Seat Tarraco Tuning

"Thank you for reading my Seat Tarraco tuning guide."
The Tarraco is a good car modification project to have.

We see DIY mechanics wasting money on their Tarraco doing the wrong mods and then having to start over.

Follow our guides to avoid ruining your car

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

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.

Typically these uprated mods are usually carried out by our members, decide how far you wish to go in your tuning project before you start.

Getting the right sports mods for your planned usage of the car is essential. Stage 3 competition upgrades just don't work well on the road hard to control in slow traffic.

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Stages of Tune

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

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

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

In this article we shall give a limited introduction 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.A fast road cam will be one of the best NASP power mods you can do from a single upgrade to your engine.

It improves the intake and exhaust flow and pushes up the power if done right. Ideally you'd add other mods and finish up with a performance chip. We'd also caution you not to go with a competition cam as this upsets the engines idling and general town driving characteristics.

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

Frequently power losses, and erratic idling after uprated modifications are done can usually be traced to timing or fuel delivery issues.To get sufficient fuel you may need to upgrade the injectors on your engine.

If you've uprated your fuelling with bigger injectors you will also need to get a bigger fuel pump to supply it.

Intake and Exhaust Tuning.

The next area for modification is the intake and exhaust. Please note that WE DO NOT FEEL YOU GET POWER GAINS FROM INDUCTION KITS, unless you have tuned your car a lot and are finding that the standard air intake has become a limitation.

For most Tarraco engines TorqueCars would suggest you just go with a washable panel air filter. On heavily tuned engines and turbo vehicles an induction kit will help release the power providing you address the problem of needing cold air.

Sports exhausts can help equal out the flow of gases through the engine. But if the exhaust is too big, ie: it's over 2.5 inches bore, you will lose much of the flow rate and end up lacking power and torque.

gas flowing the head will allow you to maximise your air/fuel charge. Leave this to a professional though with a proper flow bench and machine tools In nearly all cases of Tarraco tuning your clutch will start to complain and this needs an upgrade - read our guide on clutches for more information. The best mods that we recommend for your Tarraco are fast road camshaft, remap, induction and exhaust, suspension.

Remaps offer phenomenal power gains on all turbo charged cars. On NASP engines the benefits are doubtful. However a remap on a NASP engine will help unleash the potential if you have done a lot of mods.

We've also seen some tuners playing with twincharged applications and making some seriously high power hikes.

The most phenomenal power gains for NASP engines usually involve the addition of forced induction. Turbos are usually harder to add than a supercharger. Turbos provide boost in increasing proportion to rising engine speed and this can make mapping difficult.

The nice proportional boost and rpm characteristics of the supercharger make them simpler to map. Alternatively you could add water injection to cut down knock.

Handling/Suspension upgrades

Handling modifications are the thing most do first for the Tarraco.

We found that most Tarraco factory suspension setups need tweaking, a few degrees of toe out -0.8 to 1.3, and some negative camber will substantially enhance your cornering and handling.

Drop the car by as much as 29mm - 38 mm and fit motorsport grade stiffer dampers, bigger drops will need other modifications in most instances.

Alloy wheel upgrades.

Alloy wheels can help the brakes cool down and are usually less heavy than the steel ones. If you are serious about performance then you will need to carefully choose your tyres - ideally with a track legal slick tyre. Please note that although they can look cool on the Tarraco big alloys 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.

Although some people have fitted larger wheels we would restrict ourselves to a 19 inch rim size as the maximum.

There is a more updated version of this Seat Tarraco Tuning article on TorqueCars.com.

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