Fiat Bravo Tuning

"Thank you for reading my Bravo tuning guide."

The Bravo is a good car modification project to do. If you do your homework then you can create an awesome Bravo but don't be fooled there are lots of sports upgrades out there that will simply not suit it read our unbiased guides first.

Handling/Suspension upgrades

Handling modifications are high on most peoples lists for the Bravo.

Good suspension tweaks that substantially benefit handling for the Bravo include a couple of degrees negative camber and 1-1.5 degrees of toe out on the front wheels.

We suggest that you fit sports suspension and lower the car by 25mm - 35 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 torque out of the top end.

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.

These are the modified modifications are usually carried out by our members, decide how far you want to go before you get going.

Getting the correct grade of sports mods for your planned usage of the car is vital. Stage 3 competition upgrades just don't work well on the road hard to control in slow traffic.

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Modifying to Stage 1:

 Lighter flywheel, Alloy wheels, Panel air filter, Remap, Suspension upgrade (drop 25mm - 35 mm), Sports exhaust.

Modifying to Stage 2:

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

Modifying to Stage 3:

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

Your goal when modding the engine should be a wide torque range. You want to avoid sending all the power to be at the top end unless you are creating a motor sport car.

The aim of our advice is to give a brief overview of tuning upgrades and point you in the right direction, our forum is the place to go for detailed advice and tips on your customized car project, the best uprated kits and all aspects of modding cars.One of the biggest mechanical upgrades you can do on your NASP engine is to fit a fast road cam .

The intake and exhaust durations play a large part in your cars power band, but be careful here, getting this wrong can upset the idle and make the car impossible 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.

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

Most power losses, flat spots and erratic idling after tuning kits are done can usually be traced to fuel delivery or timing issues.To get sufficient fuel you may need to improve the injectors on your engine.

Uprate the fuel pump to cope with the extra fuel requirements of your tuned Bravos uprated injectors.

Intake and Exhaust Tuning.

The next area for modification is the intake and exhaust. Induction kits only help to increase performance if the air intake is struggling! Adding an induction kit to most standard engines will see NO 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 Bravo 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 supplying cold air.

Sports exhausts increase the flow of gases through the engine. But if your exhaust pipe is too big, ie: over 2.5 inches bore, you will lose a lot of your flow rate and end up sapping power and torque.

flowed (porting and polishing) 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 triple plate fast road uprated clutch will help to keep that power going where it should. Never skimp or ask the standard OEM clutch to cope.

The best mods that we recommend for your Bravo are remaps, sports camshafts and induction improvementsNASP 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 phenomenal power gains and fully release the potential power of the engine.

We've also seen some tuners playing with twin charging applications and making some seriously high power gains.

Despite the large cost involved adding forced induction to a NASP engine will give large power gains. It is usually simpler to bolt on a supercharger than it is to bolt on a turbo. With a turbo the power curve is related exponentially to the engine speed making it difficult to map fuelling with.

Superchargers will give a boost which is proportional to engine speed so is simpler. 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 usually less heavy than the steel ones. 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 Bravo, and make a big difference over budget tires. Large Bravo alloys can decrease performance. If you get big alloys you will be changing your final drive ratio.

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

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