Tuning the Chevrolet Cruze.

"Cruising in style with a modified Cruze"

The ideal family car offers economy, performance and practicality. With our tips you can focus on improving the performance without sacrificing the other qualities of your car.

Let's now look in detail at Cruze tuning and highlight the optimum modifications for your car. The Chevrolet Cruze  are becoming popular cars and with the right performance mods you can substantially maximise your driving enjoyment.

The Cruze is a good car tuning project to play with. With the right mods your Cruze can be transformed into a fun car. Don't waste money, do your homework and follow our unbiased guides to each performance upgrade so you don't waste your money.

Tuning tips and articles

Engine tuning Transmission tuning Care care Intake & exhaust mods Improve handling Forums

 

Handling modifications are usually your first port of call for the Cruze. Drop the car optimally somewhere in the region of 35mm and fit stiffer dampers, bigger drops will need other modifications in most instances.

Our aim in Cruze engine tuning should be to increase peak power and Torque at the top end.

Keep it looking standard but take off the badges for the ultimate sleeper!

The best power gains come from larger engine sizes. The more you start with the bigger the return on investment so engine swaps are good value mods for small engined cars.

These mods are usually performed by our members, decide how far you want to go before you begin.

Getting the correct grade of mods for your planned usage of the car is vital. Stage 3 competition upgrades just won't work well on the road difficult in stop start 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.
  6. Typical stage 1 mods often include:alloy wheels,suspension upgrade (drop 30-40mm),sports exhaust,Panel air filter,lighter flywheel,Remap.

    Typical stage 2 mods often include:power clutch,Fast road cam,fuel injector & fuel pump upgrades,Ported and polished head,.

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

    Engine tuning mods.

    You really need to keep as much low end torque as possible and aim to achieve a wide power band across the rev range rather than a narrow top end power spike.

    The whole point of this article is to give a little insight into the world of car tuning performance parts and point you in the right direction, our forum is where you can ask for more detailed advice and tips on your project and all aspects of modding cars.

    The intake and exhaust durations 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 reflashed ECU for the best performance gains.When pushing up the power you will need to pay attention to the fuelling.

    More power needs more fuel. Most power losses, flat spots and erratic idling after mods are done can usually be traced to timing or fuelling issues. Uprating the injectors is another beneficial modification and will deliver sufficient fuel. When increasing 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 RECOMMEND INDUCTION KITS, unless you have tuned your car extensively and are finding that the standard air itnake has become a restriction.

    For most Cruze 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.

    Sports exhausts generally help improve 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 1.5 to 2.0 inches as a rule of thumb.

    Getting a professionally polished and ported head with larger valves can fully maximise your power gains. When you start tuning your Cruze you will often find that the standard clutch starts to fail so get an uprated clutch.

    Turbo engines are just asking to be Remapped. You will see big power gains on most modern turbochaged 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 usually easier to bolt on a supercharger than it is to get a turbo working.

    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. Alternatively you could add water injection to control knock.

    Alloy wheel upgrades.

    Because alloy wheels are lighter they improve performance and they help to cool the brake disks.

    The downside to large alloy wheels on your Cruze 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 16 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 Cruze options in more detail with our Cruze 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.

    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.

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