MENUCaterham Tuning Tips and best mods
Maximise your Caterham’s driving pleasure
Thank you so much for visiting TorqueCars, we love Caterham’s and see quite a few interesting projects.
If you are looking to build the ultimate Caterham then you’ve found the right place.
Our tuning tips and articles for the Caterham cover all the best mods and latest tuning methods to help you build a great modified Caterham.
With the help of our forum members, industry professionals and seasoned car modders we present a best practice guide to modding your Caterham.
Please join us in our forums, we love to hear what members are up to and it helps us spot trends so that we can ensure the site is always covering the latest and greatest tuning topics.
Feel free to drop a tip or suggestion on the comments box at the bottom of each and every article, this feedback is greatly valued and helps us refine our articles.
The days of fiddling around in the engine bay with a spanner to make the car go faster are numbered.
Modern engine computers (ECU’s) take over many of the controls of all aspects of engine management from timing to fuelling and more.
This actually means you get better power, a cleaner burn and more reliable engine but it does not mean the end of tuning.
Low ratio sport gearbox setup and selection.
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.
A look at high performance wheels
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.
Vents – adding performance with Bonnet vents.
Performance gains are possible with the addition of bonnet vents.
Warm air really does kill performance. This is due to the air intake temperatures being hot and air at high temperatures carries less oxygen.
When driving an engine hard the under bonnet temperatures quickly build up and the engine has no choice but to suck this air in reducing your power.
