Tuning the Nissan Cube

"Thanks for reading our Nissan Cube tuning article."

It has quirky looks that people either love or hate, but definitely has character and we are sure it will become collectable.

The Cube is a great car tuning project to do. If you do your homework then you can create an awesome Cube but don't be fooled there are lots of modified kits out there that will simply not suit it read our unbiased guides first.

The Nissan Cube are awesome to work on and with the right tuning parts like remapping, turbo upgrades and camshafts you will greatly improve your driving fun.

TorqueCars will examine the options for your Cube tuning and show the optimum modifications.

Handling/Suspension upgrades

Handling modifications are often a priority for the Cube.

If you set the toe out to 0.9 to 1.5 degrees on the front, and add a bit of negative camber then cornering will often improve.

We suggest that you fit performance suspension and lower the car by 24mm - 44 mm. Larger drops require arch work - especially on models already equipped with motorsport 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.

Power mods.

These are the tuning kits are usually carried out by our members, decide how far you want to push your car before you get going.

Getting the best uprated upgrades for your planned usage of the car is a time and money saver. Stage 3 motor sport mods just won't work well on the road and will make the car undrivable.

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Modifying to Stage 1:

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

Modifying to Stage 2:

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

Modifying to Stage 3:

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

You should keep as much low end torque as possible and aim for a wide power band rather than a narrow top end power hike.

In this article we shall give a brief overview to the best performance parts for your car, but we'd encourage you to spend some time on the site looking into the details of each type of performance upgrade.A fast road cam is widely accepted as one of the best NASP power modifications you can do from a single upgrade to your engine.

The intake and exhaust flow play a large part 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 performance chip for the best performance gains.

Don't forget to ramp up the fuelling when you are increasing the power - it makes the car more thirsty.

Most power losses, and erratic idling after uprated modifications are done can usually be traced to timing or fuelling issues. To get sufficient fuel you may need to improve the injectors on your 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.  Please note that WE DO NOT FIND IMPROVEMENTS WITH INDUCTION KITS, unless you have tuned your car extensively and are finding that the standard air intake has become the bottleneck.

Induction kits can work well on turbo engines and larger engines (if supplied with a suitable cold air feed or air box), generally though we'd just recommend for Cube engines you should settle for a performance panel air filter preferably made from cotton.

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.

Head work including a polish and port and 3 or 5 angle valve job will really help to release the potential of the engine. When you heavily modify your Cube you will usally see that the standard clutch starts to suffer so get an uprated clutch. The best mods we recommend for your Cube are a remap especially on a turbo, a fast road camshaft and sports exhaust, with a good air intake.

Remaps offer big 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 experimenting with twin charging conversions 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. With a turbo the boost curve is related exponentially to the engine speed making it difficult to map fuelling with.

Superchargers, however will give a boost which is proportional to engine speed so is simpler. Alternatively you could perhaps install water injection to cut down knock.

Alloy wheel upgrades.

Alloy wheels will help the brake cooling and are usually less heavy than steel ones. Don't forget that your choice of rubber greatly affects your cars grip and handling. It is not worth compromising performance with cheap tyres when you can buy directional tread pattern performance tires.The drawback to large alloy wheels on your Cube is that you're altering your final drive ratio and this will have a detrimental effect on acceleration.

Although some people have installed larger rims without issues we would stick to a 16 inch rim size as the maximum.

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