Tuning the Proton Perdana

"Thanks for reading my Proton Perdana tuning tips."

The Perdana is a good tuning project to play with. Plan ahead and research Perdana tuning to avoid making the usual disastrous errors we regularly get told about.

We review Perdana tuning and show the greatest mods that work. Proton Perdanas are good project cars and with the optimum modified enhancements you can definitely increase your driving enjoyment.

Handling/Suspension upgrades

Many Perdana owners uprate the handling of their cars with uprated suspension parts as a priority, this will certainly increase your enjoyment of the car.

Adding a small amount of negative camber on the fronts and a degree or two of toe in to improve stability or toe out for better cornering, will substantially enhance your Perdana in handling and cornering.

Drop the car by as much as 28mm - 40 mm. and fit sports stiffer dampers, bigger drops will need other modifications in most instances.

Our aim in engine tuning should be to increase peak power and torque at the top end.

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.

Power mods.

Typically these modified mods are usually installed by our members, decide how far you wish to go in your tuning project before you start.

• 2.0L 4G63P
• 2.0L 6A12

Getting the right uprated modifications 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:

 Suspension upgrade (drop 28mm - 40 mm.), Sports exhaust, Lighter flywheel, Panel air filter, Remap, Alloy wheels.

Modifying to Stage 2:

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

Modifying to Stage 3:

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

Your targets when tuning should be a wide torque band. You want to avoid sending all the torque to be at the top end unless you are creating a motor sport car.

The point of our articles is to give a limited introduction of car tuning modifications and point you in the right direction, our forum is the place to go for detailed advice and tips on your car tuning project, the best uprated parts and all aspects of modding cars.One of the biggest mechanical uprated mods you can do on your NASP engine is to fit a fast road cam .

The exhaust and intake valve timings play a big 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 performance chip for the best performance gains.

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

Most power losses, flat spots and erratic idling after uprated upgrades are done can usually be traced to fuel delivery or timing issues. 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 Perdana's uprated injectors.

Intake and Exhaust Tuning.

Breathing mods are usually next up. Induction kits only help to add power if the cars air intake is restricted! Adding an induction kit to most standard engines will see ZERO 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.

Maximum power gains come from a full induction kit with a cold air feed on heavily tuned engines, this can be sited within an air box but a panel filter should suffice for most applications. TorqueCars suggest you use a panel air filter as these are easy to clean and maintain and generally perform better than paper ones.

Sports exhausts can help equal out the flow of gases through the engine. But if the exhaust pipe is too big, ie: over 2.5 inches bore, you will lose much 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 make false economies or assume your standard OEM clutch to cope. The best mods in our experience for your Perdana are Remapping or piggy back ecu, fast road cam and air intake and exhaust.

Remaps offer big 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 toying with twin charging applications and making some very high power hikes.

The most phenomenal power gains for NASP engines usually involve the addition of forced induction. Turbos are often harder to add than a supercharger. With a turbo the power curve is related exponentially to the engine speed making it more challenging to map.

It is more straightforward to map a supercharger because the boost is directly proportional to engine speed on a linear curve. Alternatively you could add water injection to reduce the risk of knock.

Alloy wheel upgrades.

The benefits of alloy wheels include reducing your unsprung weight and better brake cooling via the extra air flow they allow. 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. directional tread pattern tires work well on Perdana, and make a big difference over budget tires. Large Perdana alloy wheels can decrease performance. If you get big alloy wheels you will be changing your final drive ratio.

Although some people have fitted larger wheels without problems 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 Perdana options in more detail with our Perdana owners. It would also be worth reading our unbiased Proton 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 Proton. 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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