Nissan Cube Tuning

"Thanks for reading my Nissan Cube tuning article."
The Cube is a good tuning project to try. With the right mods your Cube can be transformed into an awesome motor. Don't waste money, do your homework and follow our unbiased guides to each performance upgrade so you don't waste your money.

Our aim in engine tuning should be to increase peak bhp at the top end.

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.

Engine tuning mods.

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

Getting the right performance upgrade kits for your planned usage of the car is essential. Stage 3 motor sport mods 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, Sports exhaust, Lighter flywheel, Remap, Alloy wheels, Suspension upgrade (drop 30-40mm).

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

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

Peak power is all well and good but for a daily driven car you need a long power band and perhaps extending the rev range.

In this article we shall give your a good starting base 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 bhp gains for your money as far as a bolt on uprated mods goes on a NASP engine.

The intake & 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 difficult 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.

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

If you find you suffer from flat spots and surges after your sports modifications you should check the fuelling and try a higher octane fuel as well. Uprating 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 only help to add performance if your air intake is struggling! Adding an induction kit to most low power engines will see LITTLE 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.

Derestricting the airflow into the engine is a primary goal of performance tuning so get a better flowing air filter if you find that the car is running lean. Induction kits can sound fun but due to the warm air in the engine bay they will not do much to increase power and usually rob you of power.

Sports exhausts will certainly help air flow out of the engine but avoid an exhaust that is too large or you could will reduce the flow rate. Stick to 1.5 to 2.5 inches for best results.

Getting a professionally polished and ported head with larger valves can fully release the engines power. When you heavily modify your Cube you will find that the standard clutch starts to fail so get an uprated clutch. The best mods we recommend for your Cube are Remapping or piggy back ecu, fast road cam and air intake and exhaust.

Turbo engines are just pleading to be Upgraded. You will see impressive power gains on most modern turbocharged cars including diesels making a remap one of the most cost effective and impressive modifications for your money.

We've also seen some tuners playing with twin charging applications and making some impressively high power figures.

Despite the large cost involved adding forced induction to a NASP engine will give large power gains. Turbos are usually harder to add than a supercharger. With a turbo the boost curve is related exponentially to the engine speed making it harder to map.

It is simpler to map a supercharger because the boost is directly proportional to engine speed on a linear curve. Adding forced induction will generally require a lower compression ratio or water injection.

Handling/Suspension upgrades

Many Cube owners uprate the handling of their cars with coilover suspension modifications as a priority, this will certainly increase your enjoyment of the car.

We found that most Cube factory suspension setups need tweaking, a few degrees of toe out -around 1.5, and a little negative camber will substantially improve your cornering and handling.

We suggest that you fit sports suspension and lower the car by 24mm - 40 mm. Larger drops require arch work - especially on models already equipped with motorsport suspension.

Alloy wheel upgrades.

As alloys are lighter 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 directional tread pattern tyre. It is worth noting that although they can look cool on the Cube 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.

Due to this fact we would advise sticking to a maximum wheel size of 16 inches, although we know some of our members have with bigger wheels with no problems.

There is a more updated version of this Nissan Cube Tuning article on TorqueCars.com.

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