Mercedes Benz A Class Tuning

"Thanks for reading my Mercedes A Class tuning tips."

Mercedes needed a compact family car to compete with the Golf, A3 and BMW 3 series  so they came up with the A class, each new version has improved.

Mercedes Benz A Classs are popular cars and with the ultimate uprated mods you can certainly enhance your driving opportunities.

The A Class is a good tuning project to have. With the right mods your A Class can be transformed into a stunning project. Don't waste money, do your homework and follow our unbiased guides to each performance upgrade to avoid disappointment.

It has proved very popular and the latest 2013 revision style wise leaves it's competitors cowering in a dark corner.

• W168; 1997–2004 First generation offered with 1.4, 1.6. 1.9 and 2.1 Petrol engines and a 1.7 Diesel in 2001 it was facelifted with new headlights and bumper revisions.
• W169; 2004–2012 met the tight emissions regs but the performance model still hit 60mph in 8 seconds. Facelift in 2008 with revised front and rear bumpers and we saw stop start tech introduced.
• W176; 2013–2018 A stunning design direction change for the A class, the A45 from AMG shows what is possible on this platform giving inspiration to all A Class owners.

The A Class is a good tuning project to have. Sit down first and research A Class tuning to spare yourself making the usual tuning errors we frequently .

Top end power should be your overall aim on the A Class with a nice fat peak torque band.

Smaller engines do not provide much of a return in terms of power so start with a bigger engine. Engine swaps are a good option if you have a small engine size.

Tuning modifications.

The following upgrades are usually fitted by our members, decide how far you wish to go in your tuning project before you get going.

Getting the correct grade of performance upgrades for your planned usage of the car is vital. Stage 3 competition upgrades just don't work well on the road hard to control in slow traffic.

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Stages of Tune

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

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

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

You need to keep as much low end torque as possible and aim for a wide power band rather than a narrow top end power hike.

In this article we shall give a limited introduction 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 modification.Fast road cams offer one of the biggest power gains for your money as far as a stand alone sports upgrades goes on a NASP engine.

It improves the intake and exhaust flow and increases the power if done right. Ideally you'd add other mods and finish up with a performance chip. TorqueCars would caution you not to go with a motor sport cam as this affects the engines idling and general town driving characteristics.

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

Most power losses, flat spots and erratic idling after modifications are done can usually be traced to fuel delivery or timing issues.To get sufficient fuel you may need to upgrade 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.

Now we move on to the intake and exhaust and ensure proper flow through the engine. Air induction kits will only help to increase power if your cars air intake is restricted!

Adding an induction kit to most low power engines will see NONE OF A 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.

Maximum power gains come from a full induction kit with a cold air feed on heavily tuned engines, this can be sited within an air box but a panel filter should suffice for most applications. TorqueCars suggest you use a panel air filter as these are easy to clean and maintain and generally perform better than paper ones.

Sports exhausts can help equal out the flow of air through the engine. But if the exhaust pipe is too large, ie: it's over 2.5 inches bore, you will lose a lot of the exhaust flow rate and end up losing power and torque.

Polishing and porting 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 Your clutch can slip as the power goes up if it starts to break and the standard clutches are only ever good for power gains of up to 45%. Fit an upgraded clutch to avoid power loss through the transmission. The best mods that we recommend for your A Class are a remap especially on a turbo, a fast road camshaft and sports exhaust, with a good air intake.

Remaps offer impressive 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.

Despite the large cost involved adding forced induction to a NASP engine will give large power gains. Superchargers are often easier to add than turbos. It is more challenging to map a turbo as the boost builds exponentially with engine speed.

Superchargers, however will give a boost which is correlating to engine speed so is simpler. To cope with forced induction you will usually need to decrease the engines compression ratio .

Handling/Suspension upgrades

Improving the handling for many people first priority in your A Class tuning project.

Good suspension tweaks that substantially benefit handling for the A Class 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 23mm - 37 mm on most models. You risk handling compromises if you go lower than this.

Alloy wheel upgrades.

Alloy wheels can help the brakes cool down and are usually less heavy than the steel ones. Don't forget that your choice of rubber greatly affects your cars grip and handling. It is not worth compromising performance with cheap tyres when you can buy directional tread pattern performance tyres.

The drawback to large alloys on your A Class is that you alter your final drive ratio and this will have a detrimental effect on acceleration and performance.

Although some people have installed larger rims without issues we would stick to a 17 inch rim size as the maximum. 18's and 19's look great on the AMG A45 version, but we wouldn't mind betting that you prefer the handling of 17's to the larger wheels as well as the lower tyre costs.

There is a more updated version of this Mercedes A Class Tuning article on TorqueCars.com.

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