MENUTuning the VW Amarok
"Ta for reading this VW Amarok tuning guide."
The Amarok is a good car tuning project to take up your weekends. The key to Amarok tuning is finding the right mods you can waste loads of money if you do it wrong.
TorqueCars will review Amarok tuning and report on the greatest upgrades. VW Amarok are good project trucks and with the optimum motorsport modifications like remapping, turbo upgrades and camshafts you will noticeably increase your driving fun.
Handling/Suspension upgrades
Handling modifications are a good place to start for the Amarok.
Fully adjustable suspension allows you to fine tune the handling of you Amarok substantially improving your drive.
Drop the car by as much as 26mm - 39 mm. and fit performance stiffer dampers, bigger drops will need other modifications in most instances.
Top end power should be your overall aim on the Amarok 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.
Tuning modifications.
Typically these performance upgrades are usually carried out by our members, decide how far you wish to go in your tuning project before you begin.
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Getting the right performance mods for your planned usage of the car is vital. Stage 3 motor sport mods just won't work well on the road difficult in stop start 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:
Alloy wheels, Lighter flywheel, Suspension upgrade (drop 26mm - 39 mm.), Panel air filter, Remap, Sports exhaust.
Modifying to Stage 2:
Power/Sport clutch, fuel pump upgrades, Fast road cam, high flow fuel injector, Ported and polished head.
Modifying to Stage 3:
Engine balancing, Adding or upgrading forced induction (turbo/supercharger), Competition cam, Sports gearbox, Internal engine upgrades (pistons/head/valves).
You need to keep as much low end torque as possible and aim to get a wide power band rather than a narrow top end power hike.
The aim of our guides is to give a limited introduction of modding performance parts 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 motorsport modifications and all aspects of modding cars.Fast road cams offer one of the biggest torque gains for your money as far as a solitary modified 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 hard to drive in traffic. You'd need to follow a cam upgrade with other mods and finish with a performance chip to fully realise your gains.
You will need to ensure that the engine is not starved of fuel so will need to increase the fuelling.
Using higher octane fuel is another option if you find you are suffering from pinking or premature ignition on your VW project after fitting other performance upgrades. 
Bigger 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.
Breathing mods are usually next up. 
Induction kits will only help to boost performance if the cars air intake is restricted! Adding an induction kit to most low power engines will see NO 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.
For most Amarok engines TorqueCars would suggest you just go with a washable panel air filter. On heavily tuned engines and turbo vehicles an induction kit will help release the power providing you address the problem of supplying cold air.
Do not go with the largest exhaust you can buy this will slow the exhaust 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.
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 When you tune up your Amarok you will find that the standard clutch starts to slip so get an uprated clutch. The best mods in our experience for your Amarok are fast road camshaft, remap, induction and exhaust, suspension.
Turbo engines are just begging to be flashed. You will see significant power gains on most modern turbo charged cars including diesels making a remap one of the most cost effective and significant modifications for your money.The most phenomenal power gains for NASP engines usually involve the addition of forced induction. Turbos are generally harder to add than a supercharger. With a turbo the boost curve is related exponentially to the engine speed making it difficult to map fuelling with.
The nice correlating boost and rpm characteristics of the supercharger make them more straightforward to map. To cope with forced induction you will usually need to decrease the engine compression ratio .
Alloy wheel upgrades.
Because alloys are less heavy they improve performance and they will help to cool the brake disks. Get a good soft compound tire to improve your handling and help improve traction on your Amarok. Please note although they can look cool on the Amarok 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.
Due to this aim to keep the overall rolling diameter of the wheel the recommended OEM sizes. In all cases without going bigger than 18 inches.
For more information on Tuning your car please join us in our friendly forum where you can discuss Amarok options in more detail with our Amarok owners. It would also be worth reading our unbiased VW tuning articles to get a full grasp of the benefits and drawbacks of each modification.
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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.
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