Acura TLX Tuning

"Thanks for reading my TLX tuning guide."

Your TLX engine choices, depending on the year, were either a 2.4-liter K24W7 I4 or the 3.5-liter J35Y6 V6, with both having pros and cons but they suit the car really well and we'd plump for the more recent 2.4 litre.

The TLX received a facelift and upgrades in 2017, and a highly acclaimed entertainment system supporting Android auto and Apple Car play. This was when the 2.4 liter engine was introduced, cutting fuel consumption and beating the original 3.5 liter engine with 208ps engine.

In 2020 the car has a new V6 i-VTEC powerplan with a choice of P-AWS or SH-AWD.

We have seen some awesome TLX tuning projects and there seems to be quite a loyal fan base of TLX owners. We see car owners wasting money on their TLX doing the wrong mods and then having to start over. Follow our tips to avoid wasting your money

Handling/Suspension upgrades

Improving the handling for people first priority in your TLX tuning project.

If you set the toe out to 0.9 to 1.5 degrees on the front, and add slight negative camber then cornering will dramatically improve.

We suggest that you fit performance suspension and lower the car by 24mm - 36 mm. Larger drops require arch work - especially on models already equipped with performance suspension.

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

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.

Engine tuning mods.

These mods modified mods are usually fitted by our members, decide how far you wish to go in your tuning project before you start.

Getting the correct grade of tuning parts for your planned usage of the car is essential. Stage 3 (competition) mods just won't work well on the road hard to control in slow traffic.

Please watch our introduction Video tutorial to car tuning. Be sure to subscribe and support our new channel.

Modifying to Stage 1:

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

Modifying to Stage 2:

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

Modifying to Stage 3:

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

You need to keep as much low end power as possible and aim to achieve a wide power band rather than a narrow top end power hike.

In this article we shall give an overview and 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 part.Fast road cams offer one of the biggest performance gains for your money as far as a bolt on motorsport mods goes on a NASP 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 reflashed ECU. We'd also caution you not to go with a motor sports profile 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, and erratic idling after tuning kits are done can usually be traced to timing or fuel delivery issues.To get sufficient fuel you may need to uprate the injectors on your engine. Uprate the fuel pump to cope with the extra fuel requirements of your tuned TLXs uprated injectors.

Intake and Exhaust Tuning.

Breathing mods are usually next up. 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 a 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 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 usually air flow out of the engine but do not go too big or you could will reduce the flow rate. Stick to 1.5 to 2.5 inches as a rule of thumb.

Polishing and porting 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 When you tune up your TLX you will usally see that the standard clutch starts to complain so get an uprated clutch. Remaps offer impressive 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 playing with twincharging applications and making some very high power hikes.

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. It is difficult to map fuelling with a turbo as the boost comes on exponentially with revs.

It is simpler to map a supercharger because the boost is proportional to engine speed on a linear curve. Decreasing the engines compression ratio will allow you to add forced induction, water injection may also help prevent detonation.

Alloy wheel upgrades.

The benefits of alloys include lowering your unsprung weight and better brake cooling via the extra air flow they allow. The drawback to large alloy wheels on your TLX is that you're altering your effective final drive ratio and this will have a detrimental effect on acceleration and performance.

Due to this we would advise sticking to a maximum wheel size of 16 inches, although we know some of our members have installed larger rims with no problems.

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

Please help us improve these tips by sending us your feedback in the comments box below. We love to hear what our visitors have got up to and which mods work best for them on each model of car. Comments are used to improve the accuracy of these articles which are continually updated.

This article was written by Waynne Smith on TorqueCars, and I appreciate your feedback and suggestions. This entry was filed under Acura. You can leave a response below or join TorqueCars forum to discuss this article and car modification in detail with our members.

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