Hyundai i30 Tuning

"Thanks for reading my Hyundai i30 tuning guide."

The i30 is popular with millennials, it is well equipped, nicely designed and engaging to drive with an excellent choice of engines.

It is proving to be a very popular car which does much to reinforce the reputation of Hyundai for building fun to drive cars with high levels of equipment.

Its small body and great design make a good basis for a tuning project and we look at getting the best from your i30 by choosing the right mods and upgrades for it.

Handling and braking improvements alone do much for the i30 but throw in a few choice power mods to create the ultimate hot hatch or track day weapon.

The i30 is a good tuning project to try. Plan ahead and research i30 tuning to spare yourself making the usual common errors we frequently .

Turning our attention to the i30's engine we need to get a bit more power out of the top end.

Sadly with smaller engine sizes you are wasting your time spending money on modifications, so if this applies to you get yourself an engine swap then apply the following mods.

Engine tuning mods.

These are the modified upgrades are usually fitted by our members, decide how far you want to push your car before you get going.

Getting the right performance upgrades for your planned usage of the car is vital. Stage 3 (competition) mods just won't work well on the road hard to control in slow traffic.

Your engine choices in the i30 were...

• 1.4 L I4 109 PS (80 kW; 108 hp) at 6200 rpm
• 1.6 L I4 Gamma 126 PS (93 kW; 124 hp) at 6300 rpm
• 2.0 L I4 Beta II 145 PS (107 kW; 143 hp) at 6000 rpm
• 1.6 L I4 CRDi 90 PS (66 kW; 89 hp) at 4000 rpm
• 1.6 L I4 CRDi 116 PS (85 kW; 114 hp) at 4000 rpm
• 1.6 L I4 CRDi 128 PS (94 kW; 126 hp) at 4000 rpm
• 2.0 L I4 CRDi140 PS (103 kW; 138 hp) at 3800 rpm

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Stages of Tune

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

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

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

Peak power is good on competition cars but for a drivable and fun car you need a long torque band and perhaps extending the rev range.

The whole aim of our tips is to give a little insight into the world of car tuning mods and point you in the right direction, our forum is best place to go if you need more detailed advice and tips on your car tuning project, the best modified mods and all aspects of modding cars.Fast road cams offer one of the biggest performance gains for your money as far as a solitary motorsport modifications goes on a NASP engine.

The exhaust & intake 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 difficult to drive in traffic. You'd need to follow a camshaft upgrade with other mods and finish with a performance chip for the best performance gains.

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

Using higher octane petrol is another option if you find you are suffering from detonation or premature ignition on your Hyundai project after fitting other upgrades. Improved injectors will enable you to supply sufficient fuel to the 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. Air induction kits will only help to increase power if your cars air intake is restricted! Adding an induction kit to most small engines will see NO 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.

For most i30 engines TorqueCars would suggest you just go with a washable panel air filter. On heavily tuned engines and turbo vehicles an induction kit will help release the power providing you address the problem of needing cold air.

Do not go with the widest exhaust you can buy this will slow up the exhaust flow rate - the best exhausts for power gains are usually between 1.5 to 2.5 inches. It is the shape and material more than the bore size.

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.

When you heavily modify your i30 you will discover that the standard clutch starts to suffer so get an uprated clutch. The best mods in our opinion for your i30 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 remapped ECU on a NASP engine will help unleash the potential if you have done a lot of mods. Despite the large cost involved adding forced induction to a NASP engine will give large power gains. Superchargers are usually easier to add than a turbo. Turbos provide boost in increasing proportion to th engine speed and this can make mapping difficult.

The nice steady boost and rpm characteristics of the supercharger make them more straightforward to map. Alternatively you could fit water injection to reduce the risk of knock.

Handling/Suspension upgrades

Handling modifications are often a priority for the i30.

Fully adjustable suspension allows you to fine tune the handling of you i30 greatly improving your drive.

We would go to a maximum drop of 23mm - 39 mm on most models. You risk compromising your handling if you go lower than this.

Alloy wheel upgrades.

The benefits of alloy wheels include reducing your unsprung weight and more efficient brake cooling via the extra air flow they allow. If you are serious about performance then you will need to carefully choose your tyres - ideally with a soft compound tyre. The downside to large alloys on your i30 is that you're altering your effective final drive ratio so this will have a detrimental effect on performance.

Due to this we would advise sticking to a maximum wheel size of 16 inches, although we know some of our members have installed larger rims with no problems.

There is a more updated version of this Hyundai i30 Tuning article on TorqueCars.com.

For more information on Tuning your car please join us in our friendly forum where you can discuss i30 options in more detail with our i30 owners. It would also be worth reading our unbiased Hyundai 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 Hyundai. 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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