Mitsubishi Mirage Tuning

"Thank you for reading my Mitsubishi Mirage tuning guide."

The Mirage is a good car modification project to play with. The key to Mirage tuning is balancing power and reliability - a lot of money can be wasted if you do it wrong.

We take a peek at Mirage tuning and point out the best modifications. Mitsubishi Mirages are fantastic to work on and with carefully picked sports upgrades you can noticeably enhance your driving fun.

A nice wide torque band and sweet spot of peak power at one third of your RPM range is optimum.

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.

Tuning modifications.

These mods modified upgrades are usually installed by our members, decide how far you want to push your car before you begin.

Getting the right performance upgrades for your planned usage of the car is vital. 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: Sports exhaust, Suspension upgrade (drop 30-40mm), Lighter flywheel, Remap, Panel air filter, Alloy wheels.

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

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

Your aims when tuning the engine should be a flat and wide torque output. You don't want all the torque to be at the top end of the rev range unless you are creating a competition car.

The whole aim of our pointers is to give a limited introduction of customising upgrades 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 sport modifications and all aspects of modding cars.A fast road cam usually works out as one of the best NASP power modifications you can do mechanically to your engine.

The intake and exhaust 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 impossible to drive in traffic. You'd need to follow a camshaft upgrade with other mods and finish with a reflashed ECU to fully release the power gain.

When pushing up the power you will need to pay attention to to the fuelling. More power needs more fuel.

Using higher octane fuel is another option if you find you are suffering from pinking or premature ignition on your Mitsubishi project after fitting other parts. Increasing the injectors is another beneficial modification and will deliver sufficient fuel.

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.

The next area for modification is the intake and exhaust. Air induction kits are only beneficial to increase performance 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.

Induction kits can work well on turbo engines and larger engines (if supplied with a suitable cold air feed or air box), generally though we'd just recommend for Mirage engines you should just fit a high performance panel air filter preferably made from cotton.

Sports exhausts increase the flow of gases through the engine. But if your exhaust pipe is too large, ie: over 2.5 inches bore, you will lose a lot of your flow rate and end up lacking power and torque.

Airflow through the head can be dramatically increased with some professional polishing and ported. These should match and be setup to take into account any other engine mods. In nearly all cases of Mirage tuning your clutch will start to slip and this needs an upgrade - read our guide on clutches for more information. The best mods that we recommend for your Mirage are fast road camshaft, remap, induction and exhaust, suspension.

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 impressive power gains and take full advantage of the strength of the block. Adding forced induction will see impressive power gains but this is usually too expensive to be cost effective. Superchargers are usually easier to add than a turbo. Turbos increase power in exponential proportion to rising engine speed and this can make mapping difficult.

It is easier to map a supercharger because the boost is directly proportional to engine speed on a linear curve. Alternatively you could perhaps fit water injection to reduce the risk of knock.

Handling/Suspension upgrades

Handling modifications are high on most peoples lists for the Mirage.

We found that most Mirage factory suspension setups need tweaking, a few degrees of toe out -1-1.7, and a bit of negative camber will radically improve your cornering and handling.

Drop the car by as much as 21mm - 39 mm and fit sports stiffer dampers, bigger drops will need other modifications in most instances.

Alloy wheel upgrades.

Because alloy wheels are lighter they improve performance and they help to cool the brake disks. Pay attention to your choice of tyres (tyres) for your car, a good soft compound tyre can really enhance your cars handling. Please note although they can look cool on the Mirage big alloy wheels 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.

Because of this endeavour to keep the overall rolling diameter of the wheel the recommended OEM sizes. In all cases we do not recommend going over 17 inches.

There is a more updated version of this Mitsubishi Mirage Tuning article on TorqueCars.com.

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