Maruti Baleno Tuning

"Thanks for reading our Maruti Baleno tuning guide."

Essentially a Suzuki Cultus Crescent, Cultus or Esteeem depending on the region we have a great little subcompact car with great range of engines.

The Baleno is a brilliant car tuning project to play with. Plan ahead and research Baleno tuning to save yourself making the usual tuning mistakes we regularly .

We outline options for your Baleno tuning and report on the best upgrades. Maruti Balenos provide a fun base for your project and with carefully chosen performance modifications you can noticeably maximize your driving pleasure.

Handling/Suspension upgrades

Improving the handling for loads of people first priority in your Baleno tuning project.

Setting some negative camber at the front and a few degrees of toe out, will radically benefit your Baleno in handling and cornering.

We would go to a maximum drop of 29mm - 35 mm. on most models. You risk handling compromises if you go lower than this.

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

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 mods.

These mods performance kits are usually installed by our members, decide how far you want to push your car before you get started.

• 1.3 L G13B I4
• 1.5 L G15A I4
• 1.6 L G16B I4
• 1.8 L J18A I4
• 1.8 L BP-ZE I4
• 1.9 L XUD9 diesel I4

Getting the correct grade of modified modifications 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 difficult in stop start traffic.

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Stages of Tune

Stage 1 mods: Remap, Lighter flywheel, Alloy wheels, Panel air filter, Sports exhaust, Suspension upgrade (drop 29mm - 35 mm.).

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

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

You need to keep as much low end torque as possible and aim to achieve a long power band across the rev range rather than a narrow top end power hike.

In this article we shall give a limited introduction to the best upgrades 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.A fast road camshaft is generally one of the best NASP power mods you can do from a single upgrade to your engine.

The intake and exhaust flow play a huge role in your cars power band, but be careful here, getting this wrong can upset the idle and make the car challenging 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.

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

Using high octane fuel is another option if you find you are suffering from pinking or premature ignition on your Maruti project after fitting other modified 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 Baleno's uprated injectors.

Intake and Exhaust Tuning.

The next area for modification is the intake and exhaust. Induction kits will only help to add power if the cars air intake is struggling! Adding an induction kit to most low power engines will see ZERO 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 Baleno 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 get this will slow up the exhaust flow rate - the best 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 Baleno tuning your clutch will start to suffer and this needs to be uprated - read our tips on clutches for more information. The best mods in our opinion for your Baleno 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 significant power gains and take full advantage of the strength of the block.

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

Adding forced induction will see impressive power gains but this is usually too expensive to be cost effective. Superchargers are often easier to add than turbos. With a turbo the boost curve is related exponentially to the engine speed making it harder to map.

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

Alloy wheel upgrades.

As alloy wheels are less heavy they improve performance and they can help to cool the brake disks. Further improvements can be made to your cars handling with the addition of track legal slick tire. Large Baleno alloy wheels can decrease performance. If you get big alloy wheels you will be changing your final drive ratio.

Because of this we would advise sticking to a maximum wheel size of 17 inches, although we know some of our members have with bigger wheels with no problems.

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

We need your help improving this article, so please send us your feedback in the comments box below and pass on any tips, points or facts we have wrong or have not covered.

We really like hearing from our readers, and hearing about which mods were the most effective for them, it helps us improve our recommendations and articles to reflect current trends in modifications and ensures that our guides and tips are kept up to date.

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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 Maruti. 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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