Choosing The Right Tuner

Who needs a tuner? Well, at some point, anyone interested in building a quality, reliable performance car will. There is always going to be someone out there who knows a little or a lot more than you do about transforming a standard motor into a tarmac-shredding missile. An experienced tuner fully grasps "The Big Picture", of how everything under the bonnet works as a complete system, not as individual items. All this complexity makes tuning a modern engine more challenging, especially when aftermarket high-performance parts are thrown into the mix.

Preparing For Turbocharging

Although most turbocharging kits have everything you need to actually fit the turbo, there are number of considerations beyond the supplied parts. Is your engine ready for boost? The kit instructions, if they are good ones, will give you recommendations for other modifications you can make to allow the turbo setup to work even better on your engine.

Perhaps no other accessory is more important for a turbo'ed car than an accurate boost gauge. Unless you have a way to keep track of actual boost in the engine, you will never know if the turbo is working at its potential or if the wastegate is adjusted where you want it , and working. The gauge also helpful to diagnose faults on your system. If you see a lesser amount of boost than normal (under the same conditions of throttle, rpm and load), you should inspect the piping and hoses in your intercooler plumbing to to see if there is a minor leak. The boost gauges are dampened to give steady needle readings and indicate both vacuum (negative side, in inches of mercury) and boost (positive side, in inches of mercury of psi).

A strong aftermarket ignition system will be very helpful to fire the plug gaps in the dense atmosphere in the combustion chamber when the turbo is cramming all that air in. The manufacturer may also recommend different spark plugs to use, or just a different plug gap for the standard plugs you are using. 

Ignition Systems

Ignition Basics

Once you understand the basic principle of an internal combustion engine, it is easy to see why an ignition system plays a crucial role.

For those readers who might need a brief  refresher on what happens inside their engine's cylinders, all modern engine run in a four cylinder of four stroke mode. Let's start with the intake stroke. Here the piston is traveling down in the cylinder, creating a suction that draws the air fuel mixture in through the open intake valve. When the piston reaches the bottom of its stroke, it starts back up again, starting the compression stroke, in which the valves close and the piston compresses the air fuel mixture. This makes the air fuel mixture very dense and capable of releasing a lot of energy when the mixture is ignited. Just before the piston reaches the top of its stroke, the spark plug ignites the mixture, beginning the power stroke, in which the rapidly-expanding gases from the burning mixture raise the cylinder pressure dramatically and this pushes the piston down the bore. The force on the crankshaft each time a power stroke pushes down is what makes the engine go. By the time The piston reaches the bottom of this stroke, the energy in the cylinder has gone and the piston starts back up again, on the exhaust stroke. The cylinder contains the mostly-inert residual gases left from combustion, and when the exhaust valve opens during this stroke, these gases are pushed out of the cylinder and past the exhaust valve as the piston rises.

Increasing Engine Performance

The truth is, speed is about how much you want to spend. People with big incomes and racers with sponsors can afford to build 10-second cars. Performance modifications are frequently called "upgrades",  its the performance is what is being upgraded. Often you will have to give up some of the other practical aspects, like the smooth, reliable, and economical operation that modern cars are famous of.

So it is the best to have plan for your project, even if you do not have all the money to do everything right away. Perhaps the best compromise is a car that is fast enough to race when you feel like it, but still practical to drive to work every day. Many upgrades, such as a four-branch manifold, cat-back system, and induction kit give "free" horsepower, meaning the only downside is more engine noise. These mods are also relatively inexpensive for any modifier. When you get into nitrous, turbos, and superchargers, you will be spending more money, and also getting into more risk of engine damage. Camshafts and cylinder head work will reduce your car's low-speed driveability and frequently also hurt your fuel economy. Generally, any mods designed to increase power at high revs will lose at bot end. Sometimes you can't have everything.

Many mods work best only when combined with other upgrades. For example, fitting a high-performance ignition coil and HT leads to your otherwise stock engine will look nice, but probably won't add any power. These bits are designed to provide ultra-high voltage to overcome high cylinder pressure created by high-compression, turbocharging or supercharging. At the normal pressures created by your stock engine, your old gakky-looking ignition components were plenty adequate. Unless of course, they were knackered anyway, in which case, go ahead.

So it is more than just whether or not the parts fit. It is also important to make sure that the upgrades are appropriate to your engine, and to your plans for it. Fitting a de-cat pipe or cat-back exhaust system will surely get a performance increase, maybe even one that you can feel in the seat of your pants.