Cadillac Escalade Tuning

"Tuning guide to the greatest Cadillac Escalade modifications."

We review Escalade tuning and highlight the premier upgrades. Cadillac Escalades are awesome to work on and with the ultimate tuning mods you can greatly maximise your driving opportunities.

The Escalade is a brilliant car modification project to carry out. With the right mods your Escalade can be transformed into a stunning project. Don't waste money, do your homework and follow our unbiased guides to each performance upgrade so you don't waste your money.

Handling/Suspension upgrades

Many Escalade owners uprate the handling of their cars with modified suspension mods as a priority, this will certainly increase your enjoyment of the car.

We found that most Escalade factory suspension setups need tweaking, a few degrees of toe out for cornering or toe in for stability, 0.8 to 1.3, and slight negative camber will substantially improve your cornering and handling.

Drop the car optimally somewhere in the region of 22mm - 35 mm. and fit performance stiffer dampers, bigger drops will need other modifications in most instances.

Turning our attention to the engine we need to get a bit more power out of the top end.

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.

Power mods.

Mk1

• 4L60-E automatic
• 5.7 L L31 V8 (gasoline) 4-speed

Mk2

• 4-speed 4L65-E automatic
• 5.3 L LM7 V8 (gasoline)
• 6.0 L LQ9 V8 (gasoline)

Mk3

• 6-speed 6L80 automatic & CVT 2ML70 automatic
• 6.0 L LFA V8 (hybrid gasoline / electric)
• 6.0 L LZ1 V8 (hybrid gasoline / electric)
• 6.2 L L92 V8 (gasoline)
• 6.2 L L9H V8 (gasoline / E85)
• 6.2 L L94 V8 (gasoline / E85)

Mk4

• 6-speed GM 6L80 automatic (2015)
• 8-speed GM 8L90 automatic (2015-2017)
• 10-Speed Ford-GM 10-speed automatic transmission (2018- )
• 6.2L EcoTec3 L86 V8

This list of the stages and performance parts are usually carried out by our members, decide how far you wish to go in your tuning project before you begin.

Getting the right motorsport parts for your planned usage of the car is a time and money saver. Stage 3 competition upgrades just don't work well on the road hard to control in slow traffic.

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, Alloy wheels, Engine Tunes/Remapping, Sports exhaust, Suspension upgrade (drop 22mm - 35 mm.), Lighter flywheel.

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

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

Your aims when tuning the engine should be a wide torque range. You want to avoid sending all the torque to be at the top end of the rev range unless you are creating a motor sport car.

In this article we shall give an overview and introduction to the best performance parts for your car, but we'd encourage you to spend some time on the site looking into the details of each type of performance mod.One of the best mechanical modified upgrades you can do to your NA (naturally aspirated) engine is to fit a fast road cam .

The exhaust & intake flow play a major role in your cars power band, but be careful here, getting this wrong can upset the idle and make the car awkward to drive in traffic. You'd need to follow a camshaft upgrade with other mods and finish with a tune/remap to fully realise your gains.

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

Using higher octane petrol is another option if you find you are suffering from detonation or premature ignition on your Cadillac project after fitting other modified mods. To get sufficient fuel you may need to uprate the injectors on your engine.

If have increased your fuelling with bigger injectors you will also need to get a bigger fuel pump to supply it.

Intake and Exhaust Tuning.

The next area for modification is the intake and exhaust. Please note that WE DO NOT FIND IMPROVEMENTS WITH INDUCTION KITS, unless you have tuned your car a lot and are finding that the standard air intake has become limited.

For most Escalade engines TorqueCars would suggest you just go with a washable panel air filter. On heavily tuned engines and turbo vehicles an induction kit will help release the power providing you address the problem of needing cold air.

Do not go with the widest exhaust you can find this will slow up the exhaust flow 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 work including a gas flow and 3 or 5 angle valve job will really help to release the potential of the engine. A good triple plate fast road sports clutch will help to keep that power going where it should. Never skimp or ask a standard clutch to cope. The best mods we would do for your Escalade are remaps, sports camshafts and induction improvements.

Turbo engines are just crying out to be flashed. You will see big power gains on most modern turbo charged cars including diesels making a tune/remap one of the most cost effective and big modifications for your money.Despite the large cost involved adding forced induction to a NA (naturally aspirated) engine will give large power gains. It is often simpler to bolt on a supercharger than it is to install a turbo. It is difficult to map fuelling with a turbo as the boost comes on exponentially with rpm.

The nice correlating boost and rpm characteristics of the supercharger make them easier to map. Decreasing the engines compression ratio will allow you to add forced induction, water injection may also help prevent detonation.

Alloy wheel upgrades.

The benefits of alloy wheels include reducing your unsprung weight and better brake cooling via the extra air flow they allow. Pay attention to your choice of tyres (tires) for your car, a good track legal slick tire can really enhance your cars handling. The drawback to large alloys on your Escalade is that you're altering your final drive ratio and this will have a negative effect on acceleration and performance.

Although some people have with bigger wheels without issues we would restrict ourselves to a 18 inch rim size as the maximum.

If you would like to know more, or just get some friendly advice on Tuning your car please join us in our friendly forum where you can discuss Escalade options in more detail with our Escalade owners. It would also be worth reading our unbiased Cadillac 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 Cadillac. 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.