CX-8 Tuning

"Cheers for reading my CX-8 tuning guide."

The CX-8 is a awesome car tuning project to try. The key to CX-8 tuning is finding the right mods you can waste loads of money if you do it wrong.

Think CX-5 with 7 seats and you won't be far off the CX-8 with a longer wheelbase and some interior revisions shares many parts and does not look too dissimilar to the CX-9.

The CX-8 is only available in China, Oceania, and Southeast Asia so the only way we can get this in other regions is with specialist imports.

We examine CX-8 tuning and report on the best mods that work. CX-8s are fantastic to work on and with a few sensible modified parts you can positively enhance your driving enjoyment.

Handling/Suspension upgrades

Many CX-8 owners uprate the handling of their cars with sports suspension modifications as a priority, this will certainly increase your enjoyment of the car.

Putting slight negative camber on the fronts and around 1 to 1.7 degrees of toe in to improve stability or toe out for better cornering, will greatly improve your CX-8 in handling and cornering.

We would go to a maximum drop of 27mm - 43 mm. on most models. You risk compromising your handling if you go lower than this.

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.

Engine tuning mods.

The following performance parts are usually carried out by our members, decide how far you want to push your car before you start.

• 2.5 L SKYACTIV-G (PY-VPS) i4 (petrol)
• 2.5 L SKYACTIV-G (PY-VPS) I4-T (petrol)
• 2.2 L SKYACTIV-D (SH-VPTS) I4-T (diesel)

Getting the right performance upgrade kits for your planned usage of the car is essential. Stage 3 (competition) mods just don'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: Lighter flywheel, Alloy wheels, Engine Tunes/Remapping, Panel air filter, Sports exhaust, Suspension upgrade (drop 27mm - 43 mm.).

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

Peak power is nice in motorsport but for a daily driven car you need a long torque band and perhaps extending the rev range.

In this article we shall give a brief overview to the best performance parts 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.A fast road camshaft usually works out as one of the best NASP power modifications you can do with a single part fitted to your engine.

It improves the intake and exhaust durations and pushes up the power if done right. Ideally you'd add other mods and finish up with a remap. We'd also caution you not to go with a motor sport cam as this affects the engines idling and general town driving characteristics.

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

Frequently power losses, flat spots and erratic idling after tuning parts are done can usually be traced to timing or fuel delivery issues. To get sufficient fuel you may need to increase the injectors on your 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.

Breathing mods are usually next up. Please note that WE DO NOT FEEL YOU GET POWER GAINS FROM INDUCTION KITS, unless you have tuned your car massively and are finding that the standard air intake has become the bottleneck.

Derestricting the flow of air into the engine is the primary part of car tuners so get a freer flowing air filter if you find that the car is running lean. Induction kits can sound fun but due to the warm air in the engine bay they will not do much to increase power and often rob you of power.

Do not go with the widest exhaust you can get 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.

Getting the cylinder head ported and polished will assist in flowing more air into each cylinder. This is definitely a job for a pro with a flow bench. Your clutch can slip if it starts to weaken and the standard clutches are only ever good for power gains of up to 40%. Fit a competition clutch to avoid power leak through the transmission. The best mods in our experience for your CX-8 are fast road camshaft, remap, induction and exhaust, suspension.

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

We've also seen some tuners toying with twin charging applications and making some impressively high power figures.

Despite the large cost involved adding forced induction to a NA (naturally aspirated) engine will give large power gains. Superchargers are usually easier to add than turbos. It is harder to map a turbo as the boost increases exponentially with engine speed.

The nice proportional boost and rpm characteristics of the supercharger make them easier to map. Alternatively you could perhaps add water injection to control knock.

Alloy wheel upgrades.

Alloy wheels can help the brakes cool down and are generally less heavy than steel ones. Get a good directional tread pattern tire to improve your handling and help improve traction on your CX-8. It is worth noting that although they can look cool on the CX-8 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.

Although some people have gone larger than this without problems we would restrict ourselves to a 18 inch rim size as the maximum. The 19's look good but in our opinion do not improve the ride or handling.

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 CX-8 options in more detail with our CX-8 owners. It would also be worth reading our unbiased tuning articles to get a full grasp of the benefits and drawbacks of each modification.

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

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