Holden Trax Tuning

"Thank you for reading my Trax tuning tips"

Also called the tracker in some regions this SUV offers much potential to the tuner and modifier.

It's a great platform and handles really well with a few suspension tweaks.

More power goes a long way to increase your driving enjoyment and these engines just beg to produce more power.

• 1,364 cc turbo (A14NET) 140 PS (138 bhp) @4,900 rpm 200 Nm (148 lbft) @1,850–4,900 rpm
• 1,598 cc  (A16XER) 115 PS (113 bhp) @6,000 rpm 155 Nm (114 lbft) @4,000 rpm
• 1,796 cc (A18XER) 140 PS (138 bhp) @6,300 rpm 175 Nm (129 lbft) @3,800 rpm
  Diesel
• 1,686 cc turbo (CDTI) 130 PS (128 bhp)@4,000 rpm 300 Nm (221 lbft) @2,000–2,500 rpm

You can do a lot to improve the performance of your Trax with our step by step tuning tips. We see many people wasting money on their Trax doing the wrong mods and then having to start over. Follow our hints to avoid wasting your money

Many Trax owners uprate the handling of their cars with modified suspension mods as a priority, this will certainly increase your enjoyment of the car. We suggest that you fit motorsport suspension and lower the car by 30-35mm. Larger drops require arch work - especially on models already equipped with uprated suspension.

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

To be completely frank and honest, on the more modest engine sizes you are wasting your time spending money on modifications, so if this applies to you get yourself an engine swap then apply the following mods.

Engine tuning mods.

These mods motorsport kits are usually fitted by our members, decide how far you want to push your car before you start.

Getting the correct grade of performance mods for your planned usage of the car is essential. 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: Lighter flywheel, Panel air filter, Alloy wheels, Engine Tunes/Remapping, Suspension upgrade (drop 30-40mm), Sports exhaust.

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

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

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

In this article we shall give an overview and introduction to the best mods for your car, but we'd encourage you to spend some time on the site looking into the details of each type of performance part.A fast road camshaft will be one of the best NASP power modifications you can do from a single upgrade to your 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 impossible to drive in traffic. You'd need to follow a cam upgrade with other mods and finish with a reflashed ECU for the best performance gains.Don't forget to ramp up the fuelling when you are increasing the power - it makes the car more thirsty.

Most power losses, and erratic idling after modified parts are done can usually be traced to fuel delivery or timing issues.To get sufficient fuel you may need to uprate 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.

Intake and Exhaust Tuning.

Breathing mods are usually next up. Air induction kits are only beneficial to increase power if the cars 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. For most Trax 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 supplying cold air.

Sports exhausts can help balance the flow of air through the engine. But if the exhaust pipe is too big, ie: it's over 2.5 inches bore, you will lose much of your flow rate and end up losing power and torque.

Getting the cylinder head ported and polished will assist in flowing more air into each cylinder. This is definitely a job for a pro with a flow bench. When you heavily modify your Trax you will reach a point that the standard clutch starts to slip 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. A tuned/remapped turbo will give big power gains and fully release the potential power of the engine.

We've also come across some owners experimenting with twin charging conversions and making some impressively high power figures.

Despite the large cost involved adding forced induction to a NA (naturally aspirated) engine will give large power gains. Turbos are often harder to add than a supercharger. It is difficult to map fuelling with a turbo as the boost builds exponentially with engine speed.

Superchargers, however will give a boost which is proportional to engine speed so is simpler. Decreasing the engines compression ratio will allow you to add forced induction, water injection may also help prevent detonation.

Alloy wheel upgrades.

Alloy wheels will help the brake cooling and are generally less heavy than the steel ones. We should point out that although they can look cool on the Trax 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.

Due to this we would advise sticking to a maximum wheel size of 16 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 Trax options in more detail with our Trax 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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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 Holden. 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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