Tuning the Hyundai i40

"Thank you for reading our Hyundai i40 tuning guide."

A large family oriented car which shares much with the Sonata US verson.

A great range of engines and nicely designed interior and exterior, the i40 has wide appeal and has sold reasonably well in all markets where it was featured.

The i40 is a great car tuning project to fill your spare time. If you do your research then you can create an awesome i40 but don't be fooled there are lots of high performance modifications out there that will simply not suit it read our unbiased guides first.

Handling/Suspension upgrades

Handling modifications are high on the agenda for the i40 with many criticising the overly soft suspension setup and bodyroll.

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

Drop the car by as much as 25mm - 39 mm. and fit modified stiffer dampers or coilovers, bigger drops will need other modifications in most instances.

A front strut brace and high quality bushing will go a long way to sharpen up the handling.

Don't just look at the peak power figures, you need to see the whole torque curve when determining if a mod is right for you i40.

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.

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

• 1.6 L Gamma GDI i4 133hp
• 2.0 L Nu i4 164hp/150hp
• 2.0 L Nu GDI i4 176hp/162hp
• 1.7 L U2 CRDI i4 diesel

Getting the best modified upgrade kits for your planned usage of the car is essential. Stage 3 motor sport mods just don't work well on the road and will make the car undrivable.

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Modifying to Stage 1:

 Sports exhaust, Alloy wheels, Suspension upgrade (drop 25mm - 39 mm.), Lighter flywheel, Panel air filter, Remap.

Modifying to Stage 2:

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

Modifying to Stage 3:

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

You should keep as much low end power as you can and aim to achieve a wide power band rather than a narrow top end power spike.

The point of our advice is to give a limited introduction of modding upgrades and point you in the right direction, our forum is best place to go if you need more detailed advice and tips on your tuning project, the best motorsport kits and all aspects of modding cars.One of the biggest mechanical modified parts you can do to your NASP engine is to fit a fast road camshaft .

The intake & exhaust flow play a huge role in your cars power band, but be careful here, getting this wrong can upset the idle and make the car difficult to drive in traffic. You'd need to follow a cam upgrade with other mods and finish with a remap to fully release the power gain.

You will need to ensure that the engine is not starved of fuel so will need to increase the fuelling.

Frequently power losses, flat spots and erratic idling after uprated parts 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.

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.

Breathing mods are usually next up. Please note that WE DO NOT SEE 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 limitation.

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 i40 engines you should go with a high performance panel air filter preferably made from cotton.

Sports exhausts equal out the flow of gases through the engine. But if your exhaust is too big, ie: over 2.5 inches bore, you will lose much of the exhaust flow rate and end up lacking power and torque.

Getting a professionally flowed (ported and polished) head with larger valves can fully release the engines power. When you tune up your i40 you will often find that the standard clutch starts to complain so get an uprated clutch. The best mods in our experience for your i40 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 large power gains and fully release the potential power of the engine. Adding forced induction will see phenomenal power gains but this is usually too expensive to be cost effective. Turbos are often harder to add than a supercharger. With a turbo the power curve is related exponentially to the engine speed making it difficult to map fuelling with.

It is simpler to map a supercharger because the boost is directly proportional to engine speed on a linear curve. Adding forced induction will generally require a lower compression ratio or water injection.

Alloy wheel upgrades.

Because alloy wheels are lighter they improve performance and they will help to cool the brake disks. 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 i40, and make a big difference over budget tires. Large i40 alloys can decrease performance. If you get big alloys you will be changing your final drive ratio.

Although some people have installed larger rims 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 i40 options in more detail with our i40 owners. It would also be worth reading our unbiased Hyundai 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 Hyundai. 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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