The 106 is an often overlooked capable track day car.

"Tuning guide to the greatest Peugeot 106 modifications."

The 106 has been a very popular track day car and even has its own racing class and TorqueCars have seen a humble 106 GTi beat cars with over 4 times the power on small twisty tracks.

The 106 Gti was frequently voted best car due in no small part to its lively engine and sharp handling. The 106 shares many parts with its sister the Citroen Saxo which means that the 106 tuner has a larger selection of parts to choose from.

The 106 is indeed a car you can have a lot of fun in.

As far as a cheap and fun car goes you can do no wrong by choosing a 106. It is cheap to run, economical and simple to work on. (Although it can be a pain finding French socket sizes!)

The baby of the Peugeot stable but  by no means a docile car.

All of the 1.6 engines are lively performance but the ultimate base for a tuning project has to be the 16v 1.6 GTi. Some tuning companies have come up with turbo charger kits for the 106 which produce lethal amounts of power for the size of the car.

Wheels 15's or 16's with a suspension drop of around 35 mm. Fitting 17 inch rims to most 106 hubs requires extensive arch work to avoid rubbing. You will lose performance fitting larger rims to the 15 inch option would seem to be the best compromise.

Tuning tips and articles

Engine tuning Transmission tuning Care care Intake & exhaust mods Improve handling Forums

Whilst you are increasing the power you should also ensure you can safely stop. Upgrade your brakes. The easiest option is to fit GTi calipers or go with the brakes from  a 206 GTi 180 or 306 GTi-6. Larger wheels will allow larger brake discs to be fitted.

Power mods.

These mods tuning modifications are usually installed by our members, decide how far you want to push your car before you get started.

Getting the best tuning modifications for your planned usage of the car is vital. Stage 3 (competition) mods just won't work well on the road difficult in stop start traffic.

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Guide to the Best Tuning Mods & Upgrades

  1. Mods that Remove a Restriction

    If the intake or exhaust are restricted in any way this will have an impact on your cars performance, so use an induction kit/filter upgrade and better flowing exhaust whenever your tuning creates a flow restriction.

  2. Mods that Improve Handling

    Braking, Suspension and general alignment of the suspension components is vital for any tuning project even before you start increasing power.

  3. Fit Stronger Parts

    Tuned cars will show up weaknesses, typically in the turbochargers, clutch and internal engine components. Whilst most engines can cope with mild tuning mods, TorqueCars recommend that you upgrade the internal components before these weak spots manifest themselves.

  4. ECU Tunes & Remapping

    While some cars can be easily remapped, others may require piggyback ECU's or aftermarket ECU's but this is the most vital step of your tuning project as it fully releases the power from all of your mods and upgrades. Expect 10-20% on NASP engines and 30-40% on turbocharged units.

  5. More Power Needs More Fuel & Air

    Every tuning project will aim to increase the air supply, but fuel supply is just as vital and will need to match the air the engine can utilise. Fuel to Air ratio is vital so upgrade the fuel pump & injectors. Also you can look to perform head mods (flowing and porting), bigger valves, fast road cams and forced induction upgrades to improve fuel.

Stages of Tune

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

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

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

Your targets when modding your car should be a nice flat torque range. You don't want all the power to be at the top end unless you are creating a competition car.

In this article we shall give your a good starting base to the best mods for your car, but we'd encourage you to spend some time on the site looking into the details of each type of performance mod.Fast road cams offer one of the biggest torque gains for your money as far as a single sports modifications goes on a NASP engine.

It maximises the intake and exhaust flow and increases the power if done right. Ideally you'd add other mods and finish up with a remap. TorqueCars would caution you not to go with a competition cam as this upsets the engines idling and general town driving characteristics.

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

Frequently power losses, flat spots and erratic idling after mods are done can usually be traced to fuelling or timing issues.Upgraded injectors will enable you to supply sufficient fuel to the 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.

Breathing mods are usually next up. Induction kits are only beneficial to boost power if the cars air intake is restricted! Adding an induction kit to most stock 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 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 get this will reduce 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 a professionally ported and polished head with larger valves can fully maximise your power gains. In nearly all cases of 106 tuning your clutch will start to fail and this needs to be uprated - read our article on clutches for more information. The best mods we recommend for your 106 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 chipped ECU on a NASP engine will help unleash the potential if you have done a lot of mods. Adding forced induction will see massive power gains but this is usually too expensive to be cost effective. It is generally simpler to bolt on a supercharger than it is to fit a working turbo. Turbos provide boost in exponential proportion to rising engine speed and this can make mapping difficult.

Exhaust changes can be a pain due to the 2 lambda sensors but many aftermarket exhaust manufacturers are providing suitable repleacement systems. Addressing the air intake is your next job after the exhaust and we would recommend a panel air filter rather than a full induction kit.

There is a more updated version of this Peugeot 106 Tuning article on TorqueCars.com.

For more information on Tuning your car please join us in our friendly forum where you can discuss 106 options in more detail with our 106 owners. It would also be worth reading our unbiased Peugeot tuning articles to get a full grasp of the benefits and drawbacks of each modification.

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