Mazda 323 Tuning

"Small but with lots of potential"

The 323 is often sadly overlooked by many tuners and dismissed as a family car.

The 4x4 Turbo 323 really shows what can be achieved with this platform and gives inspiration to all those 323 owners looking for more power.

The car was a rally legend in 4x4 form showing how capable the chassis is. With the right mods, done in the right order you can have great fun on the roads and push hard when you go on a track day.

Our aim in 323 engine tuning should be to increase peak power and Torque at the top end.

Many 323 owners uprate the handling of their cars as a priority, this will certainly increase your enjoyment of the car. Drop the car by as much as 35mm and fit good quality coil-overs, bigger drops will need other modifications in most instances.

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.

323 Engine Tuning modifications.

The following mods are usually carried out by our members, decide how far you want to go before you begin. For a road car we would stick with stage one mods unless you have deep pockets.

Stage 3 is generally too extreme for road use and the slow traffic speeds can become very tiresome to drive with these mods.

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. One of the best mechanical mods you can do on the 323 is to fit a fast road cam. You will need to ensure that the engine is not starved of fuel so will also need to uprate the fuelling, especially if you are making dramatic power increasses. A fuel pressure boost valve can make the car more responsive and respond better although it will not increase the power output. 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 323s uprated injectors.

Intake and Exhaust Tuning.

Breathing mods are usually next up. Induction kits work well on turbo engines and larger engines (if supplied with a suitable cold air feed or air box), for the smaller 323 engines you should go with a sports panel air filter. Sports exhausts balance the flow of air throughout the engine. But if your exhaust is too large, ie it is over 2.5 inches bore, you will lose a lot of the flow rate and lose power on most engines.

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. Turbo engines are just begging to be remapped. You will see big power gains on most turbo engined cars including diesels making a remap one of the most cost effective modifications.

The largest power gains for NASP engines usually involve the addition of forced induction. Turbos are harder to add than supercharger. It is harder to map a turbo as the boost comes on exponentially with engine speed. 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.

Mazda 323 Wheel modifications.

The benefits of alloy wheels include a lower unsprung weight and more efficient brake cooling. Large 323 alloy wheels can decrease performance. If you get big alloy wheels you will be changing your final drive ratio. For this reason we would advise sticking to a maximum wheel size of 17 inches, although we know some of our members have gone larger than this with no problems.

For more information on Tuning your car please join us in our friendly forum where you can discuss 323 options in more detail with our 323 owners. It would also be worth reading our unbiased Mazda tuning articles to get a full grasp of the benefits and drawbacks of each modification.

Please Check out my YouTube channel, we're regularly adding new content...

Click to accept YouTube Cookies & Play.

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 Mazda. You can leave a response below or join our forum to discuss this article and car modification in detail with our members.

If you liked this page please share it with your friends, drop a link to it in your favourite forum or use the bookmarking options to save it to your social media profile.