Tuning the Proton Persona

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

We examine Persona tuning and outline the best modifications. Proton Personas make a good tuning project and with the best modifications you can certainly increase your driving fun.

• First generation (C95, C96, C97, C98, C99; 1993–2007

The Wira was  exported to Australia in May 1995 and was renamed 'Proton Persona' in 1996

• Second generation (CM6; 2007–2016)

The second generation was based on an extended Proton GEN-2 platform.

• Third generation (BH6; 2016–present)

The third generation was now based on an extended Proton Iriz platform. The third generation went on to win many accolades in fuel efficiency and best compact car/sedan in 2016-2018.

Handling/Suspension upgrades

Improving the handling for car enthusiasts first priority in your Persona tuning project.

Good suspension tweaks that often enhance handling for the Persona include a couple of degrees negative camber and 1-1.5 degrees of toe in or out on the front wheels. Toe in for stability, or Toe out to improve cornering. It would also pay to improve the brakes, by adding larger discs and or higher friction pads..

Drop the car by as much as 22mm - 44 mm. and fit sports stiffer dampers, bigger drops will need other modifications in most instances.

A nice wide torque band and sweet spot of peak power at one third of your RPM range is optimum.

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 mods motorsport upgrades are usually installed by our members, decide how far you want to push your car before you begin.

• 1.6L S4PH
• 1.6L S4PH IAFM
• 1.6L S4PH VVT

Getting the right motorsport modifications for your planned usage of the car is vital. Stage 3 (competition) mods just won't work well on the road making the car difficult to drive.

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Modifying to Stage 1:

 Panel air filter, Sports exhaust, Suspension upgrade (drop 22mm - 44 mm.), Remap, Lighter flywheel, Alloy wheels.

Modifying to Stage 2:

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

Modifying to Stage 3:

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

You really need to keep as much low end torque as you can and aim for a long power band rather than a narrow top end power hike.

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

It maximises the intake and exhaust durations and increases the power if done right. Ideally you'd add other mods and finish up with a performance chip. We'd also caution you not to go with a motor sports profile cam as this upsets the engines idling and general town driving characteristics.

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

Using high octane petrol is another option if you find you are suffering from pinking or premature ignition on your Proton project after fitting other motorsport kits. Higher capacity injectors will enable you to supply sufficient fuel to the engine.

A fuel pump will only deliver a finite amount of fuel, so you may need to uprate this if your injectors are demanding more fuel.

Intake and Exhaust Tuning.

The next area for modification is the intake and exhaust. Please note that WE DO NOT SEE IMPROVEMENTS WITH INDUCTION KITS, unless you have tuned your car extensively and are finding that the standard air intake has become limited.

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 will certainly help air flow through the engine but do not go too wide or you could will reduce the flow rate. Stick to 1.5 to 2.5 inches as a rule of thumb.

Head work including a polish and port and 3 or 5 angle valve job will really help to release the potential of the engine. In nearly all cases of Persona tuning your clutch will start to fail and this should be improved - read our guide on clutches for more information. The best mods in our experience for your Persona 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 impressive power gains and take full advantage of the strength of the block. Adding forced induction will see big 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 boost curve is related exponentially to the engine speed making it harder to map.

The nice correlating boost and rpm characteristics of the supercharger make them easier to map. Decreasing the engines compression ratio will allow you to add forced induction, water injection may also help prevent detonation.

Alloy wheel upgrades.

Alloy wheels will help the brake cooling and are usually less heavy than steel ones. Further improvements can be made to your cars handling with the addition of track legal slick tire. Please note although they can look cool on the Persona big 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.

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 Persona options in more detail with our Persona 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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