Citroen C1 Tuning

"Thanks for reading our Citroen C1 tuning tips."

There were 2 engine options and both felt quite lively in this small light chassis.

It shared much with the Toyota Aygo and Peugeot 108

• 1.0 L 1KR-FE I3 (KGB40) 68bhp 93 Nm (69 lbf⋅ft) at 3,600 rpm
• 1.2 L EB2DT I3 (PAB40) 82bhp 130 Nm (96 lbf⋅ft) at 1,750 rpm

The C1 is a good car tuning project to do. With the right mods your C1 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 disappointment.

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 C1

1. Fast road cams are are often the best upgrade for an engine, but they must be installed by someone who knows what they are doing and they are not always easy to source but you might find a local firm to regrind a stock camshaft.
2. Intake Upgrades and Exhaust - Please note that on their own these mods won't ADD POWER in most cases, but they can help enhance power after other mods by removing the restriction.
3. C1 Handling Mods (suspension) - Upgrading your suspension greatly enhances your C1 road holding and cornering. Poly Bushes and Coilovers are typically fitted to achieve this
4. Brake Mods - Enhancing your stopping power should be near the top of your Mods list.
5. Tunes - A tune/remap provides the biggest gains in terms of cost, aftermarket ECUs, and inline Tuning boxes are all alternatives.
6. Head work - The goals of porting and flowing the head are to get air flowing into the engine while removing flow restrictions and turbulence.

C1 Tuning Stages

Typical stage 1 mods often include: Lighter flywheel, Suspension upgrade (drop 23-45mm), Panel air filter, Alloy wheels, Sports exhaust, Remap.

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

Your goal when modding the engine should be a nice flat torque output. You don't want all the torque to be at the top end unless you are creating a motor sport car.

The aim of our articles is to give a little insight into the world of customizing modifications and point you in the right direction, our forum is best place to go if you need more detailed advice and tips on your customized car project, the best sport parts and all aspects of modding cars

C1 Handling/Suspension Upgrades

Improving the handling for lots of DIY modders first priority in your C1 tuning project.

We would go to a maximum drop of 27 - 35 on most models. You risk compromising your handling if you go lower than this.

Upgrades to the C1's suspension and handling. Fully adjustable suspension allows you to fine tune the handling of you C1 substantially improving your drive.

One of the most popular reasons for modifying your C1 suspension is to improve its handling. In spite of this, we regularly witness the same mistakes over and over again.

One of the most popular reasons for tweaking your C1 is to improve its handling. However, we see the same mistakes repeated repeated again and over.

Improvements to the bushings

Enhancements to the bushings: Things you need to know

The suspension components of the C1 may be mounted and move with your C1's chassis through bushes, which are rotating rubber mounts. The rubber ones will degrade with time.

Installing new OEM rubber bushings may dramatically improve the performance of your car. But consider an upgrade to Poly bushes.

Because the polyurethane bushes are firmer, the ride may be a bit bumpier, but they will last longer and maintain the handling.

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

A new set of poly bushes might help to lessen the excessive play associated with rubber bushes.

A frequent misconception is that the best setup would be a non-adjustable suspension system that lowers the vehicle by 50mm purchased from a franchised component shop.

Vendors may claim that their C1 suspension kits are compatible with any or all model year C1s.

For a vast variety of vehicles, a 'generic one set for all models' approach is obviously incorrect.

How low should you go on the C1?

According to TorqueCars research and testing, the maximum amount of suspension drop for most road vehicles is 27 - 35 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 17"wheels and stock suspension, lowering the vehicle might result in a slew of complications.

While the fact that the C1 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.

If you set the toe out to around 1.5 degrees on the front, and add some negative camber then cornering will radically benefit.

For dramatically improved stopping put better high friction brake pads and combine this with larger brake discs.

Bear in mind that some performance friction pads can be noisier and will need to be hot before they bite.

On a road car the brakes are only used rarely so won't be as effective at slowing you up so choose brake pads which don't need to be really hot.

C1 Power mods.

Don't just look at the peak power figures, you need to see the whole torque curve when determining if a mod is right for you C1.

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.

These mods modified upgrades are usually carried out by our members, decide how far you want to push your car before you begin.

Getting the best tuning upgrade kits for your planned usage of the car is a time and money saver. Stage 3 motor sport parts just won't work well on the road making the car difficult to drive..One of the most cost effective mechanical uprated mods you can do to your NA (naturally aspirated) engine is to fit a fast road camshaft .

The exhaust and intake 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 tune/remap for the best performance gains.

When pushing up the power you will need to look at to the fuelling. More power needs more fuel.

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

A fuel pump will only deliver a finite amount of fuel, so you may need to uprate this if your injectors are demanding more fuel.

C1 Intake and Exhaust Tuning.

The next area for modification is the intake and exhaust. Induction kits are only beneficial to boost power if the air intake is restricted! Adding an induction kit to most small engines will see NO LOW END POWER GAIN AT ALL. If you have heavily modified your engine and it's need for air INCREASES DRAMATICALLY then an induction kit is the answer and will help remove this restriction.

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 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.

Do not go with the largest exhaust you can buy this will reduce the exhaust flow rate - the best exhausts for power gains are usually between 1.5 to 1.8 inches. It is the shape and material more than the bore size.

Polishing and porting 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 C1 you will find that the standard clutch starts to fail so get an uprated clutch.

The best mods we recommend for your C1 are fast road camshaft, remap, induction and exhaust, suspensionTurbo engines are just pleading to be remapped.

Despite the large cost involved adding forced induction to a NA (naturally aspirated) engine will give large power gains. It is generally easier to add a supercharger than it is to fit a working turbo. With a turbo the power curve is related exponentially to the engine speed making it more challenging to map.

It is easier to map a supercharger because the boost is directly proportional to engine speed on a linear curve. To cope with forced induction you will usually need to decrease the engine compression ratio .

C1 Alloy Wheel Upgrades.

The benefits of alloys include lowering your unsprung weight and better brake cooling via the extra air flow they allow.

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 C1, and make a big difference over budget tires.

Please note although they can look cool on the C1 large alloys 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.

If you decided to fit some 15's you would need to fit wheel spacers of around 10mm and obviously longer wheel nuts on the front wheels to maintain the turning circle and prevent fouling the bodywork during turning.

On the rear you'll probably experience that the petrol tank filler pipe is prone to rub on wider wheels. YOU MUST relocate this pipe if there is a risk of rubbing.

The second issue with the rears is that adding spacers will push the wheels into the bodywork (depending on the width you choose), so you can't use spacers on the rear.

Because of this we would advise sticking to a maximum wheel size of 15 inches, although we know some of our members have installed larger rims 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 friendly forum where you can discuss C1 options in more detail with our C1 owners. It would also be worth reading our unbiased Citroen 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 Citroen. 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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