Tuning the Skoda Kamiq

"Tuning guide to the most effective Skoda Kamiq modifications."

The Kamiq is a great car tuning project to do. Sit down first and research Kamiq tuning to avoid making the usual costly slip ups we regularly hear about.

The Skoda Kamiq are great bases for a tuning project and with carefully picked performance upgrades like remapping, turbo improvements and camshafts you will substantially maximize your driving fun.

This pages aim is look into Kamiq tuning and summarise the greatest upgrades.

Handling/Suspension upgrades

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

We found that most Kamiq factory suspension setups need tweaking, a few degrees of toe out for cornering or toe in for stability, 1 to 2, and a little negative camber will greatly benefit your cornering and handling.

We would go to a maximum drop of 30mm - 39 mm. on most models. You risk compromising your handling if you go lower than this.

Top end power should be your overall aim on the Kamiq with a nice fat peak torque band.

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.

Engine Tuning.

The following tuning kits are usually carried out by our members, decide how far you want to push your car before you start.

The following engines may be good engine swap candidates for your Kamiq.

• 1.4 TFSi tuning
• 1.8T engine Tuning
• 1.8 2.0 TFSi (ea888) Tuning
• 2.0 TFSi carbon issue & care guide
• 2.0 TDI 140-170 tuning

Getting the right sports mods for your planned usage of the car is essential. Stage 3 motor sport parts just won't work well on the road and will make the car undrivable.

Please watch our introduction Video tutorial to car tuning. Be sure to subscribe and support our new channel.

Modifying to Stage 1:

 Lighter flywheel, Suspension upgrade (drop 30mm - 39 mm.), Panel air filter, Remap, Sports exhaust, Alloy wheels.

Modifying to Stage 2:

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

Modifying to Stage 3:

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

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

In this article we shall give a little insight into the world to the best upgrades for your car, but we'd encourage you to spend some time on the site looking into the details of each type of performance part.Fast road cams offer one of the biggest torque gains for your money as far as a stand alone sports modifications goes on a NASP engine.

The intake & 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 awkward to drive in traffic. You'd need to follow a cam upgrade with other mods and finish with a reflashed ECU to fully release the power gain.

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

If you find you get flat spots and power surges after your tuning mods you should check the fuelling and try a higher octane fuel as well. Uprated injectors will enable you to supply sufficient fuel to the engine.

If you are increasing your fuelling with bigger injectors you will also need to get a bigger fuel pump to supply it.

Intake and Exhaust Tuning.

Now we move on to the intake and exhaust and ensure proper flow through the engine.  Contrary to popular belief there is usually very little power gain to be had by fitting an induction kit, they only help and are recommended after you increase the engines power to the point where the standard air intake box cannot cope!

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 Kamiq engines you should just fit a high performance panel air filter preferably made from cotton.

Do not go with the widest exhaust you can find this will reduce the exhaust flow 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.

Airflow through the head can be dramatically increased with some professional polishing and ported.

These should match and be setup to take into account any other engine mods. When you start tuning your Kamiq you will discover that the standard clutch starts to slip so get an uprated clutch. The best mods we would do for your Kamiq are Remapping or piggy back ecu, fast road cam and air intake and exhaust.

Remaps offer impressive power gains on all turbo charged cars. On NASP engines the benefits are doubtful.

However a remapped ECU on a NASP engine will help unleash the potential if you have done a lot of mods. Adding forced induction will see big power gains but this is usually too expensive to be cost effective. It is often simpler to bolt on a supercharger than it is to fit a working turbo. It is harder to map a turbo as the boost builds exponentially with revs.

The nice steady boost and rpm characteristics of the supercharger make them easier to map. Alternatively you could fit water injection to reduce the risk of knock.

Alloy wheel upgrades.

Alloy wheels can help the brake cooling and are usually lighter than the steel ones.

If you are serious about performance then you will need to carefully choose your tires - ideally with a track legal slick tire. Large Kamiq alloys can decrease performance. If you get big alloys you will be changing your final drive ratio.

For this reason try to keep the overall rolling diameter of the wheel the same as supplied from the factory. In all cases avoid going bigger than 18 inches.

For more information on Tuning your car please join us in our friendly forum where you can discuss Kamiq options in more detail with our Kamiq owners. It would also be worth reading our unbiased Skoda 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 Skoda. 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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