Hyundai Mistra Tuning

"Tuning guide to the greatest Hyundai Mistra modifications."

Here we look into Mistra tuning and highlight the ultimate upgrades.

The Mistra was built for the Chinese market, but it was well received and could be exported to other markets. It is a small luxury compact car.

The Mistra is a brilliant car modification project to take up your weekends. Plan ahead and research Mistra tuning to save yourself making the usual common mistakes we come across.

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.

This list of the stages and sports kits are usually installed by our members, decide how far you want to push your car before you begin.

• 1.8 L Nu I4 (petrol)
• 2.0 L  Nu I4 (petrol)
• 1.6 Gamma T-GDI I4 (petrol)

Getting the correct grade of tuning upgrade kits for your planned usage of the car is vital. Stage 3 motor sport parts just won't work well on the road making the car difficult to drive.

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 Mistra

1. Engine Tunes - A tune/remap provides the most power in terms of cost, aftermarket ECUs, and piggyback ECUs are all alternatives.
2. Mistra Handling Mods (suspension) - Fitting a more sporty Suspension kit dramatically improves Mistra handling Adjustable coilovers and better bushings are what is needed here.
3. Fast road cams are one of the most significant mechanical changes, but they must be installed 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. Braking Mods - Improve your ability to stop should be high on your agenda.
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.
6. Turbo upgrades - Adding a turbocharger 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.
7. Intake Upgrades and Exhaust - Please note that on their own these mods won't ADD POWER in most cases, but they can help enhance power after other mods by removing the restriction.

Mistra Tuning Stages

Typical stage 1 mods often include: Remap, Alloy wheels, Sports exhaust, Panel air filter, Suspension upgrade (drop 23mm - 40 mm.), Lighter flywheel.

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

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

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

Mistra Handling/Suspension upgrades

Handling modifications are high on the agenda for the Mistra.

Adding a bit of negative camber at the front wheels and a degree or two of toe (in for better stability or out to improve cornering), will often improve your Mistra in handling and cornering.

Drop the car optimally somewhere in the region of 23mm - 40 mm. and fit performance stiffer dampers, bigger drops will need other modifications in most instances.

For greatly improved braking put better high friction brake pads and match this with better brake discs.

Note that motorsport pads can grind and will have to be hot before they bit.

On your regular commute to work the brakes are only applied now and then, therefore won't stop you as well so choose brake pads which don't need to be really hot.

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

In this article we shall give a limited introduction 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.A fast road camshaft proves to be one of the best NASP power modifications you can do with a single part fitted to your engine.

The intake and exhaust durations play a big role in your cars power band, but be careful here, getting this wrong can upset the idle and make the car challenging to drive in traffic. You'd need to follow a camshaft upgrade with other mods and finish with a performance chip for the best performance gains.

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

Using higher octane fuel is another option if you find you are suffering from detonation or premature ignition on your Hyundai project after fitting other tuning upgrades. To get sufficient fuel you may need to uprate the injectors on your engine.

If have increased your fuelling with bigger injectors you will also need to get a bigger fuel pump to supply it.

Mistra Intake and Exhaust Mods.

Now we move on to the intake and exhaust and ensure proper flow through the engine.  Please note that WE DO NOT FIND IMPROVEMENTS WITH INDUCTION KITS, unless you have tuned your car with over 30 percent more power and are finding that the standard air intake has become limited.

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.

Sports exhausts can help equal out the flow of gases through the engine. But if your exhaust pipe is too large, ie: over 2.5 inches bore, you will lose much of your flow rate and end up losing power and torque.

Getting the head polished and ported will allow you to get more air into each cylinder. This is definitely a job for a pro with a flow bench. A good heavy duty fast road upgraded clutch will help to keep that power going where it should. Never skimp or assume your standard OEM clutch to cope. The best mods that we recommend for your Mistra are remaps, sports camshafts and induction improvements.

Remaps offer impressive power gains on all turbo charged cars. On NA (naturally aspirated) engines the benefits are doubtful. However a flashed ecu on a NA (naturally aspirated) engine will help unleash the potential if you have done a lot of mods.

We've also come across some owners playing with twincharging applications and making some very high power gains.

The most significant power gains for NA (naturally aspirated) engines usually involve the addition of forced induction. It is often cheaper to bolt on a supercharger than it is to fit a working turbo. It is difficult to map fuelling with a turbo as the boost increases exponentially with revs.

The nice steady boost and rpm characteristics of the supercharger make them more straightforward to map. Alternatively you could add water injection to reduce the risk of knock.

Alloy wheel upgrades.

The benefits of alloy wheels include a lower unsprung weight and better brake cooling. Get a good soft compound tire to improve your handling and help improve traction on your Mistra. Please note that although they can look cool on the Mistra 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.

With this in mind we would advise sticking to a maximum wheel size of 18 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 Mistra options in more detail with our Mistra 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.

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.

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 Hyundai. You can leave a response below or join our forum to discuss this article and car modification in detail with our members.

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.