Infiniti M56 Tuning

"Thanks for reading our Infiniti M56 tuning tips."

We were emailed and asked questions for more information on tuning and building a modified M56 and particularly which turbo upgrades work best, so we've put together this feature which covers our go to upgrades for this engine and what we feel are the greatest value upgrades you can do.

The M56 is a good tuning project to play with. With the right mods your M56 can be transformed into an awesome motor. Don't waste money, do your homework and follow our unbiased guides to each performance upgrade to avoid wasting money.

Handling/Suspension upgrades

Improving the handling for car owners first priority in your M56 tuning project.

If you set the toe out to 1-1.7 degrees on the front, and add a tiny bit of negative camber then cornering will greatly benefit.

Drop the car optimally somewhere in the region of 23mm - 36 mm. and fit motorsport grade stiffer dampers, bigger drops will need other modifications in most instances.

For sharper enhanced braking you should get better high performance brake pads and combine this with bigger discs.

We should point out that some performance brake pads can be noisier and will need a lot of heat before they bit.

On a road car the brakes are only used rarely so will not stop you as well so select pads which work well in daily use.

A nice wide torque band and sweet spot of peak power at one third of your RPM range is optimum.

5.6L V8 VK56VD 420 hp (313 kW; 426 PS) @ 6,000, 417 lbft (565 Nm) @4,400

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.

These are the tuning upgrades are usually carried out by our members, decide how far you want to go before you get started.

Getting the right sports mods for your planned usage of the car is a time and money saver. Stage 3 (competition) mods just don't work well on the road making the car difficult to drive.

Please watch our video which covers the 5 principles of tuning your car. Be sure to keep up with our latest YouTube content and subscribe.

Best Engine Mods for your car

1. Engine Tunes - engine tuning/remapping provides the most advantage in terms of cost savings,  aftermarket ECUs, and piggyback ECUs are all alternatives.
2. Fast road cams are one of the most significant mechanical changes, but they must be installed by someone who knows what they're doing and they are not always easy to source but you might find a local firm to regrind a stock camshaft.
3. Intake and Exhaust - Note that on their own these mods will NOT ADD POWER in most cases, but they can help enhance power after other mods by removing the restriction.
4. Upgrades to turbochargers and superchargers - forced induction is the most efficient approach to increase air supply, allowing you to burn more fuel and make more power. It is one of the most costly upgrades but provides the best gains.
5. Head work - The goals of porting and flowing the head are to get air flowing into the engine while removing flow restrictions and turbulence.

Typical stage 1 mods often include: Panel air filter, Engine Tunes/Remapping, Lighter flywheel, Suspension upgrade (drop 23mm - 36 mm.), Alloy wheels, Sports exhaust.

Typical stage 2 mods often include: Fast road cam, Ported and polished head, high flow fuel injector, fuel pump upgrades, Power/Sport clutch.

Typical stage 3 mods often include: Internal engine upgrades (pistons/head/valves), Competition cam, Adding or upgrading forced induction (turbo/supercharger), Engine balancing, Sports gearbox.

Peak power is good on competition cars but for a drivable and fun car you need a wide torque band and perhaps extending the rev range.

The aim of our articles is to give a limited introduction of customizing upgrades 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 modified modifications and all aspects of modding cars.A fast road camshaft usually works out as one of the best NASP power mods you can do mechanically to your engine.

It improves the intake and exhaust flow and pushes up the power if done right. Ideally you'd add other mods and finish up with a reflashed ECU. We'd also caution you not to go with a motor sport cam as this upsets the engines idling and general town driving characteristics.

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

Frequently power losses, and erratic idling after kits are done can usually be traced to timing or fuel delivery issues. To get sufficient fuel you may need to upgrade the injectors on your engine.

If you've uprated your fuelling with bigger injectors you will also need to get a bigger fuel pump to supply it.

Intake and Exhaust Tuning.

Breathing mods are usually next up.  Please note that WE DO NOT FIND IMPROVEMENTS WITH INDUCTION KITS, unless you have tuned your car with over 30 percent more power and are finding that the standard air intake has become the bottleneck.

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 M56 engines you should settle for a performance panel air filter preferably made from cotton.

Do not go with the widest 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.

Head 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 M56 you will reach a point that the standard clutch starts to suffer so get an uprated clutch. The best mods we would do for your M56 are a tune/remap especially on a turbo, a fast road camshaft and sports exhaust, with a good air intake.

Turbo engines are just asking to be remapped. You will see big power gains on most modern turbocharged cars including diesels making a tune/remap one of the most cost effective and big modifications for your money.The most significant power gains for NA (naturally aspirated) engines usually involve the addition of forced induction. Turbos are usually harder to add than a supercharger. Turbos provide boost in exponential proportion to increasing engine speed and this can make mapping difficult.

The nice directly proportional boost and rpm characteristics of the supercharger make them easier to map. Adding forced induction will nearly always require a lower compression ratio or water injection.

Alloy wheel upgrades.

Due to the fact that alloys are less heavy they improve performance and they can help to cool the brake disks. We can't go into too much detail here about tires but they are how the car puts the power down on the road so are a critical choice. track legal slick tires work well on M56, and make a big difference over budget tires. Please note although they can look cool on the M56 big alloy wheels 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 we would advise sticking to a maximum wheel size of 16 inches, although we know some of our members have installed larger rims with no problems.

For more information on Tuning your car please join us in our friendly forum where you can discuss M56 options in more detail with our M56 owners. It would also be worth reading our unbiased Infiniti 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 hearing about our website visitors projects, especially the mods done and which work best for you on your car. Which helps us keep our guides and tips up to date helping others with their modified car projects. Your feedback and comments are used to keep this page up to date, and help improve the accuracy of these articles which are kept updated and constantly revised.

If you've enjoyed this page we would be very grateful if you could share a link to it on your favourite forums or on your social media profiles, it helps us keep going.

Please Check out my YouTube channel, we're regularly adding new content...

Click to accept YouTube Cookies & Play.

This article is flagged for an update, so please pass on specific tips below that I can include. All articles, and content was written by me, Waynne Smith TorqueCars founder. Some outlines are just too general so I appreciate your feedback and suggestions. This entry was filed under Infiniti. You can leave a response below or join our forum to discuss this article and car modification in detail with our members.

If you liked this page please share it with your friends, drop a link to it in your favourite forum or use the bookmarking options to save it to your social media profile.