Nissan Versa Tuning

"Ta for reading my Nissan Versa tuning guide."

The Versa is a awesome project car to carry out. With the right mods your Versa can be transformed into a stunning project. Don't waste money, do your homework and follow our unbiased guides to each performance upgrade to avoid disappointment.

The Nissan Versa are awesome to work on and with the optimum tuning mods like a remap, turbo upgrades and camshafts you will substantially maximise your driving fun.

We shall detail the best approach to Versa tuning and point out the best modifications for your car.

Handling/Suspension upgrades

Many Versa owners uprate the handling of their cars with tuning suspension upgrades as a priority, this will certainly increase your enjoyment of the car.

Good suspension tweaks that often benefit handling for the Versa 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 30mm - 41 mm. and fit modified stiffer dampers, bigger drops will need other modifications in most instances.

Don't just look at the peak power figures, you need to see the whole torque curve when determining if a mod is right for you Versa.

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.

Tuning modifications.

This list of the stages and sports modifications are usually fitted by our members, decide how far you wish to go in your tuning project before you begin.

Getting the right sports modifications for your planned usage of the car is a time and money saver. Stage 3 (competition) mods just won'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: Panel air filter, Lighter flywheel, Engine Tunes/Remapping, Alloy wheels, Suspension upgrade (drop 30mm - 41 mm.), Sports exhaust.

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

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

You should keep as much low end torque as you can and aim to get a wide power band rather than a narrow top end power hike.

The whole aim of our guides is to give a little insight into the world 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 modified car project, the best motorsport modifications and all aspects of modding cars.One of the best mechanical motorsport upgrades you can do on your NA (naturally aspirated) engine is to fit a fast road camshaft .

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

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

If you find you experience flat spots and surges after your uprated upgrades you should check the fuelling and try a higher octane fuel as well. Improved injectors will enable you to supply sufficient fuel to the engine.

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

Intake and Exhaust Tuning.

The next area for modification is the intake and exhaust.  Air induction kits are only beneficial to increase performance if the cars 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.

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.

Sports exhausts will certainly help 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 2.5 inches for best results.

Airflow through the head can be dramatically increased with some professional head porting and polishing. These should match and be setup to take into account any other engine mods. Your clutch can slip as the power goes up if it starts to fail and the standard clutches are only ever good for power gains of up to 45%. Fit a competition clutch to avoid power leak through the transmission. The best mods we would do for your Versa are a tune/remap especially on a turbo, a fast road camshaft and sports exhaust, with a good air intake.

Remaps offer massive power gains on all turbo charged cars. On NA (naturally aspirated) engines the benefits are doubtful. However a tuned/remapped ECU on a NA (naturally aspirated) engine will help unleash the potential if you have done a lot of mods.

We've also come across some owners playing with twincharged conversions and making some impressively high power hikes.

Despite the large cost involved adding forced induction to a NA (naturally aspirated) engine will give large power gains. Turbos are often harder to add than a supercharger. It is harder to map a turbo as the boost increases exponentially with revs.

It is easier to map a supercharger because the boost is directly proportional to engine speed on a linear curve. Decreasing the engines compression ratio will allow you to add forced induction, water injection may also help prevent detonation.

Alloy wheel upgrades.

Because alloy wheels are lighter they improve performance and they will help to cool the brake disks. If you are serious about performance then you will need to carefully choose your tires - ideally with a track legal slick tire. The downside to large alloys on your Versa is that you're altering your final drive ratio and this will have a negative effect on performance.

Due to this aim to keep the overall rolling diameter of the wheel the recommended OEM sizes. In all cases without going larger than 17 inches.

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 Versa options in more detail with our Versa 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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