve power, and more importantly will allow you to get a greater power increase on other upgrades.

Turbo upgrades for the 1ND-TV

NASP engines need quite a lot of work when you add a turbo, so we have a separate guide to help you take into account the pros and cons of going this route on your 1ND-TV

The more air you can get into an engine, the more fuel it can burn and uprating the induction with a turbocharger upgrade makes massive power gains.

If an engine has forced induction modifications are relatively easy and you'll see that turbo engines will have many forged and stronger components.

There are practical limits for every engine, with some being extremely strong and some only able to handle stock power

See where you'll find these limitations and install higher quality crank and pistons to utilize the power.

There are many car owners spending a lots of money on turbocharger upgrades on the 1ND-TV only to have the engine go up in smoke just after it's used in anger.

Big capacity turbochargers tend to experience no power at low rpm, and low capacity turbochargers spool up really quickly but don't have the peak rpm engines power gains.

Thankfully the market of turbo units is always moving on and we commonly find variable vane turbo units, allowing the vane angle is altered according to speed to lower lag and increase top end bhp and torque.

Twin scroll turbo units divert the exhaust gases into 2 channels and feed these at differently angled vanes in the turbocharger. They also help the scavenging effect of the engine.

It is common that there is a limit in the air flow sensor MAF/MAP on the 1ND-TV when a lot more air is being drawn into the engine.

Going up you'll find 4 bar air sensors coping with quite large power gains, whereas the OEM air sensor sapped power at a much lower level.

Adding a supercharger or additional turbo will make large performance gains, although more challenging to setup. We have this guide to twinchargers if you want to read more.

Uprating 1ND-TV fuel injectors

When you lift the performance you will need to increase to the fuel delivery.

More performance needs more fuel. We would recommend you to over specify your injectors flow rate.

The rule of thumb is to add 20% to the flow rate when fitting an injector, this allows for injector deterioration and allows a little spare capacity should the engine require more fuel.

We think this one is common sense, but you'll need to match your fuel injector to the type of fuel your car uses as well.

Best 1ND-TV performance exhausts

You should look to improve your exhaust if the current exhaust is creating a flow problem.

On most factory exhausts you'll find the exhaust flow rate is still fine even on modest power gains, but when you start pushing up the power levels you will need to get a better flowing exhaust.

Sports exhausts will certainly help air flow from the engine but avoid an exhaust that is too large or you could will reduce the flow rate. Stick to 1.5 to 2.5 inches as a rule of thumb.

Common exhaust restrictions can be traced to the emissions filters installed, so adding a higher flowing race alternative will help avoid this restriction.

Problems and issues to look out for on the 1ND-TV

The 1ND-TV engines, if regularly serviced and maintained, are generally very reliable and have few issues.

Regular oil changes are vital on the 1ND-TV, particularly when the engine has been modified and is putting down more power than the manufacturer intended.

For more information on Tuning your 1ND-TV engine please join us in our friendly forum where you can discuss tuning options in more detail with our 1ND-TV owners. It would also be worth reading our unbiased tuning articles to get a full grasp of the benefits and drawbacks of each modification.

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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 1ND-TV guides and tips are kept up to date.

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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 Toyota. 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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