Range Rover Sport Tuning

"Thanks for reading this Range Rover Sport tuning guide."

There are many off road sports utility vehicles around but the big daddy, the one that can actually cope well off road is the Range Rover sport.

This is one of the best selling cars for the Land Rover group.

We take a peek at Sport tuning and show the ultimate modifications for your car. Range Rover Sports are fantastic to work on and with carefully picked motorsport modifications you can really maximise your driving pleasure.

The Sport is a good tuning project to have. We see people wasting money on their Sport doing the wrong mods and then having to start over. Follow our pointers to avoid wasting your money

Turning our attention to the 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.

Power mods.

This list of the stages and motorsport modifications are usually carried out by our members, decide how far you want to go before you get started.

Getting the right performance upgrades for your planned usage of the car is a time and money saver. Stage 3 competition upgrades just won't work well on the road and will make the car undrivable.

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Stages of Tune

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

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

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

Peak power is good on competition cars but for a drivable and fun car you need a long power 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 solitary uprated parts goes on a NASP engine.

The intake & exhaust flow 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 camshaft upgrade with other mods and finish with a remap for the best performance gains.

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

Using higher octane fuel is another option if you find you are suffering from detonation or premature ignition on your Range Rover project after fitting other motorsport kits. To get sufficient fuel you may need to uprate the injectors on your engine.

Uprate the fuel pump to cope with the extra fuel requirements of your tuned Sports uprated injectors.

Intake and Exhaust Tuning.

The next area for modification is the intake and exhaust. Contrary to popular belief there is generally a small if any power gain to be had by fitting an induction kit, they only work well and are recommended after you increase the engines power to the point where the standard air intake box cannot cope!

For most Sport 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 supplying cold air.

Do not go with the largest exhaust you can find this will slow the exhaust 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.

flowed (porting and polishing) the head will allow you to maximise your air/fuel charge. Leave this to a professional though with a proper flow bench and machine tools In nearly all cases of Sport tuning your clutch will start to slip and this needs to be uprated - read our article on clutches for more information. The best mods in our opinion for your Sport are remaps, sports camshafts and induction improvements.

Remaps offer large 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.

We've also come across some owners toying with twin charging conversions and making some very high power figures.

Despite the large cost involved adding forced induction to a NASP engine will give large power gains. It is often cheaper to bolt on a supercharger than it is to bolt on a turbo. With a turbo the boost curve is related exponentially to the engine speed making it more challenging to map.

Superchargers, however will give a boost which is proportional to engine speed so is simpler. Adding forced induction will often require a lower compression ratio or water injection.

Handling/Suspension upgrades

Handling modifications are top of many to do lists for the Sport.

Good suspension tweaks that greatly improve handling for the Sport 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 22mm - 38 mm on most models. You risk ruining the cars flexibility and handling on the arches if you go lower than this. Most Range Rovers sports we've seen have had higher suspension fitted, to make it a more capable off roader!

To be frank though, the Range Rover Sport is an offroad enabled car and only looks right on higher suspension. Fitting good springs and slightly firmer damping will help the cornering without compromising the look of the car.

Alloy wheel upgrades.

Alloy wheels can help the brakes cool down and are generally lighter than steel ones. Further improvements can be made to your cars handling with the addition of soft compound tyre. It is worth noting that although they can look cool on the Sport large alloys will actually decrease your performance. The larger you go the lower your acceleration will be - this to the change in your effective final drive ratio.

Due to this fact try to keep the overall rolling diameter of the wheel the same as supplied from the factory. In all cases not going over 19 inches. 21's may "look really cool" but you'll wreck the lovely ride qualities of the Range Rover Sport.

There is a more updated version of this Range Rover Sport Tuning article on TorqueCars.com.

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