Alfa GTV Tuning

"GTV - Grand Tourer Vitality"

I remember first noticing a car and it happened to be an old 1980's GTV with a very distinctive flat boxer engine sound.

This may well have been the turning point in my life sparking a lifelong interest in cars and the GTV will always have a place in my heart.

The cars are great to work on and there are some good quality aftermarket part suppliers out there.

The key is to pick the right mods or you risk ruining the excellent ride quality of the standard GTV.

Improving the handling should be your first priority in your GTV tuning project.

Drop the car by as much as 25mm and fit stiffer dampers, bigger drops will need other modifications in most instances.

Turning our attention to the GTVs engine we need to get a bit more power out of the top end.

Alfa GTV Tuning modifications.

The following mods are usually carried out by our members, decide how far you want to go before you begin.

Stage 1 mods: Exhaust, Panel air filter, Remap, lighter flywheel

Stage 2 mods: Fast road cam, ported and polished head, fuel injector & fuel pump upgrades, 

Stage 3 mods: Engine balancing, forced induction (turbo/supercharger), Internal engine upgrades (pistons/head/valves), competition cam.

Your aim when tuning should be a nice flat torque curve and a wide power band. Fast road cams offer one of the biggest performance gains as far as a bolt on part goes. You will need to ensure that the engine is not starved of fuel so will need to uprate the fuelling.

To get sufficient fuel if you have gone a bit mad with your tuning options, you may need to uprate the injectors on your engine. Uprate the fuel pump to cope with the extra fuel requirements of your tuned GTVs uprated injectors.

Intake and Exhaust Tuning.

Breathing mods are usually next up. Maximum power gains come from a full induction kit with a cold air feed, preferably sited within an air box but a panel filter should suffice for most applications. On small engines you will actually lose low down power so TorqueCars suggest you use a panel air filter instead.

Do not go with the biggest exhaust you can find this will slow up the exhaust flow rate - the best for power gains are usually between 2 to 3 inches on the lovely 3.0 V6 engine.

Airflow through the head can be dramatically increased with some professional porting and polishing. These should match and be setup to take into account any other engine mods. Your clutch can seriously let you down if it starts to slip and the standard clutches are only ever good for power gains of up to 50%. Fit an uprated clutch to avoid power losses through the transmission. 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.

The largest power gains for NASP engines usually involve the addition of forced induction. Turbos are harder to add than supercharger. Turbos give boost in exponential proportion to increasing engine speed and this can make mapping difficult. It is easier to map a supercharger because the boost is 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.

Some specialist Alfa Romeo tuners are offering Rotrex and similar supercharger kits. If you run low boost and use high octane fuel then you shouldn't have too much trouble.

Alfa Romeo GTV Wheel modifications.

The benefits of alloy wheels include a lower unsprung weight and more efficient brake cooling. Large GTV alloy wheels can decrease performance. If you get big alloy wheels you will be changing your final drive ratio. Although some people have gone larger we would stick to a 17 inch rim size as the maximum.

For more information on Tuning your car please join us in our friendly forum where you can discuss GTV options in more detail with our GTV 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.

Please use the comments box below to pass on your own GTV tuning tips, all constructive comments are greatly appreciated!

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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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