Nissan Rogue Tuning

"Tuning guide to the most effective Nissan Rogue modifications."

The Rogue is a good project car to carry out. We see loads of people wasting money on their Rogue doing the wrong mods and then having to start over. Follow our tips to avoid wasting your money

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

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.

The following motorsport modifications are usually fitted by our members, decide how far you want to go before you begin.

Getting the best uprated modifications for your planned usage of the car is essential. Stage 3 motor sport mods just won't work well on the road making the car difficult to drive.

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Stages of Tune

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

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

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

Your aims when tuning should be a nice flat torque output. You want to avoid sending all the torque to be at the top end unless you are creating a competition car.

The whole point of our guides is to give a starting base of modding modifications and point you in the right direction, our forum is the place to go for detailed advice and tips on your car tuning project, the best uprated kits and all aspects of modding cars.Fast road cams offer one of the biggest torque gains for your money as far as a solitary upgrades goes on a NASP engine.

The exhaust and intake 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 cam upgrade with other mods and finish with a reflashed ECU to fully realise your gains.

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

If you find you have flat spots and power surges after your uprated parts you should check the fuelling and try a higher octane fuel as well. To get sufficient fuel you may need to improve the injectors on your engine.

If have increased your fuelling with bigger injectors you will also need to get a bigger fuel pump to supply it.

Intake and Exhaust Tuning.

Breathing mods are usually next up. Induction kits will only help to add performance if the air intake is restricted! Adding an induction kit to most small 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.

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 performance 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.

Do not go with the widest exhaust you can buy this will slow up the exhaust flow rate - the best exhausts for power gains are usually between 1.5 to 2.5 inches. It is the shape and material more than the bore size.

Getting the cylinder head polished and ported will help get more air into each cylinder. This is definitely a job for a professional with a flow bench. When you start tuning your Rogue you will reach a point that the standard clutch starts to complain so get an uprated clutch. The best mods that we recommend for your Rogue are fast road camshaft, remap, induction and exhaust, suspension.

Remaps offer big 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.

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

Adding forced induction will see massive power gains but this is usually too expensive to be cost effective. Turbos are generally harder to add than a supercharger. Turbos provide boost in increasing proportion to increasing engine speed and this can make mapping difficult.

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

Handling/Suspension upgrades

Improving the handling for lots of DIY modders first priority in your Rogue tuning project.

Setting a little negative camber on the fronts and around 1 to 1.7 degrees of toe out, will often enhance your Rogue in handling and cornering.

Drop the car by as much as 28mm - 39 mm and fit motorsport grade stiffer dampers, bigger drops will need other modifications in most instances.

Alloy wheel upgrades.

Alloy wheels will help the brakes cool down and are usually less heavy than the steel ones. We can't go into too much detail here about tyres but they are how the car puts the power down on the road so are a critical choice. directional tread pattern tyres work well on Rogue, and make a big difference over budget tyres. The drawback to large rims on your Rogue is that you're altering your final drive ratio and this will have a detrimental effect on acceleration.

For this reason try to keep the overall rolling diameter of the wheel your OEM settings. In all cases without going larger than 18 inches.

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

For more information on Tuning your car please join us in our friendly forum where you can discuss Rogue options in more detail with our Rogue 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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