Jeep Patriot Tuning

"Tuning guide to the greatest Jeep Patriot modifications."

The Patriot is a good tuning project to have. With the right mods your Patriot can be transformed into a fun car. Don't waste money, do your homework and follow our unbiased guides to each performance upgrade so you don't waste your money.

Handling/Suspension upgrades

Improving the handling for loads of people first priority in your Patriot tuning project.

Putting slight negative camber at the front wheels and a degree or two of toe in to improve stability or toe out for better cornering, will radically benefit your Patriot in handling and cornering.

We suggest that you fit uprated suspension and lower the car by 27mm - 37 mm. Larger drops require arch work - especially on models already equipped with uprated suspension.

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

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.

These are the upgrades are usually fitted by our members, decide how far you wish to go in your tuning project before you get started.

Getting the right motorsport 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 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 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, Alloy wheels, Sports exhaust, Suspension upgrade (drop 27mm - 37 mm.), Panel air filter, Lighter flywheel.

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

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

You need to keep as much low end torque as you can and aim to achieve a wide power band rather than a narrow top end power hike.

The whole point of our advice is to give a little insight into the world of customizing modifications and point you in the right direction, our forum is where you can ask for more detailed advice and tips on your modified car project, the best uprated mods and all aspects of modding cars.A fast road cam usually works out as one of the best NASP power modifications you can do from a single upgrade to your engine.

The exhaust and intake valve 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 difficult to drive in traffic. You'd need to follow a camshaft upgrade with other mods and finish with a reflashed ECU to fully release the power gain.

Don't forget to pay attention to the fuelling when you are increasing the power - it makes the car more thirsty.

Using high octane petrol is another option if you find you are suffering from detonation or premature ignition on your Jeep project after fitting other performance mods. Improving 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.

Now we move on to the intake and exhaust and ensure proper flow through the engine. Air induction kits are only beneficial to increase performance if your air intake is struggling! 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 air flow into the engine is the primary part of tuning so get a freer flowing air filter if you find that the car is running lean. Induction kits can sound sporty but due to the warm air in the engine bay they will not really increase power and often rob you of power on most cars.

Sports exhausts equal out the flow of air through the engine. But if your exhaust is too large, ie: it's over 2.5 inches bore, you will lose a lot of the exhaust flow rate and end up losing power and torque.

Getting a professionally polished and ported head with larger valves can fully maximise your power gains. Your clutch can seriously let you down as you increase the power if it starts to break and the standard clutches are only ever good for power gains of up to 48%. Fit a competition clutch to avoid power leak through the transmission. The best mods in our opinion for your Patriot are Remapping or piggy back ecu, fast road cam and air intake and exhaust.

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 impressive power gains and fully release the potential power of the engine. Adding forced induction will see impressive power gains but this is usually too expensive to be cost effective. Superchargers are generally easier to add than turbos. Turbos give boost in increasing proportion to th engine speed and this can make mapping difficult.

It is more straightforward to map a supercharger because the boost is correlating to engine speed on a linear curve. Decreasing the engines compression ratio will allow you to add forced induction, water injection may also help prevent detonation.

Alloy wheel upgrades.

Because alloys are less heavy they improve performance and they help to cool the brake disks. We can't go into too much detail here about tires but they are how the car puts the power down on the road so are a critical choice. directional tread pattern tires work well on Patriot, and make a big difference over budget tires. Please note although they can look cool on the Patriot large 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.

For this reason endeavour to keep the overall rolling diameter of the wheel the same as supplied from the factory. In all cases avoid going larger than 18 inches.

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

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