Tiguan Tuning

"Thanks for reading my VW Tiguan tuning guide."

The Tiguan is unusually placed as a fun family oriented SUV. The Tiguan has the practicalities of an off roader and excels when it comes to load space and access but the running costs are similar to a family car.

On our speed bump and pot hole infested roads it is a sensible buy indeed as long as you don't fit anything larger than an 18 inch alloy wheel.

The looks whilst controversial are generally appreciated and VW have virtually created a new model for their ever growing line up. We look at Tiguan tuning and report on the best modifications. Volkswagen Tiguan are popular cars and with a few sensible performance modifications you can greatly increase your driving enjoyment.

The Tiguan is a good car tuning project to execute. If you do your homework then you can create an awesome Tiguan but don't be fooled there are lots of competition inspired parts out there that will simply not suit it read our unbiased guides first.

Tuning tips and articles

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

A nice wide torque band and sweet spot of peak power at one third of your RPM range is optimum.

With just a few mods you can convert your Tiguan into a hot hatch, beating larger cars on the track.

Smaller engines do not provide much of a return in terms of power so start with a bigger engine. Engine swaps are a good option if you have a small engine size.

Tuning modifications.

Typically these motorsport parts are usually installed by our members, decide how far you want to go before you get started.

Getting the best uprated upgrade kits for your planned usage of the car is essential. Stage 3 motor sport mods just don'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, Suspension upgrade (drop 30-40mm), Panel air filter, Sports exhaust, Alloy wheels, Remap.

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

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

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

In this article we shall give an overview and introduction 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 part.One of the best mechanical motorsport parts you can do on your NASP engine is to fit a fast road camshaft .

It improves the intake and exhaust durations and pushes up the power if done right. Ideally you'd add other mods and finish up with a remap. We'd also caution you not to go with a competition cam as this upsets the engines idling and general town driving characteristics.

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

Using high octane fuel is another option if you find you are suffering from pinking or premature ignition on your VW project after fitting other performance upgrades. Upgrading 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 Tiguans 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 will only help to boost performance if the cars air intake is restricted! Adding an induction kit to most standard engines will see ZERO 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.

Sports exhausts increase the flow of gases through the engine. But if the exhaust is too big, ie: over 2.5 inches bore, you will lose a lot of the flow rate and end up sapping power and torque.

Getting the cylinder head flowed (ported and polished) will help get more air into each cylinder. This is definitely a job for a pro with a flow bench. When you tune up your Tiguan you will see that the standard clutch starts to slip so get an uprated clutch. The best mods in our opinion for your Tiguan are Remapping or piggy back ecu, fast road cam and air intake and exhaust.

Remaps offer big power gains on all turbo charged cars. On NASP engines the benefits are doubtful. However a chipped ECU on a NASP engine will help unleash the potential if you have done a lot of mods.

We've also seen some tuners toying with twin charging applications and making some impressively high power gains.

Adding forced induction will see impressive power gains but this is usually too expensive to be cost effective. It is generally easier to bolt on a supercharger than it is to fit a working turbo. With a turbo the boost curve is related exponentially to the engine speed making it difficult to map fuelling with.

It is more straightforward to map a supercharger because the boost is correlating to engine speed on a linear curve. Adding forced induction will generally require a lower compression ratio or water injection.

Handling/Suspension upgrades

Many Tiguan owners uprate the handling of their cars with uprated suspension parts as a priority, this will certainly increase your enjoyment of the car.

Good suspension tweaks that substantially enhance handling for the Tiguan include a couple of degrees negative camber and 1-1.5 degrees of toe out on the front wheels.

We would go to a maximum drop of 30mm - 38 mm on most models. You risk rubbing on the arches if you go lower than this.

Alloy wheel upgrades.

As alloys are less heavy they improve performance and they help to cool the brake disks. Further improvements can be made to your cars handling with the addition of track legal slick tyre. The drawback to large alloy wheels on your Tiguan is that you alter your effective final drive ratio and this will have a negative effect on performance.

Although some people have gone larger than this without problems we would restrict ourselves to a 18 inch rim size as the maximum.

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

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

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