Coupe Tuning

"Thanks for reading our Hyundai Coupe tuning guide."

The Coupe is a awesome project car to try. The key to Coupe tuning is doing it right you can waste loads of money if you do it wrong.

The Coupe is a stunning looking car, each model releases really stood out. Sadly though the older mk1 Coupe's look rather dated now which is a shame but this means that the Coupe is a bit of a bargain if you know what you are looking for.

The cars are very well built and the radical styling, whilst not to everyone's taste pushed the boundaries of car design. with some imagination and the right mods you can turn your Coupe into a very credible track day car.

The key is getting the right balance of power and handling mods, so follow our guides carefully and read our no nonsense unbiased articles on car mods to see which ones would be best for your Coupe.

Tuning tips and articles

Engine tuning Transmission tuning Care care Intake & exhaust mods Improve handling Forums

Many Coupe owners uprate the handling of their cars as a priority, this will certainly increase your enjoyment of the car. Drop the car optimally somewhere in the region of 35mm and fit stiffer dampers, bigger drops will need other modifications in most instances.

An anti roll bar and strut brace will help stiffen up the cornering and reduce body roll and flex. We would also look at fitting polyurethane hoses as well.

Turning our attention to the Coupes engine we need to get a bit more power out of the top end. A good looking car really needs the performance to match.

Enjoy your Coupe to the full with our tuning tips. With the right mods you can turn your Coupe into a really fun car, beating bigger engined cars on the track.

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.

Tuning modifications.

Typically these performance parts are usually fitted by our members, decide how far you want to push your car before you begin.

First generation RD 1996–2001

Second generation (GK) 2002–2008

Getting the correct grade of uprated mods for your planned usage of the car is essential. Stage 3 competition upgrades just won't work well on the road and will make the car undrivable.

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 Coupe

  1. Tunes - A Remapped Coupe ECU provides the most advantage for the money, aftermarket ECU upgrades, and piggyback ECUs are all alternatives.
  2. Flowing and porting the engine head - for larger gains, you will get better flow and make a more efficient engine if you do this to support your other mods.
  3. Fast road cams are are often the best upgrade for an engine, but they must be setup 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.
  4. Coupe Suspension Upgrades - Replacing worn bushings and shocks greatly enhances your Coupe road holding and cornering. Coilovers and Bushings are the usual go to mods
  5. Brake Mods - Improve your Coupe's stopping power needs to be high on your agenda.
  6. Intake and Exhaust Upgrades - 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.

Coupe Tuning Stages

Typical stage 1 mods often include: Lighter flywheel, Suspension upgrade (drop 21 mm - 40 mm.), Panel air filter, Sports exhaust, Engine Tunes/Remapping, Alloy wheels.

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

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

You should keep as much low end torque as you can and aim to get a long power band across the rev range rather than a narrow top end power spike.

In this article we shall give a little insight into the world to the best modifications for your car, but we'd encourage you to spend some time on the site looking into the details of each type of performance mod.Fast road cams offer one of the biggest power gains for your money as far as a bolt on mods goes on a NA (naturally aspirated) engine.

It improves the intake and exhaust flow and pushes up the power if done right. Ideally you'd add other mods and finish up with a performance chip. We'd also caution you not to go with a competition cam as this upsets the engines idling and general town driving characteristics.

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

Using high octane petrol is another option if you find you are suffering from detonation or premature ignition on your Hyundai project after fitting other modified mods. Increasing 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. Derestricting the airflow into the engine is the primary part of tuning so get a better flowing air filter. Induction kits sound great but due to the warm air in the engine bay they will not add noticeable power and actually rob you of power. A good sports exhaust is essential to balance your freer flowing air filter, just adding an induction kit on it's own will do little to increase your power.

We note that the Lantra exhaust header/manifolds are bigger and flow better and are suitable for some Coupe engines, this can be easier than trying to find performance aftermarket exhaust headers.

Getting a professionally flowed head with larger valves can fully release the engines power. In nearly all cases of Coupe tuning your clutch will start to slip and this needs to be uprated - read our article on clutches for more information. Remaps offer significant power gains on all turbo charged cars. On NA (naturally aspirated) engines the benefits are doubtful. However a tune/remap on a NA (naturally aspirated) engine will help unleash the potential if you have done a lot of mods.

The largest power gains for NA (naturally aspirated) engines usually involve the addition of forced induction. Turbos are harder to add than supercharger. It is harder to map a turbo as the boost comes on exponentially with engine speed. Superchargers however will give a boost which is proportional to engine speed so is easier to map. Alternatively you could add water injection to control knock. If you are not planning to strengthen the engine or lower the compression ratio then you are stuck with low pressure forced induction.

We have not seen any Coupe Supercharger kits around yet but we are sure you could probably get a Mini Cooper supercharger from a breakers yard, fabricate your own mounts and then get the mapping sorted out for a cheap and impressive power upgrade.

Hyundai Coupe Wheel modifications.

Alloy wheels will help the brakes cool down and are usually lighter than the steel ones. Large Coupe alloy wheels can decrease performance. If you get big alloy wheels you will be changing your final drive ratio. For this reason we would advise sticking to a maximum wheel size of 18 or 19 inches, although we know some of our members have gone to 20's with few problems other than poor ride quality.

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

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2 Responses to “Hyundai Coupe Tuning”

  1. Dan Hibbert says:

    I have a Hyundai coupe 2.0 se and am willing to spend a lot of money on it I have owned a 340 bmp pulsar gtir and an rx7 in the past but due to a messy divorce I am left with this it is mint and only has 40k since New I like it cos I haven’t seen another one on the road what would you recommend

  2. Greyson says:

    For the wheels, base models come stock with 18s, not 17s. Highest drive able size commonly are 20’s (barely) :).

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