Tuning the Proton Suprima S
"Thank you for reading our Proton Suprima S tuning guide."
The Suprima S is a great project car to play with. The key to Suprima S tuning is finding the right mods you can waste loads of money if you do it wrong.
We outline options for your Suprima S tuning and report on the premier mods that work. Proton Suprima Ss offer good returns when tuned and with the ultimate enhancements you can definitely improve your driving fun.
Handling/Suspension upgrades
Handling modifications are often a priority for the Suprima S.
Putting some negative camber to the front and around 1 to 1.7 degrees of toe in to improve stability or toe out for better cornering, will radically improve your Suprima S in handling and cornering.
Drop the car by as much as 22mm - 37 mm. and fit performance stiffer dampers, bigger drops will need other modifications in most instances.
Our aim in engine tuning should be to increase peak power 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.
These mods tuning mods are usually installed by our members, decide how far you want to push your car before you get going.
There was only one engine option offered but it was designed by Proton and Lotus in collaboration 138 horsepower @ 5,000 rpm & 205 Nm of torque @ 2,000-4,000 rpm.
- 1.6 L CamPro Turbo DOHC I4
Getting the best modified mods for your planned usage of the car is a time and money saver. Stage 3 competition upgrades just don't work well on the road hard to control in slow traffic.
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How to tune your car
- Improve the handling
Focus on Suspension improvements, such as coilovers and make sure the bushings are in good order and that the alignment is correct. Then focus on improving the brakes, with a big disk brake conversion kit and fast road brake pads.
- Remove restrictions
Focus on the intake and exhaust with filters being the common point of restriction in a tuned car. Intercoolers may also become restrictive on turbo engines so this may also need to be uprated.
- Burn more fuel & air
Increase the fuelling so it matches the air coming into the engine. The ratio is important so you need to improve the fuel pump and injectors, so the head mods, big valve conversions, fast road camshafts and forced induction upgrades extra supply of air is adequately met.
- Test and replace any weak parts
Weak areas are commonly the clutch, the turbocharger and pistons and crankshaft in a highly tuned engine. Makes sure these components will cope with your power aspirations.
- The Tune or Remap
A cars ECU controls the fuel, timing, spark and even the turbo in some cases, so to fully extract your gains you should remap the car last and this will fully release the power. Some cars are easy to map, and others require piggyback ECU's or aftermarket ECU's but this is the most vital step of your tuning project.
Modifying to Stage 1:
Lighter flywheel, Sports exhaust, Alloy wheels, Remap, Suspension upgrade (drop 22mm - 37 mm.), Panel air filter.
Modifying to Stage 2:
fuel pump upgrades, high flow fuel injector, Power/Sport clutch, Fast road cam, Ported and polished head.
Modifying to Stage 3:
Competition cam, Adding or upgrading forced induction (turbo/supercharger), Engine balancing, Internal engine upgrades (pistons/head/valves), Sports gearbox.
You really need to keep as much low end torque as you can and aim to achieve a long power band rather than a narrow top end power hike.
In this article we shall give a brief overview to the best modifications for your car, but we'd encourage you to spend some time on the site looking into the details of each type of performance mod.Fast road cams offer one of the biggest performance gains for your money as far as a bolt on upgrades goes on a NASP engine.
The intake and exhaust flow play a huge factor in your cars power band, but be careful here, getting this wrong can upset the idle and make the car impossible to drive in traffic. You'd need to follow a camshaft upgrade with other mods and finish with a performance chip to fully release the power gain.
You will need to ensure that the engine is not starved of fuel so will need to look at the fuelling.
If you find you suffer from flat spots and power surges after your motorsport kits you should check the fuelling and try a higher octane fuel as well. Increasing the injectors is another beneficial modification and will deliver sufficient fuel.
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. Contrary to popular belief there is generally a small power gain got by fitting an induction kit, they only become beneficial and are recommended after you increase the engines power to the point where the standard air intake box cannot cope!
Derestricting the air flow into the engine is the primary part of car tuners so get a better flowing air filter if you find that the car is running lean. Induction kits can sound sporty but due to the warm air in the engine bay they will not really increase power and more often than not rob you of power.
Do not go with the biggest exhaust you can find this will reduce 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 the cylinder head gas flowed will allow you to get more air into each cylinder. This is definitely a job for a professional with a flow bench. A good multi plate fast road performance clutch will help to keep that power going where it should. Never make false economies or assume the standard clutch to cope. The best mods we recommend for your Suprima S are remaps, sports camshafts and induction improvements.
Remaps offer phenomenal power gains on all turbo charged cars. On NASP engines the benefits are doubtful. However a flashed ecu on a NASP engine will help unleash the potential if you have done a lot of mods. Adding forced induction will see large power gains but this is usually too expensive to be cost effective. Turbos are often harder to add than a supercharger. Turbos increase power in increasing proportion to increasing engine speed and this can make mapping difficult.
It is more straightforward to map a supercharger because the boost is correlating to engine speed on a linear curve. To cope with forced induction you will usually need to decrease the compression ratio of the engine .
Alloy wheel upgrades.
The benefits of alloy wheels include lowering your unsprung weight and better brake cooling via the extra air flow they allow. If you are serious about performance then you will need to carefully choose your tires - ideally with a track legal slick tire. Large Suprima S alloy wheels can decrease performance. If you get big alloy wheels you will be changing your final drive ratio.
Although some people have installed larger rims without issues we would restrict ourselves 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 Suprima S options in more detail with our Suprima S 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.
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