Nissan R33 Skyline Tuning

"Thank you for reading our Nissan R33 Skyline tuning article."
The R33 Skyline is a good tuning project to do. The key to R33 Skyline tuning is balancing power and reliability you can waste loads of money if you do it wrong.

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

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.

Power mods.

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

Getting the right modified modifications for your planned usage of the car is vital. Stage 3 competition upgrades 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, Sports exhaust, Lighter flywheel, Suspension upgrade (drop 30-40mm), Panel air filter.

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

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

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

The aim of our advice is to give a little insight into the world of tuning performance parts 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 motorsport modifications and all aspects of modding cars.One of the best mechanical modified modifications you can do to your NASP engine is to fit a fast road cam .

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 hard to drive in traffic. You'd need to follow a camshaft upgrade with other mods and finish with a performance chip to fully release the power gain.

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

Using high octane fuel is another option if you find you are suffering from detonation or premature ignition on your Nissan project after fitting other sports parts. To get sufficient fuel you may need to uprate 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.

• HR33 GTS – 2.0 L RB20E SOHC I6, 128 hp 172Nm(127 lbft)
• HR33 GTS- 2.0 L RB20DE DOHC I6, 153 hp 192Nm(142 lbft)
• ER33 GTS-25 – 2.5 L RB25DE DOHC I6,  187 hp 231Nm(170 lbft)
• ENR33 GTS-4 – 2.5 L RB25DE DOHC I6,  187 hp 231Nm(170 lbft) 4WD
• ECR33 GTS-25t – 2.5 L RB25DET DOHC turbo I6, 247 hp 294Nm(217 lbft)
• ECR33 P.Ride 280 Type MR – 2.8L RB28DET DOHC turbo I6, 296 hp)

Intake and Exhaust Tuning.

The next area for modification is the intake and exhaust. Contrary to popular belief there is generally very little power gain to be had by fitting an induction kit, they only become beneficial and are recommended after you raise the engines power to the point where the standard air intake box cannot cope!

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 increase the flow of air through the engine. But if the exhaust pipe is too big, ie: it's over 2.5 inches bore, you will lose much of your flow rate and end up sapping power and torque.

Getting the head gas flowed will help get more air into each cylinder. This is definitely a job for a professional with a flow bench. When you heavily modify your R33 Skyline you will see that the standard clutch starts to slip so get an uprated clutch. The best mods in our experience for your R33 Skyline are a remap especially on a turbo, a fast road camshaft and sports exhaust, with a good air intake.

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

We've also come across some owners toying with twincharged applications and making some impressively high power gains.

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

Superchargers, however will give a boost which is 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

Handling modifications are the thing most do first for the R33 Skyline.

Good suspension tweaks that usually enhance handling for the R33 Skyline include a couple of degrees negative camber and 1-1.5 degrees of toe out on the front wheels.

We suggest that you fit modified suspension and lower the car by 30mm - 38 mm. Larger drops require arch work - especially on models already equipped with uprated suspension.

Alloy wheel upgrades.

The benefits of alloys include lowering your unsprung weight and better brake cooling. Pay attention to your choice of tyres (tyres) for your car, a good soft compound tyre can really enhance your cars handling. Large R33 Skyline alloy wheels can decrease performance. If you get big alloy wheels you will be changing your final drive ratio.

With this in mind aim to keep the overall rolling diameter of the wheel the standard factory sizes. In all cases not going larger than 18 inches.

There is a more updated version of this Nissan R33 Skyline Tuning article on TorqueCars.com.

For more information on Tuning your car please join us in our friendly forum where you can discuss R33 Skyline options in more detail with our R33 Skyline 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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