Nissan Sunny Tuning

"Listen up 'Sunny'!"

Handling modifications are usually your first port of call for the Sunny. We suggest that you fit uprated suspension and lower the car by 30-35mm. Larger drops require arch work - especially on models already equipped with sports suspension.

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

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 to begin with.

Nissan Sunny Tuning modifications.

Typically these tuning kits are usually carried out by our members, decide how far you wish to go in your tuning project before you begin.

Getting the correct grade of sports upgrades for your planned usage of the car is a time and money saver. Stage 3 motor sport 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

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: Suspension upgrade (drop 25mm - 43 mm.), Lighter flywheel, Alloy wheels, Panel air filter, Engine Tunes/Remapping, Sports exhaust.

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

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 all well and good but for a drivable and fun car you need a wide torque band and perhaps extending the rev range.

In this article we shall give an overview and introduction 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 will be one of the best NASP power mods you can do from a single upgrade to your engine.

The intake & exhaust valve timings play a huge role in your cars power band, but be careful here, getting this wrong can upset the idle and make the car difficult to drive in traffic. You'd need to follow a camshaft upgrade with other mods and finish with a tune/remap to fully release the power gain.

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

Using higher octane fuel is another option if you find you are suffering from pinking or premature ignition on your Nissan project after fitting other uprated parts. Improving the injectors is another beneficial modification and will deliver sufficient fuel.

If you are increasing your fuelling with bigger injectors you will also need to get a bigger fuel pump to supply it.

Nissan Sunny Intake and Exhaust.

The next area for modification is the intake and exhaust. Air induction kits will only help to add power if your air intake is restricted! Adding an induction kit to most small engines will see NO 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 Sunny engines you should go with a high performance panel air filter preferably made from cotton.

Sports exhausts generally help improve air flow from the engine but do not go too wide or you might just stuff your flow rate and make things worse. So generally speaking, keep to a size of 1.5 to around 2.5 inches to maximise flow rates, and this should take into account the amount of air your engine is moving.

Getting the head 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 fail as you increase the power if it starts to break and the standard clutches are only ever good for power gains of up to 40%. Fit a sports clutch to avoid power loss through the transmission. The best mods we recommend for your Sunny are remaps, sports camshafts and induction improvements.

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

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

Superchargers however will give a boost which is correlating to engine speed so is simpler. Decreasing the engines compression ratio will allow you to add forced induction, water injection may also help prevent detonation.

Nissan Sunny Wheel modifications.

Because alloy wheels are lighter they improve performance and they help to cool the brake disks.

The downside to large alloy wheels on your Sunny is that you alter your effective final drive ratio and this will have a detrimental effect on performance.

Aim to keep the overall rolling diameter of the wheel the same as supplied from the factory. In all cases we do not recommend going above 15 inches.

Please join us in our forum to discuss the Sunny options in more detail with our Sunny owners. It would also be worth reading our Sunny tuning articles to get a full grasp of the pros and cons of each type of 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 Nissan. 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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