Tuning the Hyundai Tiburon

"Tuning guide to the most effective Hyundai Tiburon modifications."

The Tiburon is a good car modification project to play with. With the right mods your Tiburon can be transformed into a fun car. Don't waste money, do your homework and follow our unbiased guides to each performance upgrade so you don't waste your money.

We examine Tiburon tuning and provide tips on the optimum modifications for your car. Hyundai Tiburons provide a fun base for your project and with the ultimate enhancements you can definitely maximise your driving fun.

Handling/Suspension upgrades

Handling modifications are usually your first port of call for the Tiburon.

Fully adjustable suspension allows you to fine tune the handling of you Tiburon dramatically improving your drive.

We suggest that you fit modified suspension and lower the car by 26mm - 36 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.

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.

Power mods.

These are the sports parts are usually installed by our members, decide how far you want to go before you start.

Getting the right performance modifications for your planned usage of the car is vital. Stage 3 motor sport parts just don't work well on the road making the car difficult to drive.

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Modifying to Stage 1:

 Suspension upgrade (drop 26mm - 36 mm.), Alloy wheels, Lighter flywheel, Sports exhaust, Remap, Panel air filter.

Modifying to Stage 2:

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

Modifying to Stage 3:

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

You need to keep as much low end power as possible and aim to achieve a wide power band across the rev range rather than a narrow top end power hike.

The aim of our hints is to give a limited introduction of modding modifications and point you in the right direction, our forum is best place to go if you need more detailed advice and tips on your modified car project, the best modified upgrades and all aspects of modding cars.A fast road cam usually proves to be one of the best NASP power mods you can do from a single upgrade to your engine.

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

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

Using high octane petrol is another option if you find you are suffering from pinking or premature ignition on your Hyundai project after fitting other tuning kits. To get sufficient fuel you may need to upgrade the injectors on your engine.

Uprate the fuel pump to cope with the extra fuel requirements of your tuned Tiburon's uprated injectors.

Intake and Exhaust Tuning.

The next area for modification is the intake and exhaust. Please note that WE DO NOT RECOMMEND INDUCTION KITS, unless you have tuned your car with over 30 percent more power 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 Tiburon engines you should go with a high performance panel air filter preferably made from cotton.

Do not go with the largest exhaust you can get this will slow up the exhaust flow rate - the best for power gains are usually between 1.5 to 2.5 inches. It is the shape and material more than the bore size.

Getting a professionally flowed (ported and polished) head with larger valves can fully maximise your power gains. A good fast road performance clutch will help to keep that power going where it should. Never make false economies or think that your standard OEM clutch to cope. The best mods that we recommend for your Tiburon are a remap especially on a turbo, a fast road camshaft and sports exhaust, with a good air intake.

Remaps offer impressive 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 playing with twincharging applications and making some seriously high power figures.

Adding forced induction will see phenomenal power gains but this is usually too expensive to be cost effective. It is often cheaper to bolt on a supercharger than it is to fit a working turbo. With a turbo the power curve is related exponentially to the engine speed making it more challenging to map.

The nice correlating boost and rpm characteristics of the supercharger make them more straightforward to map. To cope with forced induction you will usually need to decrease the engine compression ratio .

Alloy wheel upgrades.

Alloy wheels can help the brake cooling and are generally less heavy than the steel ones. Get a good track legal slick tire to improve your handling and help improve traction on your Tiburon. Large Tiburon alloy wheels can decrease performance. If you get big alloy wheels you will be changing your final drive ratio.

For this reason aim to keep the overall rolling diameter of the wheel the OEM setup. In all cases not going over 16 inches.

For more information on Tuning your car please join us in our friendly forum where you can discuss Tiburon options in more detail with our Tiburon 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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