Nissan Altima / Coupe Tuning

"Thank you for reading our Nissan Altima tuning guide."

The Altima and Altima Coupe are great project cars to play around with. If you do your planning then you can create an awesome Altima but don't be fooled there are lots of competition inspired parts out there that will simply not suit it read our unbiased guides first.

We shall look at Altima tuning and point out the ultimate mods that work. Nissan Altima make awesome project cars and with carefully picked tuning parts like a remap, turbo kits and camshafts you will positively enhance your driving fun.

Tuning the Nissan Altima and best Altima performance parts.

Handling/Suspension upgrades

Improving the handling for many tuners first priority in your Altima tuning project.

Putting some negative camber at the front wheels and around 1 to 1.7 degrees of toe in to improve stability or toe out for better cornering, will substantially enhance your Altima in handling and cornering.

We suggest that you fit modified suspension and lower the car by 26mm - 41 mm. Larger drops require arch work - especially on models already equipped with performance suspension.

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

To be completely frank and honest, on the more modest engine sizes you are wasting your time spending money on modifications, so if this applies to you get yourself an engine swap then apply the following mods.

Power mods.

This list of the stages and performance upgrades are usually carried out by our members, decide how far you want to push your car before you get started.

Getting the correct grade of performance upgrade kits for your planned usage of the car is a time and money saver. Stage 3 motor sport 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: Panel air filter, Lighter flywheel, Suspension upgrade (drop 26mm - 41 mm.), Sports exhaust, Engine Tunes/Remapping, Alloy wheels.

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

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

Peak power is good on competition cars but for a daily driven car you need a wide power band and perhaps extending the rev range.

The whole aim of our advice is to give a brief overview of car tuning modifications and point you in the right direction, our forum is best place to go if you need more detailed advice and tips on your modified car project, the best sport modifications and all aspects of modding cars.Fast road cams offer one of the biggest bhp gains for your money as far as a bolt on uprated upgrades goes on a NA (naturally aspirated) engine.

It maximises the intake and exhaust flow and increases 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 sports profile cam as this upsets the engines idling and general town driving characteristics.

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

If you find you experience flat spots and power surges after your sports parts you should check the fuelling and try a higher octane fuel as well. To get sufficient fuel you may need to increase the injectors on your engine.

Uprate the fuel pump to cope with the extra fuel requirements of your tuned Altima's uprated injectors.

Intake and Exhaust Tuning.

The next area for modification is the intake and exhaust.  Contrary to popular belief there is usually a small if any power gain got by fitting an induction kit, they only become beneficial and are recommended after you boost the engines power to the point where the standard air intake box cannot cope!

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 Altima engines you should settle for a high performance panel air filter preferably made from cotton.

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

Getting the cylinder head ported and polished will help get more air into each cylinder. This is definitely a job for a professional with a flow bench. A good multi plate fast road power clutch will help to keep that power going where it should. Never make false economies or ask the standard clutch to cope. The best mods we recommend for your Altima are a tune/remap especially on a turbo, a fast road camshaft and sports exhaust, with a good air intake.

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 large power gains and fully release the potential power of the engine.

(In some cases, like the Altima and Coupe, the factory ECU is locked flashing is not an option, so an aftermarket ECU is the route to take, and many of these will outperform factory ECU's but make sure it has knock protection and that you get it setup properly.)

Some of our members recommended the following aftermarket ECU's from their projects. You'll generally find harnesses available now for most of the aftermarket ECU options for these engines.

• LINK G4X
• Megasquirt
• Apexi
• Syvecs
• Haltech Elite 1000/1500
• IMPUL Hi Power

An aftermarket ECU is harder to setup and requires some specialist knowledge of your engine and parts you've fitted, but gives better performance and helps you optimize the timing and fuelling to a fine degree of accuracy - we suggest you go for the Link G4+ (or a G4 with an external knock control unit) or the better but more expensive Syvecs ECU (the upgraded data logging feature is extremely useful)

We've also seen some tuners playing with twincharged conversions and making some very high power figures.

Adding forced induction will see massive power gains but this is usually too expensive to be cost effective. Turbos are generally harder to add than a supercharger. It is harder to map a turbo as the boost increases exponentially with rpm.

Superchargers however will give a boost which is directly proportional to engine speed so is simpler. Alternatively you could perhaps add water injection to cut down knock.

Alloy wheel upgrades.

The benefits of alloy wheels include reducing your unsprung weight and more efficient brake cooling. If you are serious about performance then you will need to carefully choose your tires - ideally with a directional tread pattern tire. Large Altima alloy wheels can decrease performance. If you get big alloy wheels you will be changing your final drive ratio.

Although some people have with bigger wheels 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 friendly forum where you can discuss Altima options in more detail with our Altima owners. It would also be worth reading our unbiased Nissan tuning articles to get a full grasp of the benefits and drawbacks of each modification.

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