Infiniti Q50 Tuning

"Tuning guide to the greatest Infiniti Q50 modifications."

As many of our forum members have emailed and posted questions about the Q50 and recommendations on how to modify one, so we've created an article to cover the primary areas which make for improvement and tuning success on this model.

The Q50 is a great tuning project to take up your weekends. If you do your homework then you can create an awesome Q50 but don't be fooled there are lots of parts out there that will simply not suit it read our unbiased guides first. In this article we review and look at Q50 tuning and show the best upgrades.

Handling/Suspension upgrades

Many Q50 owners uprate the handling of their cars with modified suspension modifications as a priority, this will certainly increase your enjoyment of the car.

Fully adjustable suspension allows you to fine tune the handling of you Q50 often improving your drive.

We would go to a maximum drop of 23mm - 39 mm. on most models. You risk compromising your handling if you go lower than this.

Adding meatier brake discs and better quality pads can make for dramatically improved stopping. (They will brake effectively over longer periods during heavy use than stock brakes will, but grip has more of a bearing on the cars ability to stop).

Note that motorsport friction pads will be noisy and will need to be hot before they are effective.

In every day driving the brakes are only applied now and then and won't be as effective at slowing you up so choose pads which have a low working temperature.

Our aim in Q50 engine tuning should be to increase peak power and Torque at the top end.

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.

The following modifications are usually carried out by our members, decide how far you want to push your car before you get going.

Getting the right modified upgrades for your planned usage of the car is essential. Stage 3 competition upgrades 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 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: Remap, Lighter flywheel, Suspension upgrade (drop 23mm - 39 mm.), Alloy wheels, Panel air filter, Sports exhaust.

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

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

Peak power is all well and good but for a daily driven car you need a long power band and perhaps extending the rev range.

In this article we shall give an overview and introduction to the best upgrades 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.One of the biggest mechanical mods you can do to your NA (naturally aspirated) engine is to fit a fast road cam .

The exhaust and intake valve timings play a huge role in your cars power band, but be careful here, getting this wrong can upset the idle and make the car awkward to drive in traffic. You'd need to follow a camshaft upgrade with other mods and finish with a tune/remap to fully release the power gain.

When pushing up the power you will need to pay attention to the fuelling. More power needs more fuel.

Most power losses, and erratic idling after modified upgrades are done can usually be traced to timing or fuel delivery issues. Larger injectors will enable you to supply sufficient fuel to the engine.

If you've uprated your fuelling with bigger injectors you will also need to get a bigger fuel pump to supply it.

Intake and Exhaust Tuning.

The next area for modification is the intake and exhaust.  Induction kits are only beneficial to increase performance if your air intake is restricted! Adding an induction kit to most stock engines will see ZERO LOW END 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.

Derestricting the airflow into the engine is the primary part of car tuners so get a better flowing air filter if you find that the car is running lean. Induction kits can sound great but due to the warm air in the engine bay they will not do much to increase power and usually rob you of power on most cars.

Sports exhausts balance the flow of gases through the engine. But if your exhaust pipe is too big, ie: over 2.5 inches bore, you will lose a lot of the flow rate and end up losing power and torque.

Getting the head gas flowed will help get more air into each cylinder. This is definitely a job for a professional with a flow bench. Your clutch can fail if it starts to slip and the standard clutches are only ever good for power gains of up to 45%. Fit a competition clutch to avoid power losses through the transmission. The best mods we recommend for your Q50 are remaps, sports camshafts and induction improvements.

Turbo engines are just pleading to be remapped. You will see impressive power gains on most modern turbo engined cars including diesels making a tune/remap one of the most cost effective and impressive modifications for your money.

We've also come across some owners toying with twincharged conversions and making some very high power gains.

Despite the large cost involved adding forced induction to a NA (naturally aspirated) engine will give large power gains. It is generally cheaper to bolt on a supercharger than it is to bolt on a turbo. Turbos provide boost in exponential proportion to increasing engine speed and this can make mapping difficult.

Superchargers will give a boost which is proportional to engine speed so is easier to map. Adding forced induction will often require a lower compression ratio or water injection.

Alloy wheel upgrades.

Because alloys are less heavy they improve performance and they will help to cool the brake disks. If you are serious about performance then you will need to carefully choose your tires - ideally with a directional tread pattern tire. Large Q50 alloys can decrease performance. If you get big alloys you will be changing your final drive ratio.

Due to this try to keep the overall rolling diameter of the wheel the recommended OEM sizes. In all cases avoid going above 18 inches.

For more information on Tuning your car please join us in our friendly forum where you can discuss Q50 options in more detail with our Q50 owners. It would also be worth reading our unbiased Infiniti 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 Infiniti. 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.