Alfa Romeo Giulietta Tuning

"Adding some Guile and cunning to the Guilietta"

We look at Giulietta tuning and report on the best modifications. Alfa Romeo Giulietta are often unfairly overlooked cars and with a few sensible performance modifications you can greatly increase your driving enjoyment of them. They go very well in standard form and are practical everyday cars.

The Giulietta is a good basis for a car tuning project.  It was offered with a well specified range of petrol and diesel engines. We particularly like the 1.75 Petrol and the 2.0 Diesel but all engines are willing, pull well and respond well to tuning modifications.

• 1.4 L i4 t/c petrol/LPG
• 1.4 L i4 t/c petrol (MultiAir)
• 1.75 L i4 t/c petrol
• 1.6 L i4 t/c diesel (JTDM)
• 2.0 L i4 t/c diesel (JTDM)

Uprating your Giulietta's cornering and general handling is often a big priority. Don't go too mad when it comes to lowering your car, a drop of around 35mm will make a noticeable difference.

Bear in mind that a track day suspension setup will be hard to live with on our roads with potholes and rough surfaces to contend with.

The overall aim in Giulietta engine tuning should be to increase peak power and torque at the top end and have a nice flat torque curve that starts low down.

When it comes to car tuning you always get a percentage gain so start off with a powerful engine to start with to maximise your tuning investment - the 170bhp JDm-2 editions work very well indeed.

Alfa Romeo Giulietta Tuning modifications.

Bear in mind the mantra that you want to keep as much low end power as you can and aim for a wide power band rather than a narrow top end power spike.

The following modifications are usually performed by our members, decide how far you want to go before you begin.

Getting the right mods for your planned usage of the car is vital. Stage 3 (competition) mods just don't work well on the road.

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 mods for your Giulietta

1. Flowing and porting the Head - Head work will get air flowing into the engine while removing turbulence or restrictions.
2. Intake Mods and Exhaust - Please be warned on their own these mods will NOT ADD PERFORMANCE for most setups, but they will enable you to enhance power after other modifications by freeing up a restriction.
3. Giulietta Handling Mods (Suspension) - Upgrading your suspension greatly enhances your Giulietta road holding and cornering. Coilovers and Bushings are the usual go to mods
4. Fast road cams are generally the biggest mechanical mod upgrade, but we strongly suggest they be setup by someone competent and it is often hard to find a suitable cam near you but you'll probably find a local firm to regrind a stock cam for you.
5. Lightened Flywheels - a lower weight flywheel will enhance the engines ability to rev freely. In some cases flywheel lightening is not beneficial for all Giulietta engines.
6. ECU Tunes - A Remapped Giulietta ECU offers the most advantage in terms of cost, replacement ECUs, and piggyback ECUs are all alternatives.
7. Forced induction upgrades - forced induction is the most efficient approach to increase air supply, allowing you to combust more fuel and make higher power. Although one of the most costly mods but provides the best gains.
8. Brake Mods - Improve your Giulietta's stopping power should be somewhere in your mods list.

Giulietta Tuning Stages

Typical stage 1 mods often include: Exhaust, Panel air filter, Engine Tunes/Remapping, lighter flywheel

Typical stage 2 mods often include: Fast road cam, ported and polished head, fuel injector & fuel pump upgrades,

Typical stage 3 mods: Engine balancing, forced induction (turbo/supercharger), Internal engine upgrades (pistons/head/valves), competition cam.

Fast road cams are generally one of the best power mods you can do to your engine. But you need to select the right profile, for advice on cam selection see our tuning articles for more information. You will need to ensure that the engine is not starved of fuel so will need to uprate the fuelling. Using uprated injectors and a bigger capacity fuel pump deals with the fuelling issue.

Giulietta Handling/Suspension upgrades

Improving the handling for most drivers, is rated as a top priority mod in your Giulietta tuning project. So I would look to do a modest drop on the Giulietta optimally somewhere in the region of 23 - 39 and fit modified stiffer dampers, bigger drops will need other modifications in most instances.

Look out for adjustable coilovers which enable you to adjust the suspension height and this allows you to fine tune your cornering performance.

One of the most popular reasons for tweaking your Giulietta suspension is to improve its handling. However, we see the same mistakes often repeated again and over with people going to low, or using too hard a spring causing the Giulietta to skip and bounce over bumps in the road.

Uprated Bushes

What factors should you consider when setting up and selecting your bushes if your Giulietta is also used as a daily driver?

The suspension components of the Giulietta may be connected to the car's chassis through bushings, which are rotatable rubber mounts. These rubber ones will deteriorate as they age.

Brand New OEM rubber bushes may have a major impact on the performance of your vehicle.

It's probable that the ride may be a touch rougher because of the stronger polyurethane bushings but they'll last longer and maintain tighter handling.

They may also hasten the depreciation of other suspension components due to the increased vibration and play.

With a new set of poly bushes, the excessive play associated with rubber bushes may be minimized.

You may struggle to find a full set of polyeyurothane bushings, but most regions have the primary mounts available. Custom poly bushes are often made to your requirements.

How low should you go on the Giulietta?

According to TorqueCars research and testing, the maximum amount of suspension drop for most road vehicles is 23 - 39 millimetres, whereas cars that are factory fitted with lowered springs have a maximum suspension drop of 20 millimetres.

These tolerances may be drastically lowered if the wheel size is changed. Even with 16 or 17-inch wheels and conventional suspension, lowering the vehicle may create a a slew of new complications.

While the fact that the Giulietta being lower allows for less air to travel underneath it may aid in stability, the ultimate goal should always be to enhance handling. When lowering the springs, it is critical to use the proper shocks that match all round.

We found that most Giulietta factory suspension setups need tweaking, a few degrees of toe (set some toe out to improve cornering or use toe in for better stability) and you only need around degrees, and slight negative camber will greatly benefit your cornering and handling.

For dramatically improved braking add better high performance brake pads and match this with meatier brake discs.

Please note that motorsport friction pads will be noisy and will need to be hot before they bite.

On your regular commute to work the brakes are occasionally used, therefore won't be all that effective so select brake pads which have a low working temperature.

Alfa Romeo Giulietta intake and exhaust modifications.

Let's move on to the engine intake and exhaust and ensure proper flow through the engine. You need to derestrict the airflow into the engine as much as possible and the bottleneck on most engines is the air filter so fitting a cotton panel air filter will address this.

When it comes to exhaust the key thing is flow rate. Big exhausts do not always flow better so don't go sticking on the biggest pipe you can buy!See our article on performance exhausts for details of the issue around large bore exhausts and how to choose the right size for your engine.

Getting the head ported and polished will further help more air into each cylinder. This is definately a job for a professional with a flow bench. A good fast road power clutch will help to keep that power going where it should. Never just hope that a standard worn clutch will cope.

Despite the large cost involved adding forced induction to a NA (naturally aspirated) engine will give large power gains. Superchargers are generally easier to add than turbos.

Turbos give boost in exponential proportion to increasing engine speed and this can make mapping difficult. The nice steady boost to rpm characteristics of the supercharger make them easier to map. To cope with forced induction you will usually need to decrease the compression ratio of the engine.

Alfa Romeo Giulietta Wheel modifications.

The benefits of alloy wheels include a lower unsprung weight and more efficient brake cooling. Large wheels tend to be heavy and the last thing you want is to increase the unsprung mass in your car, instead choose performance tyres and light weight wheels of a similar size to the OEM settings on your car.For this reason we would advise sticking to a maximum wheel size of 16 inches, although we know some of our members have gone larger than this with no problems.

If you would like to know more, or just get some friendly advice on Tuning your car please join us in our car forums where you can discuss Giulietta options in more detail with our Giulietta owners. It would also be worth reading our unbiased Alfa Romeo tuning articles to get a full grasp of the benefits and drawbacks of each modification.

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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 Alfa Romeo. You can leave a response below or join our forum to discuss this article and car modification in detail with our members.

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