Alfa Romeo 156 Tuning

"Thank you for reading our Alfa Romeo 156 tuning tips."

The 156 is one of the most distinctive cars to come out of the Alfa Romeo stable, with performance to match it's looks.

The 156 is a superb Alfa with a loyal dedicated fan base. The 156 is a good car tuning project to execute.

If you do your planning then you can create an awesome 156 but don't be fooled there are lots of performance mods out there that will simply not suit it read our unbiased guides first.

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

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.

Engine Tuning.

The following motorsport modifications are usually installed by our members, decide how far you want to go before you begin.

Getting the best performance modifications for your planned usage of the car is vital. Stage 3 competition upgrades just won't work well on the road making the car difficult to drive.

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Stages of Tune

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

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

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

Peak power is nice in motorsport but for a drivable and fun car you need a wide torque band and perhaps extending the rev range.

In this article we shall give a little insight into the world to the best performance parts for your car, but we'd encourage you to spend some time on the site looking into the details of each type of performance upgrade.Fast road cams offer one of the biggest performance gains for your money as far as a single tuning mods goes on a NASP engine.

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

You will need to ensure that the engine is not starved of fuel so will need to increase the fuelling.

Frequently power losses, and erratic idling after sports modifications are done can usually be traced to timing or fuelling issues.To get sufficient fuel you may need to improve the injectors on your engine.

If you are increasing your fuelling with bigger injectors you will also need to get a bigger fuel pump to supply it.

Intake and Exhaust Tuning.

The next area for modification is the intake and exhaust. Please note that WE DO NOT FIND IMPROVEMENTS WITH INDUCTION KITS, unless you have tuned your car with over 30 percent more power and are finding that the standard air intake has become the bottleneck.

Induction kits can work well on turbo engines and larger engines (if supplied with a suitable cold air feed or air box), generally though we'd just recommend for 156 engines you should just fit a sports panel air filter preferably made from cotton.

Sports exhausts will certainly help air flow through the engine but avoid an exhaust that is too big or you may end up will reduce the flow rate. Stick to 1.5 to 2.5 inches as a rule of thumb.

Getting a professionally gas flowed head with larger valves can fully release the engines power. A good heavy duty fast road upgraded clutch will help to keep that power going where it should. Never cut corners or ask a standard OEM clutch to cope. The best mods we would do for your 156 are a remap especially on a turbo, a fast road camshaft and sports exhaust, with a good air intake.

NASP engines do not achieve big power gains if you remap them, unless you have done extensive modifications. With turbocharged engines this is another story. A remapped turbo will give massive power gains and fully release the potential power of the engine.

We've also come across some owners playing with twincharging conversions and making some seriously high power figures.

The most phenomenal power gains for NASP engines usually involve the addition of forced induction. Turbos are usually harder to add than a supercharger. Turbos increase power in exponential proportion to th engine speed and this can make mapping difficult.

Superchargers, however will give a boost which is correlating to engine speed so is easier to map. Decreasing the engines compression ratio will allow you to add forced induction, water injection may also help prevent detonation.

Handling/Suspension upgrades

Improving the handling for lots of DIY modders first priority in your 156 tuning project.

We found that most 156 factory suspension setups need tweaking, a few degrees of toe out, and a tiny bit of negative camber will greatly improve your cornering and handling.

We suggest that you fit sports suspension and lower the car by 28mm - 37 mm. Larger drops require arch work - especially on models already equipped with performance suspension.

Alloy wheel upgrades.

As alloys are lighter they improve performance and they help to cool the brake disks. 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. soft compound tyres work well on 156, and make a big difference over budget tyres. Large 156 alloys can decrease performance. If you get big alloys you will be changing your final drive ratio.

Although some people have gone larger than this we would restrict ourselves to a 18 inch rim size as the maximum.

There is a more updated version of this Alfa Romeo 156 Tuning article on TorqueCars.com.

For more information on Tuning your car please join us in our friendly forum where you can discuss 156 options in more detail with our 156 owners. It would also be worth reading our unbiased Alfa Romeo tuning articles to get a full grasp of the benefits and drawbacks of each modification.

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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 Alfa Romeo. 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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