BMW X6 Tuning F15/F16

"Thank you for reading this BMW X6 tuning tips."

The X6 is a large car, despite it's curves and shape which attempt to diminish this. The engines were powerful and the car is great to drive.

The X6 is a good project car to do. Think carefully and research X6 tuning to spare yourself making the usual expensive errors we .

Tuning tips and articles

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

 

Turning our attention to the X6's engine we need to get a bit more power out of the top end.

With our guides your X6 can be a track day fun car and still be a reliable daily driver.

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.

These mods modified mods are usually fitted by our members, decide how far you want to go before you begin.

Getting the best tuning mods for your planned usage of the car is essential. Stage 3 competition upgrades just don't work well on the road difficult in stop start traffic.

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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, Remap (MPPK and piggyback chip/ecu), Alloy wheels, Suspension upgrade (drop 30-40mm), Sports exhaust, Panel air filter.

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

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

You should keep as much low end torque as you can and aim to achieve a wide power band rather than a narrow top end power spike.

In this article we shall give a limited 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 upgrade.One of the best mechanical performance parts you can do on your NASP engine is to fit a fast road camshaft .

The intake & exhaust durations 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 cam upgrade with other mods and finish with a remap to fully realise your gains.

Don't forget to pay attention to the fuelling when you are increasing the power - it makes the car more thirsty.

Using high octane fuel is another option if you find you are suffering from pinking or premature ignition on your BMW project after fitting other performance parts. To get sufficient fuel you may need to uprate the injectors on your engine.

A fuel pump will only deliver a finite amount of fuel, so you may need to uprate this if your injectors are demanding more fuel.

Intake and Exhaust Tuning.

The next area for modification is the intake and exhaust. Please note that WE DO NOT RECOMMEND INDUCTION KITS, unless you have tuned your car a lot and are finding that the standard air intake has become a restriction.

E71 Engines

  • 3.0 L I6 turbo (petrol) 302hp N54B30 N55B30
  • 3.0 L I6 turbo (diesel)  232-375hp  M57D30TÜ2  N57D30OL N57D30TOP  N57S
  • 4.4  L V8 turbo (petrol) 408hp N63B44 S63B44

F16 Engines

  • 3.0 L I6 turbo (petrol) 302 bhp
  • 3.0 L I6 turbo (diesel) 255-309bhp
  • 4.4  L V8 turbo (petrol) 444-457bhp

G06 was announced in 2019 for a 2020 launch

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 X6 engines you should settle for a performance panel air filter preferably made from cotton.

Sports exhausts will certainly help air flow through 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 for best results.

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. Your clutch can slip as you increase the power if it starts to weaken and the standard clutches are only ever good for power gains of up to 45%. Fit a sports clutch to avoid power leak through the transmission. The best mods we would do for your X6 are a remap especially on a turbo, a fast road camshaft and sports exhaust, with a good air intake.

Remaps offer massive power gains on all turbo charged cars. On NASP engines the benefits are doubtful. However a flashed ecu on a NASP engine will help unleash the potential if you have done a lot of mods. Adding forced induction will see impressive power gains but this is usually too expensive to be cost effective. Turbos are usually harder to add than a supercharger. With a turbo the power curve is related exponentially to the engine speed making it more challenging to map.

The nice correlating boost and rpm characteristics of the supercharger make them 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 people often first priority in your X6 tuning project.

Fully adjustable suspension allows you to fine tune the handling of you X6 dramatically benefitting your drive.

Drop the car by as much as 26mm - 38 mm and fit modified stiffer dampers, bigger drops will need other modifications in most instances.

Alloy wheel upgrades.

Alloy wheels can help the brake cooling and are generally lighter than steel ones. Further improvements can be made to your cars handling with the addition of directional tread pattern tyre. Large X6 alloys can decrease performance. If you get big alloys you will be changing your final drive ratio.

Although some people have installed larger rims we would restrict ourselves to a 19 inch rim size as the maximum.

There is a more updated version of this BMW X6 Tuning article on TorqueCars.com.

For more information on Tuning your car please join us in our friendly forum where you can discuss X6 options in more detail with our X6 owners. It would also be worth reading our unbiased BMW tuning articles to get a full grasp of the benefits and drawbacks of each modification.

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