MENUDaewoo Kalos Tuning
"You can't afford to be callous"
The little Kalos competes in the small hatch sector with the Polo and forms an important part of the Daewoo portfolio. There are lots of young drivers out there looking for performance mods for the Kalos.
We'll take a good look at Kalos tuning and summarise the optimum modifications - there are a lot of dubious parts out there that will just waste your money and time.
The Kalos is a good car tuning project to play with. If you do your homework then you can create an awesome Kalos but don't be fooled there are lots of performance parts out there that will simply not suit it read our unbiased guides first.
Improving the handling should be your first priority in your Kalos tuning project. 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.
Top end power should be your overall aim on the Kalos 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.
Tuning modifications.
These are the mods that are usually performed by our members, decide how far you want to go before you start.
Getting the correct grade of mods for your planned usage of the car is essential. Stage 3 motorsport parts 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
- 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:
Lighter flywheel,Panel air filter,Sports exhaust,Suspension upgrade (drop 30-40mm),Remap,Alloy wheels.
Typical stage 2 mods often include:
Fuel injector & fuel pump upgrades,Ported and polished head,Power clutch,Fast road cam,.
Typical stage 3 mods often include:
Internal engine upgrades (pistons/head/valves),Adding or upgrading forced induction (turbo/supercharger),Competition cam,Engine balancing,Sports gearbox.
You should keep as much low end power as you can and aim to get a wide power band 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 best place to go if you need 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 tune/remap to fully realise your gains.You will need to ensure that the engine is not starved of fuel so will need to uprate the fuelling. Using high octane fuel is another option if you find you are suffering from detonation or premature ignition on your Daewoo project after fitting other mods. To get sufficient fuel you may need to uprate the injectors on your engine. Uprate the fuel pump to cope with the extra fuel requirements of your tuned Kalos uprated injectors.
Intake and Exhaust Tuning.
Breathing mods are usually next up. Air induction kits only help to add power if your air intake is restricted! Adding an induction kit to most standard engines will see NO 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. Induction kits can work well on turbo engines and larger engines (if supplied with a suitable cold air feed or air box), generally though we'd just recommend for Kalos engines you should just fit a sports panel air filter prefereble made from cotton.
Sports exhausts can usually air flow through the engine but do not go too large or you could very well end up with a reduced flow rate. So generally speaking, keep to 1.5 to 2 inches for best results.
Head work including a gas flow (ported and polished) and 3 or 5 angle valve job will really help to release the potential of the engine. When you tune up your Kalos you will discover that the standard clutch starts to fail so get an uprated clutch. NA (naturally aspirated) engines do not achieve big power gains if you tune/remap them, unless you have done extensive modifications. With turbocharged engines this is another story.
Alloy wheel upgrades.
Because alloy wheels are lighter they improve performance and they can help to cool the brake disks. The downside to large alloy wheels on your Kalos is that you alter your effective final drive ratio and this will have a detrimental effect on acceleration and performance. Aim to keep the overall rolling diameter of the wheel the same as supplied from the factory. In all cases we do not recommend going above 16 inches.
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 Kalos options in more detail with our Kalos owners. It would also be worth reading our unbiased Daewoo 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.Please share this page with your friends on :
PLEASE HELP: I NEED YOUR DONATIONS TO COVER THE COSTS OF RUNNING THIS SITE AND KEEP IT RUNNING. I do not charge you to access this website and it saves most TorqueCars readers $100's each year - but we are NON PROFIT and not even covering our costs. To keep us running PLEASE Donate here
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.
Feedback - What do You Think?
Please use our forums if you wish to ask a tuning question, and please note we do not sell parts or services, we are just an online magazine.
Help us improve, leave a suggestion or tip
Please watch this video and subscribe to my YouTube channel.