Tuning the Maruti S-presso
"Tuning guide to the greatest Maruti S-presso modifications."
The S-presso is a great car tuning project to try it's small and light, and every extra bit of power can be felt by the driver!
If you do your planning then you can create an awesome S-presso but don't be fooled there are lots of performance parts out there that will simply not suit it read our unbiased guides first.
We consider S-presso tuning and summarise the ultimate upgrades. Maruti S-pressos make a good tuning project and with carefully picked tuning mods you can improve your driving fun.
Handling/Suspension upgrades
Handling modifications are often a priority for the S-presso.
We found that most S-presso factory suspension setups need tweaking, a few degrees of toe out for cornering or toe in for stability, 1-1.7, and a little negative camber will greatly enhance your cornering and handling.
We suggest that you fit motorsport suspension and lower the car by 23mm - 36 mm. Larger drops require arch work - especially on models already equipped with performance suspension.
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.
Tuning modifications.
Typically these tuning kits are usually fitted by our members, decide how far you want to push your car before you begin.
Getting the best motorsport modifications for your planned usage of the car is essential. Stage 3 competition upgrades just won't work well on the road making the car difficult to drive.
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How to tune your car
- Improve the handling
Focus on Suspension improvements, such as coilovers and make sure the bushings are in good order and that the alignment is correct. Then focus on improving the brakes, with a big disk brake conversion kit and fast road brake pads.
- Remove restrictions
Focus on the intake and exhaust with filters being the common point of restriction in a tuned car. Intercoolers may also become restrictive on turbo engines so this may also need to be uprated.
- Burn more fuel & air
Increase the fuelling so it matches the air coming into the engine. The ratio is important so you need to improve the fuel pump and injectors, so the head mods, big valve conversions, fast road camshafts and forced induction upgrades extra supply of air is adequately met.
- Test and replace any weak parts
Weak areas are commonly the clutch, the turbocharger and pistons and crankshaft in a highly tuned engine. Makes sure these components will cope with your power aspirations.
- The Tune or Remap
A cars ECU controls the fuel, timing, spark and even the turbo in some cases, so to fully extract your gains you should remap the car last and this will fully release the power. Some cars are easy to map, and others require piggyback ECU's or aftermarket ECU's but this is the most vital step of your tuning project.
Modifying to Stage 1:
Lighter flywheel, Suspension upgrade (drop 23mm - 36 mm.), Alloy wheels, Panel air filter, Remap, Sports exhaust.
Modifying to Stage 2:
high flow fuel injector, Ported and polished head, fuel pump upgrades, Power/Sport clutch, Fast road cam.
Modifying to Stage 3:
Adding or upgrading forced induction (turbo/supercharger), Engine balancing, Sports gearbox, Competition cam, Internal engine upgrades (pistons/head/valves).
Your targets when tuning should be a nice flat torque curve. You don't want all the power to be at the top end of the rev range unless you are creating a motor sport car.
In this article we shall give a brief overview to the best modifications 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 single performance modifications goes on a NASP engine.
The intake & exhaust flow play a major role in your cars power band, but be careful here, getting this wrong can upset the idle and make the car challenging to drive in traffic. You'd need to follow a cam upgrade with other mods and finish with a performance chip to fully realise your gains.
Don't forget to ramp up the fuelling when you are increasing the power - it makes the car more thirsty.
Using high octane petrol is another option if you find you are suffering from pinking or premature ignition on your Maruti project after fitting other sports parts. Improving the injectors is another beneficial modification and will deliver sufficient fuel.
If you are increasing 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. Contrary to popular belief there is often a small if any power gain achieved by fitting an induction kit, they only work well and are recommended after you boost the engines power to the point where the standard air intake box cannot cope!
For most S-presso 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.
Do not go with the biggest exhaust you can find 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.
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 A good fast road uprated clutch will help to keep that power going where it should. Never skimp or think that the standard clutch to cope. The best mods we would do for your S-presso are fast road camshaft, remap, induction and exhaust, suspension.
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 impressive power gains and fully release the potential power of the engine.
We've also come across some owners toying with twin charging conversions and making some seriously high power gains.
Adding forced induction will see large power gains but this is usually too expensive to be cost effective. It is often simpler to bolt on a supercharger than it is to install a turbo. Turbos give boost in exponential proportion to th engine speed and this can make mapping difficult.
The nice steady boost and rpm characteristics of the supercharger make them more straightforward to map. Adding forced induction will often require a lower compression ratio or water injection.
Alloy wheel upgrades.
The benefits of alloy wheels include lowering your unsprung weight and better brake cooling via the extra air flow they allow. We can't go into too much detail here about tires but they are how the car puts the power down on the road so are a critical choice. track legal slick tires work well on S-presso, and make a big difference over budget tires. Large S-presso alloy wheels can decrease performance. If you get big alloy wheels you will be changing your final drive ratio.
Although some people have installed larger rims without issues we would restrict ourselves to a 15 inch rim size as the maximum.
For more information on Tuning your car please join us in our friendly forum where you can discuss S-presso options in more detail with our S-presso owners. It would also be worth reading our unbiased Maruti tuning articles to get a full grasp of the benefits and drawbacks of each modification.
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