Bristol Tuning Tips and Modifications

Maximise your Bristols driving pleasure

Bristol car tuning tips and advice. We have a wide range of tuning articles covering all models of Bristol from this small and overlooked sports car maker. Following our tuning tips you will avoid many of the common mistakes and actually achieve the car set up you desire and be able to set good track times and increase driver enjoyment. Please join the forum for model specific questions and answers and to meet other owners and see what modifications they have done.

TorqueCars started providing Bristol modification pointers, car tuning and car modification tips and advice back in 2003 and have grown from strength to strength with a fast growing membership of all types of cars including, Bristol owners. We are currently one of the fastest growing car tuning clubs around and certainly one of the friendliest. In 2007 we also organised our first full car show.

Our Bristol tuning articles and styling tips and features are constantly being updated and refined so to keep upto date with what is hot in the tuning wold and for the most recent Bristol modification,tuning and modification advice, tips and pointers please check back regularly. We strongly recommend that you join our Bristol forums and swap modification ideas with like minded Bristol owners in the modification forums.

We get to read about a lot of international Bristol owners projects in our forum and have an ever growing gallery so be sure to drop in and tell us what you’ve been upto with your car. Scroll down the page to see our latest tuning articles for your Bristol.

We look at the benefits and disadvantages of solid flywheel conversions from a DMF and help you decide which is right for you.

It is our considered opinion that unless a car is used extensively for competition or off road you should stick with a DMF. The additional torque caused by tuning an engine or heavy competition use can quickly destroy a DMF. The solution would be to fit a stronger, higher performance DMF but the aftermarket industry seems geared up to offer solid ones as the upgrade option.

Both work on the same principle they blow air into the engine under pressure. Both have a turbine which spins up depending on the engine speed and the higher the revs the greater the volume of air is forced into the engine. But there are some major differences between the two and which is best for your project?

Catalysts are a vital component in our modern tree hugging environmentally conscious society. First TorqueCars will look at what a catalyst does and how it works.

A catalyst is actually a term used to explain anything which accelerates or performs a chemical reaction. In a car the exhaust fumes are fed through a matrix of ceramic honeycomb lined with precious metals.

The inlet and outlet ports on the engine block are usually larger than those of the manifolds that connect to them.

This allows for scope in the manufacturing process to allow for mismatched alignment.

Generally the engine ports are larger in the upstream flow direction avoiding turbulance but power gains can be made by matching these up.

Todays featured car tuning articles

Gearbox – Lower ratios give better acceleration times and lower fuel economy. Six or seven speed boxes are better matched to modern engines.

Most street applications are closer 1st and 2nd gear ratios for that off the line 0-60 boost or for the fast exec a lower 2nd and 3rd ratio give improved overtaking flexibility and 30 – 70 mph acceleration with a high 4th and 5th gear to give motorway fuel economy.

One popular modification done to cars is replacing the wheels. We will look at the types of wheel available, the pros and cons of each and look at the implications of fitting different size wheels.

We will be challenging the concept of wider wheels giving more grip and looking at the effect a larger rim size has on a cars performance.

Lightening the flywheel – the flywheel works in a similar way to the wheel in the toy cars you used to rev up and release and let it zoom off. The heavy wheel located between the engine and the gearbox builds up rotational force with speed and momentum.

Effectively storing the energy and helping the car resist changes in engine speed – good for cruising at a steady speed but bad when you need a fast engine response.