MENUChevrolet Corvette Tuning
"You must not Corvette your neighbours car"
The Corvette is one of the most respected and iconic sports cars the world over. Everything about the car shouts fun, performance and summer road trips.
We shall look at improving this superb sports car and highlight what we feel are the best mods to allow you to make the most of your Corvette.
In my opinion the cars handling and cornering is a priority, they go well in a straight line but seem to be outpaced by lesser cars on tight tracks. If you get the right performance and handling mods on your Corvette you can turn it into the perfect sports car.
Don't waste money though, do your homework and follow our unbiased guides to each performance upgrade to avoid wasting money.
Handling modifications are usually your first port of call for the Corvette. We suggest that you fit uprated suspension and lower the car by 30-35mm. Larger drops require arch work - especially on models already equipped with sports suspension.
Power mods.
Top end power should be your overall aim on the Corvette with a nice fat peak torque band.
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.
The following modifications are usually performed by our members, decide how far you wish to go in your tuning project before you get going.
Getting the best mods for your planned usage of the car is essential. Stage 3 motorsport 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
- Engine Tunes - engine tuning/remapping provides the most advantage in terms of cost savings, aftermarket ECUs, and piggyback ECUs are all alternatives.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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:sports exhaust,suspension upgrade (drop 30-40mm),alloy wheels,lighter flywheel,Remap,Panel air filter.
Typical stage 2 mods often include:power clutch,Fast road cam,Ported and polished head,fuel injector & fuel pump upgrades,.
Typical stage 3 mods often include:adding or upgrading forced induction (turbo/supercharger),sports gearbox,Engine balancing,Internal engine upgrades (pistons/head/valves), competition cam.
Peak power is all well and good but for a daily driven car you need a wide torque band and perhaps extending the rev range. In this article we shall give your a good starting base 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.
The intake and exhaust flow play a large part in your cars power band, but be careful here, getting this wrong can upset the idle and make the car difficult to drive in traffic. You'd need to follow a camshaft upgrade with other mods and finish with a performance chip to fully release the power gain.When pushing up the power you will need to pay attention to the fuelling.
More power needs more fuel. If you find you have flat spots and surges after your modifications you should check the fuelling and try a higher octane fuel as well. Uprated injectors will enable you to supply sufficient fuel to the engine. Uprate the fuel pump to cope with the extra fuel requirements of your tuned Corvettes uprated injectors.
Intake and Exhaust Tuning.
The next area for modification is the intake and exhaust. Contrary to popular belief there is usually very little power gain to be had by fitting an induction kit, they only work well and are recommended after you increase the engines power to the point where the standard air intake box cannot cope! Maximum power gains come from a full induction kit with a cold air feed on heavily tuned engines, this can be sited within an air box but a performance panel filter should suffice for most applications. TorqueCars suggest you use a panel air filter as these are easy to clean and maintain and generally perform better than paper ones.
Sports exhausts will certainly help air flow out of the engine but avoid an exhaust that is too large or you might just stuff your flow rate and make things worse. So generally speaking, keep to a size of around 3 inches exhaust size for best results - the critical factor here is the shape and design of the exhaust particularly the headers.
Airflow through the head can be dramatically increased with some professional gas flowing although Chevrolet have done a superb job from the factory. These should match and be setup to take into account any other engine mods. When you tune up your Corvette you will reach a point that the standard clutch starts to complain so get an uprated clutch.
On NA (naturally aspirated) engines the benefits are doubtful without having done lots of extra mods to it. However a flashed ecu on a NA (naturally aspirated) engine will help unleash the potential if you have done a lot of mods. The most significant power gains for NA (naturally aspirated) engines usually involve the addition of forced induction. It is usually cheaper to bolt on a supercharger than it is to get a turbo working. It is harder to map a turbo as the boost comes on exponentially with engine speed. It is easier to map a supercharger because the boost is proportional to engine speed on a linear curve. Decreasing the engines compression ratio will allow you to add forced induction, water injection may also help prevent detonation.
Alloy wheel upgrades.
Alloy wheels will help the brakes cool down and are usually lighter than the steel ones. The downside to large alloy wheels on your Corvette is that you alter your effective final drive ratio and this will have a detrimental effect on acceleration and performance. Although some people have gone larger we would stick to a 19 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 car forums where you can discuss Corvette options in more detail with our Corvette owners. It would also be worth reading our unbiased Chevrolet tuning articles to get a full grasp of the benefits and drawbacks of each modification.
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