Tuning your Maruti 800.
"The best selling car in India up to 2004!"
The 800 was extremely popular, and is a rebadged version of the Suzuki Fronte. They are popular tuning project cars, possibly because there are so many around or perhaps because they appeal to younger drivers.
They are easy to work on and with the right performance upgrades you can turn your 800 into something very special indeed. So let's take a look at the world of Maruti 800 tuning and highlight the greatest modifications for it.
We have seen some awesome 800 tuning projects and there seems to be quite a loyal fan base of 800 owners. We do however see many people wasting money on their 800, doing the wrong mods and then having to start over. Follow our advice to avoid wasting your money.
Handling modifications are usually your first port of call for the 800. We would go to a maximum drop of 35mm on most models. You risk rubbing on the arches if you go lower than this.
Turning our attention to the 800's engine we need to get a bit more power out of the top end.
The best power gains come from larger engine sizes. The more you start with the bigger the return on investment, so engine swaps are good value mods for small engined cars.
Engine Tuning.
This is a list of the stages and mods that are usually performed by our members. Decide how far you want to push your car before you get going.
Getting the right mods for your planned usage of the car is essential. Stage 3 motorsport mods 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
- Engine Tunes - engine tuning/remapping provides the most advantage in terms of cost savings, aftermarket ECUs, and piggyback ECUs are all alternatives.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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, Suspension upgrade (drop 30-40mm), Sports exhaust, Lighter flywheel, Panel air filter.
Typical stage 2 mods often include: Power clutch, Ported and polished head, Fuel injector & fuel pump upgrades, Fast road cam,.
Typical stage 3 mods often include: Sports gearbox, Competition cam, Adding or upgrading forced induction (turbo/supercharger), Engine balancing, Internal engine upgrades (pistons/head/valves).
Your aim when modding your car should be a flat and wide torque curve. You don't want all the power to be at the top end of the rev range, unless you are creating a motorsport car. In this article we shall give an overview and 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 upgrade.
The intake and exhaust durations play a large part in your car's power band, but be careful here, getting this wrong can upset the idle and make the car impossible to drive in traffic. You'd need to follow a cam upgrade with other mods and finish with a reflashed ECU for the best performance gains.
Don't forget to uprate the fuelling when you are increasing the power - it makes the car more thirsty. If you find you suffer from flat spots and power surges after your mods you should check the fuelling and try a higher octane fuel as well. Uprating the injectors is another beneficial modification and will deliver sufficient fuel. Uprate the fuel pump to cope with the extra fuel requirements of your tuned 800's uprated injectors.
Intake and Exhaust Tuning.
Breathing mods are usually next up. These will only help to add power if your air intake is restricted! Adding an induction kit to most standard engines will see NO POWER GAIN AT ALL. If you have heavily modified your engine and its need for air INCREASES DRAMATICALLY then an induction kit is the answer and will help remove this restriction. 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.
Do not go with the largest exhaust you can buy this will slow up the exhaust flow rate - the best exhausts for power gains are usually between 0.5 to 1 inches. It is the shape and material more than the bore size.
Getting the head flowed (ported and polished) will further help more air into each cylinder. This is definitely a job for a professional with a flow bench. Your clutch can seriously let you down as the power goes up if it starts to slip and the standard clutches are only ever good for power gains of up to 50%. Fit a sports clutch to avoid power losses through the transmission. Remaps offer massive 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. Despite the large cost involved adding forced induction to a NA (naturally aspirated) engine will give large power gains. It is usually simpler to bolt on a supercharger than it is to get a turbo working. It is harder to map a turbo as the boost increases exponentially with engine speed. It is easier to map a supercharger because the boost is directly proportional to engine speed on a linear curve. Adding forced induction will usually require a lower compression ratio or water injection.
Alloy wheel upgrades.
The benefits of alloy wheels include a lower unsprung weight and better brake cooling via the extra air flow they allow. Larger Maruti 800 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 16 inches, although we know some of our members have gone larger than this 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 800 options in more detail with our 800 owners. It would also be worth reading our unbiased Maruti 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.
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2 Responses to “800 Tuning”
Where can I get power clutch and high lift cam for Maruti 800.
i want to upgrade my maruti 800 cc into a turbo racer😎
thank you