Kia Sportage Tuning

Tips for tuning the Kia Sportage and best Sportage performance parts.

We review and look at Sportage tuning and provide tips on the ultimate modifications. Kia Sportages are popular cars and with carefully chosen uprated parts you can substantially increase your driving fun.

The only thing holding you back in your Sportage project is time, money and your imagination With the right mods your Sportage can be transformed into an awesome motor. Don't waste money, do your homework and follow our unbiased guides to each performance upgrade to avoid disappointment.

Tuning tips and articles
 

Improving the handling for many people first priority in your Sportage tuning project. Drop the car optimally somewhere in the region of 35mm and fit modified stiffer dampers, bigger drops will need other modifications in most instances.

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

Keep it looking standard and take off the badges for the ultimate sleeper!

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.

Engine tuning mods.

Typically these performance mods are usually installed by our members, decide how far you wish to go in your tuning project before you begin.

Getting the right motorsport upgrade kits for your planned usage of the car is vital. Stage 3 motor sport parts just won't work well on the road hard to control in slow 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.
  6. Typical stage 1 mods often include:
    Alloy wheels,Panel air filter,Suspension upgrade (drop 30-40mm),Remap,Sports exhaust,Lighter flywheel.

    Typical stage 2 mods often include:
    Fuel injector & fuel pump upgrades,Ported and polished head,Fast road cam,Power clutch,.

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

    Your targets when tuning the engine should be a wide torque curve. You want to avoid sending all the torque to be at the top end unless you are creating a motor sport car.

    In this article we shall give your a good starting base 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 mod.One of the best mechanical performance upgrades you can do to your NA (naturally aspirated) engine is to fit a fast road cam .

    The intake and exhaust durations play a large part in your cars power band, but be careful here, getting this wrong can upset the idle and make the car hard to drive in traffic. You'd need to follow a camshaft upgrade with other mods and finish with a reflashed ECU to fully realise your gains.Don't forget to uprate the fuelling when you are increasing the power - it makes the car more thirsty.

    Frequently power losses, and erratic idling after motorsport modifications are done can usually be traced to fuelling or timing issues.Uprated injectors will enable you to supply sufficient fuel to the engine. If you are increasing your fuelling with bigger injectors you will also need to get a bigger fuel pump to supply it.

    Intake and Exhaust Tuning.

    Breathing mods are usually next up. Please note that WE DO NOT RECOMMEND INDUCTION KITS, unless you have tuned your car extensively and are finding that the standard air intake has become a restriction. Induction kits can work well on turbo engines and larger engines (if supplied with a suitable cold air feed or air box), generally though we'd just recommend for Sportage engines you should just fit a sports panel air filter preferably made from cotton.

    Do not go with the widest exhaust you can buy this will slow up the exhaust flow rate - the best exhausts for power gains are usually between 1.5 to 2.5 inches. It is the shape and material more than the bore size.

    Head work including a polish and port and 3 or 5 angle valve job will really help to release the potential of the engine. A good multi plate fast road upgraded clutch will help to keep that power going where it should. Never cut corners or think that your standard clutch to cope. Remaps offer significant 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 twincharged conversions and making some impressively high power gains.

    Adding forced induction will see significant power gains but this is usually too expensive to be cost effective. Superchargers are usually easier to add than a turbo. With a turbo the boost curve is related exponentially to the engine speed making it more challenging to map.

     

    The nice steady boost and rpm characteristics of the supercharger make them more straightforward to map. Adding forced induction will often require a lower compression ratio or water injection.

    Alloy wheel upgrades.

    The benefits of alloy wheels include lowering your unsprung weight and more efficient brake cooling via the extra air flow they allow. The downside to large alloy wheels on your Sportage is that you're changing your final drive ratio and this will have a negative effect on performance.

    Although some people have installed larger rims without problems we would restrict ourselves to a 16 inch rim size as the maximum.

    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 Sportage options in more detail with our Sportage owners. It would also be worth reading our unbiased Kia 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...

    PLEASE HELP: I NEED YOUR DONATIONS TO COVER THE COSTS OF RUNNING THIS SITE AND KEEP IT RUNNING. I do not charge you to access this website and it saves most TorqueCars readers $100's each year - but we are NON PROFIT and not even covering our costs. To keep us running PLEASE Donate here

    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.

    Feedback - What do You Think?

    Please use our forums if you wish to ask a tuning question, and please note we do not sell parts or services, we are just an online magazine.

    Help us improve, leave a suggestion or tip

    Your Constructive comments on this article, I really want to improve this article with your help and suggestions.


    Please watch this video and subscribe to my YouTube channel.



Member Benefits

Join our forum today and benefit from over 300,000 posts on tuning styling and friendly car banter.

You will also have full access to the modifed car gallery, project car updates and exclusive member only areas.

(All car owners of all ages and from all countries are welcome).


BMW 335i - 2021 COTY

We gave the BMW 335i our coveted car of the year award, read more about this awesome car and see why 335i Tuning Guide

Tips for N54 Tuning

Tips for N55 Tuning
Tips for B58 Tuning

Popular articles

Diesel Tuning
ECU remapping
Double Clutch
Induction Kits
Customize a car
Chipping cars
Modified car insurance
Track day insurance cover
Remap Diesels
MPG calc
Unblock a DPF
Stages Of Tuning


Engine Cooling

Guide to Essential Engine Cooling Mods
Read more...

Particulate Filter

Particulate filters and FAP Performance gains.
Read more...

Lambo Doors

Lambo style doors suicide doors and gullwing door conversions.
Read more...

Sports Silencers

Sports back box exhaust silencers
Read more...

Stone Chip Removal

How to repair stone chips.
Read more...

How Remaps Work

Dangers and problems with some tune/remap services
Read more...

MPG Calculator

MPG calculator UK miles per Gallon – calculate MPG
Read more...