Mitsubishi Mirage Tuning

"Thank you for reading my Mitsubishi Mirage tuning guide."

We consider Mirage tuning and show the greatest modifications. Mitsubishi Mirages are good project cars and with the ultimate motorsport enhancements you can dramatically increase your driving fun.

The Mirage is a good car modification project to try. If you do your planning then you can create an awesome Mirage but don't be fooled there are lots of high performance modifications out there that will simply not suit it read our unbiased guides first.

Tuning tips and articles

Engine tuning Transmission tuning Care care Intake & exhaust mods Improve handling Forums

Handling/Suspension upgrades

Handling modifications are a good place to start for the Mirage.

Good suspension tweaks that greatly benefit handling for the Mirage include a couple of degrees negative camber and 1-1.5 degrees of toe in or out on the front wheels. Toe in for stability, or Toe out to improve cornering. It would also pay to improve the brakes, by adding larger discs and or higher friction pads..

Drop the car optimally somewhere in the region of 21mm - 41 mm. and fit sports stiffer dampers, bigger drops will need other modifications in most instances.

Turning our attention to the Mirage's engine we need to get a bit more power out of the top end.

With our pointers your Mirage can become an awesome performer and prove to be reliable daily run around.

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.

Power mods.

Typically these sports parts are usually fitted by our members, decide how far you wish to go in your tuning project before you start.

Getting the best tuning upgrades for your planned usage of the car is vital. Stage 3 motor sport mods 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, Suspension upgrade (drop 21mm - 41 mm.), Lighter flywheel, Sports exhaust, Alloy wheels, Panel air filter.

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

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

Your aim when modding the engine should be a wide torque range. You want to avoid sending all the power to be at the top end of the rev range unless you are creating a competition car.

The point of our hints is to give a starting base of car tuning upgrades and point you in the right direction, our forum is the place to go for detailed advice and tips on your car tuning project, the best uprated upgrades and all aspects of modding cars.A fast road cam is generally one of the best NASP power mods you can do mechanically to your engine.

The intake & exhaust valve timings play a huge factor 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 cam upgrade with other mods and finish with a performance chip to fully realise your gains.

You will need to ensure that the engine is not starved of fuel so will need to uprate the fuelling.

If you find you suffer from flat spots and power surges after your tuning kits you should check the fuelling and try a higher octane fuel as well. To get sufficient fuel you may need to uprate the injectors on your engine.

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. Induction kits are only beneficial to boost performance if the cars air intake is struggling! Adding an induction kit to most low power engines will see LITTLE 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.

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 Mirage engines you should settle for a sports panel air filter preferably made from cotton.

Do not go with the widest exhaust you can find this will slow the exhaust 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 gas flow and 3 or 5 angle valve job will really help to release the potential of the engine. In nearly all cases of Mirage tuning your clutch will start to fail and this needs to be uprated - read our tips on clutches for more information. The best mods in our experience for your Mirage are remaps, sports camshafts and induction improvements.

Turbo engines are just asking to be flashed. You will see massive power gains on most modern turbo charged cars including diesels making a tune/remap one of the most cost effective and massive modifications for your money.The most impressive power gains for NA (naturally aspirated) engines usually involve the addition of forced induction. Turbos are generally harder to add than a supercharger. Turbos give boost in increasing proportion to increasing engine speed and this can make mapping difficult.

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

Alloy wheel upgrades.

Alloy wheels can help the brake cooling and are generally less heavy than the steel ones. Don't forget that your choice of rubber greatly affects your cars grip and handling.

It is not worth compromising performance with cheap tyres when you can buy track legal slick performance tires.Please note although they can look cool on the Mirage big 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 fitted larger wheels we would restrict ourselves to a 17 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 friendly forum where you can discuss Mirage options in more detail with our Mirage owners. It would also be worth reading our unbiased Mitsubishi 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.



2 Responses to “Mirage Tuning”

  1. John says:

    Just ordered a new Mirage where would I get an exhaust and aluminum wheels and tires

  2. Don says:

    I put stage 3 Thornton chip in my 2023 mirage blackout edition. World of difference in power and I hit 41 mprg

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
Remapping the ECU
Double declutch
Induction Kits
Customize a car
Tuning Chips
Insuring Modified Cars
Track day insurance cover
Diesel remaps
MPG Calculator
DPF cleaning
Tuning Stages


Anti Lag Systems

Anti lag systems
Read more...

Tuning Misfires

Misfires and problems after tuning
Read more...

Steering Wheels

Aftermarket steering wheels
Read more...

Spray Art

Spray art on cars from shows
Read more...

Calculating Insurance

How do insurance companies calculate their prices?
Read more...

2009 Car News

Review of 2009 automotive news stories
Read more...

MPG Calculator

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