MENUTuning the VW Phaeton
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The Phaeton is a great car tuning project to execute. The key to Phaeton tuning is choosing the right mods - a lot of money can be wasted if you do it wrong.
The VW Phaeton have loads of potential and with the best uprated upgrades like remaps, turbo improvements and camshafts you will maximize your driving fun.
In this article we provide a guide to Phaeton tuning and highlight the greatest upgrades.
Handling/Suspension upgrades
Many Phaeton owners uprate the handling of their cars with suspension parts as a priority, this will certainly increase your enjoyment of the car.
Adding slight negative camber to the front and a degree or two of toe in to improve stability or toe out for better cornering, will usually improve your Phaeton in handling and cornering.
We suggest that you fit uprated suspension and lower the car by 22mm - 39 mm. Larger drops require arch work - especially on models already equipped with performance suspension.
Turning our attention to the engine we need to get a bit more power out of the top end.
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 modified upgrades are usually installed by our members, decide how far you wish to go in your tuning project before you get started.
Petrol engines
Diesel engines
- 3.0 L TDI Common Rail (BMK / CARA / CEXA) V6 TDI
- 5.0 L AJS V10 TDI 2003–2007
Getting the best sports parts for your planned usage of the car is essential. Stage 3 competition upgrades just don't work well on the road difficult in stop start traffic.
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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:
Suspension upgrade (drop 22mm - 39 mm.), Remap, Sports exhaust, Panel air filter, Lighter flywheel, Alloy wheels.
Modifying to Stage 2:
Power/Sport clutch, Ported and polished head, Fast road cam, fuel pump upgrades, high flow fuel injector.
Modifying to Stage 3:
Competition cam, Adding or upgrading forced induction (turbo/supercharger), Sports gearbox, Engine balancing, Internal engine upgrades (pistons/head/valves).
Peak power is good on competition cars but for a daily driven car you need a long power band and perhaps extending the rev range.
The whole aim of our hints is to give a little insight into the world of modding upgrades and point you in the right direction, our forum is the place to go for detailed advice and tips on your tuning project, the best tuning modifications and all aspects of modding cars.Fast road cams offer one of the biggest torque gains for your money as far as a bolt on sports upgrades goes on a NASP engine.
It maximises 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 sport 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 pay attention to the fuelling.
Using higher octane petrol is another option if you find you are suffering from detonation or premature ignition on your VW project after fitting other sports parts. 
Upgraded injectors will enable you to supply sufficient fuel to the 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. 
Air induction kits are only beneficial to increase power if your air intake is restricted! Adding an induction kit to most standard engines will see LITTLE LOW END POWER GAIN AT ALL. If you have heavily modified your engine and it's need for air INCREASES DRAMATICALLY then an induction kit is the answer and will help remove this restriction.
For most Phaeton 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 through the engine but do not go too wide or you could will reduce the flow rate. Stick to 1.5 to 2.5 inches for best results.
Getting the cylinder head ported and polished will allow you to get more air into each cylinder. This is definitely a job for a professional with a flow bench. Your clutch can slip if it starts to complain and the standard clutches are only ever good for power gains of up to 40%. Fit an uprated clutch to avoid power leak through the transmission. The best mods we would do for your Phaeton 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 remapped ECU on a NASP engine will help unleash the potential if you have done a lot of mods. Despite the large cost involved adding forced induction to a NASP engine will give large power gains. Superchargers are generally easier to add than a turbo. It is more challenging to map a turbo as the boost increases exponentially with rpm.
It is simpler to map a supercharger because the boost is proportional to engine speed on a linear curve. Alternatively you could perhaps add water injection to minimise knock.
Alloy wheel upgrades.
Because alloy wheels are less heavy they improve performance and they can help to cool the brake disks. Get a good track legal slick tire to improve your handling and help improve traction on your Phaeton. Please note although they can look cool on the Phaeton large alloy wheels 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.
Due to this endeavour to keep the overall rolling diameter of the wheel the OEM setup. In all cases not going larger than 18 inches.
For more information on Tuning your car please join us in our friendly forum where you can discuss Phaeton options in more detail with our Phaeton owners. It would also be worth reading our unbiased VW tuning articles to get a full grasp of the benefits and drawbacks of each modification.
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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.
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