Holden Monaro Tuning

"Thank you for reading my Monaro tuning guide"

There were 2 notable engines on the Monaro, a 3.8 L V6 (supercharged; CV6) and the NASP 5.7 L V8 (CV8)

A high performance HRT 427 was released based on the Monaro bodyshell and goes some way to show what is possible on this platform.

The 7.0 V8 from a Corvette pushed out 560bhp making this one very quick Monaro.

In 2008 a HSV W427 was released to commemorate the 20 years of the HSV version.

The Monaro is popular among our members for tuning projects If you do your planning then you can create an awesome Monaro but don't be fooled there are lots of upgrades out there that will simply not suit it read our unbiased guides first.

Improving the handling for most drivers, is rated as a top priority mod in your Monaro 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 motorsport suspension.

Top end power should be your overall aim on the Monaro with a nice fat peak torque band.

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.

Typically these modifications are usually installed by our members, decide how far you wish to go in your tuning project before you begin.

Getting the right modified parts for your planned usage of the car is a time and money saver. Stage 3 motor sport parts 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 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.

Typical stage 1 mods often include: Suspension upgrade (drop 30-40mm), Alloy wheels, Panel air filter, Engine Tunes/Remapping, Lighter flywheel, Sports exhaust.

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

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

You should keep as much low end torque as possible and aim to achieve a long power band rather than a narrow top end power hike.

In this article we shall give a limited introduction 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 modification.Fast road cams offer one of the biggest performance gains for your money as far as a bolt on performance mods goes on a NA (naturally aspirated) engine.

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 cam upgrade with other mods and finish with a tune/remap for the best performance gains.When pushing up the power you will need to pay attention to the fuelling. More power needs more fuel.

If you find you get flat spots and power surges after your motorsport mods you should check the fuelling and try a higher octane fuel as well. Uprating the injectors is another beneficial modification and will deliver sufficient fuel. 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.

Intake and Exhaust Tuning.

The next area for modification is the intake and exhaust. Contrary to popular belief there is often very little if any power gain to be had by fitting an induction kit, they only become beneficial and are recommended after you increase the engines power to the point where the standard air intake box cannot cope! 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 Monaro engines you should go with a performance panel air filter preferably made from cotton.

Sports exhausts can usually air flow out of the engine but do not go too wide or you might just stuff your flow rate and make things worse. So generally speaking, keep to a size of 1.5 to 2.5 inches for best results.

flowed (porting and polishing) 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 A good triple plate fast road uprated clutch will help to keep that power going where it should. Never cut corners or ask your standard OEM clutch to cope. Remaps offer phenomenal power gains on all turbo charged cars. On NA (naturally aspirated) engines the benefits are doubtful. However a chipped ECU on a NA (naturally aspirated) engine will help unleash the potential if you have done a lot of mods. Despite the large cost involved adding forced induction to a NA (naturally aspirated) engine will give large power gains. Superchargers are usually easier to add than a turbo. With a turbo the boost curve is related exponentially to the engine speed making it difficult to map fuelling with.

The nice steady boost and rpm characteristics of the supercharger make them simpler to map. Alternatively you could perhaps fit water injection to control knock.

Alloy wheel upgrades.

Alloy wheels can help the brake cooling and are generally lighter than the steel ones. We should point out that although they can look cool on the Monaro large alloy wheels 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 we would advise sticking to a maximum wheel size of 16 inches, although we know some of our members have fitted larger wheels 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 Monaro options in more detail with our Monaro owners. It would also be worth reading our unbiased Holden tuning articles to get a full grasp of the benefits and drawbacks of each modification.

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