Dacia Sandero Stepway Tuning

"Ta for reading our Dacia Sandero Stepway tuning guide."

The Sandero Stepway is a awesome tuning project to take up your weekends. We see car owners wasting money on their Sandero Stepway doing the wrong mods and then having to start over. Follow our pointers to avoid making the common mistakes

The Dacia Sandero Stepway are awesome to work on and with the right modified upgrades like a remap, turbo upgrades and camshafts you will noticeably maximize your driving opportunities.

This pages aim is review Sandero Stepway tuning and highlight the ultimate modifications.

Handling/Suspension upgrades

Improving the handling for many people first priority in your Sandero Stepway tuning project.

We found that most Sandero Stepway factory suspension setups need tweaking, a few degrees of toe out for cornering or toe in for stability, around 1.5, and slight negative camber will usually improve your cornering and handling.

We would go to a maximum drop of 29mm - 37 mm. on most models. You risk rubbing on the arches if you go lower than this.

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

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.

Engine tuning mods.

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

Getting the right motorsport mods for your planned usage of the car is essential. Stage 3 (competition) mods just don'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 mods for your Sandero Stepway

1. Fast road cams are one of the most significant mechanical changes, but we strongly suggest they be installed by someone qualified to set them up properly and it can sometimes be hard to find one but you'll probably find a local firm to regrind a stock cam for you.
2. Brake Upgrades - Improve your Sandero Stepway's stopping power should be near the top of your Mods list.
3. Tunes - A tune/remap gives the most advantage with respect to your investment, replacement ECUs, and inline Tuning boxes are all alternatives.
4. Flowing and porting the Head - Head work will get air flowing into the engine while removing turbulence or restrictions.
5. Upgrades to turbochargers and superchargers - forced induction is the most dramatic method to improve intake air supply, which permits you to utilize more fuel and make higher power. Typically one of the most complex modifications it does provide the largest gains.
6. Sandero Stepway Handling Mods (Suspension) - Replacing worn bushings and shocks dramatically improves Sandero Stepway handling Coilovers and Bushings are the usual go to mods
7. Intake and Exhaust - Note that on their own these mods will NOT ADD POWER on most cars, but they enable you to release power after other upgrades by minimizing the restriction.
8. Lightened Flywheels - a lighter flywheel will improve the engines ability to rev freely. Not always recommended for all Sandero Stepway engines.

Sandero Stepway Tuning Stages

Typical stage 1 mods often include: Suspension upgrade (drop 29mm - 37 mm.), Alloy wheels, Lighter flywheel, Engine Tunes/Remapping, Panel air filter, Sports exhaust.

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

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

You need to keep as much low end power as you can and aim to get a wide power band rather than a narrow top end power hike.

The whole aim of our advice is to give a brief overview of modding performance parts 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 modified mods and all aspects of modding cars.A fast road camshaft proves to be one of the best NASP power mods you can do with a single part fitted to your engine.

The exhaust and intake valve durations play a major role 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 cam upgrade with other mods and finish with a tune/remap for the best performance gains.

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

Using higher octane fuel is another option if you find you are suffering from detonation or premature ignition on your Dacia project after fitting other tuning modifications. Increasing the injectors is another beneficial modification and will deliver sufficient fuel.

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.

Breathing mods are usually next up. Air induction kits will only help to boost power if your air intake is restricted! Adding an induction kit to most low power 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 2.5 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 heavily modify your Sandero Stepway you will usally see that the standard clutch starts to fail so get an uprated clutch. The best mods in our opinion for your Sandero Stepway are Remapping or piggy back ecu, fast road cam and air intake and exhaust.

Turbo engines are just pleading to be remapped. You will see phenomenal power gains on most modern turbocharged cars including diesels making a tune/remap one of the most cost effective and phenomenal modifications for your money.

We've also seen some tuners toying with twincharging applications and making some seriously high power hikes.

Despite the large cost involved adding forced induction to a NA (naturally aspirated) engine will give large power gains. It is often cheaper to bolt on a supercharger than it is to install a turbo. Turbos increase power in exponential proportion to th engine speed and this can make mapping difficult.

The nice directly proportional boost and rpm characteristics of the supercharger make them simpler to map. Alternatively you could perhaps install water injection to cut down knock.

Alloy wheel upgrades.

The benefits of alloys include reducing your unsprung weight and better brake cooling. 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. directional tread pattern tires work well on Sandero Stepway, and make a big difference over budget tires. It is worth noting that although they can look cool on the Sandero Stepway big 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.

Because of this try to keep the overall rolling diameter of the wheel your OEM settings. In all cases avoid going larger than 16 inches.

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 Sandero Stepway options in more detail with our Sandero Stepway owners. It would also be worth reading our unbiased Dacia tuning articles to get a full grasp of the benefits and drawbacks of each modification.

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