Tuning the Nissan Maxima

"Tuning guide to the best Nissan Maxima modifications."

The Maxima is a awesome car tuning project to try. We see people often wasting money on their Maxima doing the wrong mods and then having to start over. Follow our advice to avoid wasting your money

The Nissan Maxima make a good tuning project and with the right tuning parts like ECU maps, turbo upgrades and camshafts you will definitely enhance your driving enjoyment.

Let us review Maxima tuning and show the ultimate upgrades.

Tuning the Nissan Maxima and best Maxima performance parts.

Handling/Suspension upgrades

Improving the handling for loads of people first priority in your Maxima tuning project.

Setting slight negative camber on the fronts and a degree or two of toe in to improve stability or toe out for better cornering, will substantially improve your Maxima in handling and cornering.

Drop the car by as much as 29mm - 39 mm. and fit modified stiffer dampers, bigger drops will need other modifications in most instances.

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 Maxima.

Sadly with smaller engine sizes you are wasting your time spending money on modifications, so if this applies to you get yourself an engine swap then apply the following mods.

Tuning modifications.

The following sports upgrades are usually fitted by our members, decide how far you want to push your car before you start.

Getting the right sports upgrade kits for your planned usage of the car is essential. Stage 3 motor sport mods just won't work well on the road hard to control in slow traffic.

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Modifying to Stage 1:

 Lighter flywheel, Sports exhaust, Suspension upgrade (drop 29mm - 39 mm.), Remap, Panel air filter, Alloy wheels.

Modifying to Stage 2:

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

Modifying to Stage 3:

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

Your goal when tuning the engine should be a nice flat torque band. You don't want all the torque to be at the top end of the rev range unless you are creating a competition car.

The whole point of our hints is to give a brief overview of tuning 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 modified car project, the best motorsport kits and all aspects of modding cars.Fast road cams offer one of the biggest power gains for your money as far as a bolt on upgrades goes on a NASP engine.

The intake and exhaust valve durations 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 camshaft upgrade with other mods and finish with a remap to fully release the power gain.

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

Using high octane fuel is another option if you find you are suffering from pinking or premature ignition on your Nissan project after fitting other performance parts. To get sufficient fuel you may need to uprate the injectors on your engine.

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

Intake and Exhaust Tuning.

Breathing mods are usually next up.  Induction kits only help to add performance if your cars air intake is struggling! Adding an induction kit to most small 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.

Derestricting the air feed into the engine is a primary goal of car tuners so get a better flowing air filter if you find that the car is running lean. Induction kits can sound great but due to the warm air in the engine bay they will not really increase power and often rob you of power.

Do not go with the widest exhaust you can buy this will slow the exhaust 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 gas flow (ported and polished) and 3 or 5 angle valve job will really help to release the potential of the engine. In nearly all cases of Maxima tuning your clutch will start to slip and this needs to be uprated - read our article on clutches for more information. The best mods we would do for your Maxima are a remap especially on a turbo, a fast road camshaft and sports exhaust, with a good air intake.

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 phenomenal power gains and take full advantage of the strength of the block.

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

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. It is more challenging to map a turbo as the boost comes on exponentially with engine speed.

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

Alloy wheel upgrades.

The benefits of alloys include reducing your unsprung weight and more efficient brake cooling. Get a good directional tread pattern tire to improve your handling and help improve traction on your Maxima. We should point out that although they can look cool on the Maxima large alloys 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.

Although some people have gone larger than this without issues we would stick to a 18 inch rim size as the maximum.

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