Suzuki Cultus Crescent / Esteem Tuning

"Thank you for reading our Suzuki Cultus Crescent / Esteem tuning tips."

Originally released in 1995 the Cultus Crescent sub compact car sold really well, it was renamed Cultus later and in north America it bore the Esteem badge.

The Cultus Crescent / Esteem is a good car tuning project to take up your weekends. If you do your research then you can create an awesome Cultus Crescent / Esteem but don't be fooled there are lots of high performance mods out there that will simply not suit it read our unbiased guides first.

We review Cultus Crescent / Esteem tuning and provide tips on the best modifications for your car. Suzuki Cultus Crescent / Esteems great bases for a tuning project and with carefully chosen upgrades you can maximise your driving opportunities.

Tuning tips and articles

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

 

Handling/Suspension upgrades

Many Cultus Crescent / Esteem owners uprate the handling of their cars with performance suspension kits as a priority, this will certainly increase your enjoyment of the car.

We found that most Cultus Crescent / Esteem factory suspension setups need tweaking, a few degrees of toe out 1-1.7, and a little negative camber will dramatically improve your cornering and handling.

We would go to a maximum drop of 24mm - 44 mm. on most models. You risk compromising your handling if you go lower than this.

Turning our attention to the engine we need to get a bit more power out of the top end.

With just a few mods you can convert your Cultus Crescent / Esteem into a fun car, potentially beating bigger engined cars on the track.

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.

Power mods.

Typically these parts are usually installed by our members, decide how far you want to push your car before you get started.

  • 1.3 L G13B I4
  • 1.5 L G15A I4
  • 1.6 L G16B I4
  • 1.8 L J18A I4
  • 1.8 L BP-ZE I4
  • 1.9 L XUD9 diesel I4

Getting the best uprated upgrades for your planned usage of the car is essential. Stage 3 competition upgrades just don't work well on the road and will make the car undrivable.

Please watch TorqueCars Video tutorial on car tuning. And be sure to subscribe and support our new channel.

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: Sports exhaust, Remap, Alloy wheels, Panel air filter, Lighter flywheel, Suspension upgrade (drop 24mm - 44 mm.).

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

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

Your aim when tuning should be a wide torque band. You want to avoid sending all the torque to be at the top end unless you are creating a motor sport car.

The whole aim of our pointers is to give a brief overview of modifying performance parts and point you in the right direction, our forum is best place to go if you need more detailed advice and tips on your customized car project, the best modified kits and all aspects of modding cars.A fast road cam usually proves to be one of the best NASP power mods you can do with a single part fitted to your engine.

The intake & exhaust durations play a huge role 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 cam upgrade with other mods and finish with a reflashed ECU to fully realise your gains.

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

If you find you experience flat spots and surges after your sports mods you should check the fuelling and try a higher octane fuel as well. Increasing the injectors is another beneficial modification and will deliver sufficient fuel.

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 FIND IMPROVEMENTS WITH INDUCTION KITS, unless you have tuned your car with over 30 percent more power and are finding that the standard air intake has become the bottleneck.

For most Cultus Crescent / Esteem 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 generally help improve 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.

Airflow through the head can be dramatically increased with some professional flowed (porting and polishing). These should match and be setup to take into account any other engine mods. Your clutch can lose you loads of power as you increase the power if it starts to complain and the standard clutches are only ever good for power gains of up to 48%. Fit an uprated clutch to avoid power losses through the transmission. The best mods in our experience for your Cultus Crescent / Esteem are a remap especially on a turbo, a fast road camshaft and sports exhaust, with a good air intake.

NASP engines do not achieve big power gains if you remap them, unless you have done extensive modifications. With turbocharged engines this is another story. A remapped turbo will give massive power gains and take full advantage of the strength of the block.

We've also come across some owners experimenting with twin charging conversions and making some very 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 power curve is related exponentially to the engine speed making it harder to map.

The nice steady boost and rpm characteristics of the supercharger make them easier to map. Decreasing the engines compression ratio will allow you to add forced induction, water injection may also help prevent detonation.

Alloy wheel upgrades.

Alloy wheels can help the brake cooling and are generally less heavy than steel ones. If you are serious about performance then you will need to carefully choose your tires - ideally with a soft compound tire. We should point out that although they can look cool on the Cultus Crescent / Esteem large 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 with bigger wheels without problems we would restrict ourselves to a 17 inch rim size as the maximum.

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

We need your help improving this article, so please send us your feedback in the comments box below and pass on any tips, points or facts we have wrong or have not covered.

We really like hearing from our readers, and hearing about which mods were the most effective for them, it helps us improve our recommendations and articles to reflect current trends in modifications and ensures that our guides and tips are kept up to date.

Please Check out my YouTube channel, we're regularly adding new content...

PLEASE HELP: I NEED YOUR DONATIONS TO COVER THE COSTS OF RUNNING THIS SITE AND KEEP IT RUNNING. I do not charge you to access this website and it saves most TorqueCars readers $100's each year - but we are NON PROFIT and not even covering our costs. To keep us running PLEASE Donate here

If you liked this page please share it with your friends, drop a link to it in your favourite forum or use the bookmarking options to save it to your social media profile.

Feedback - What do You Think?

Please use our forums if you wish to ask a tuning question, and please note we do not sell parts or services, we are just an online magazine.

Help us improve, leave a suggestion or tip

Your Constructive comments on this article, I really want to improve this article with your help and suggestions.


Please watch this video and subscribe to my YouTube channel.



Member Benefits

Join our forum today and benefit from over 300,000 posts on tuning styling and friendly car banter.

You will also have full access to the modifed car gallery, project car updates and exclusive member only areas.

(All car owners of all ages and from all countries are welcome).