Proton GEN-2 Tuning

"Tuning guide to the best Proton GEN-2 modifications."

The GEN-2 is a awesome car tuning project to take up your weekends. If you do your planning then you can create an awesome GEN-2 but don't be fooled there are lots of performance kits out there that will simply not suit it read our unbiased guides first.

We review GEN-2 tuning and report on the ultimate modifications for your car. Proton GEN-2s are awesome to work on and with carefully picked performance enhancements you can greatly maximise your driving enjoyment.

Handling/Suspension upgrades

Many GEN-2 owners uprate the handling of their cars with sports suspension parts as a priority, this will certainly increase your enjoyment of the car.

We found that most GEN-2 factory suspension setups need tweaking, a few degrees of toe out for cornering or toe in for stability, around 1.5, and some negative camber will substantially improve your cornering and handling.

We would go to a maximum drop of 24mm - 37 mm. on most models. You risk rubbing on the arches if you go lower than this.

Turning our attention to the GEN-2's engine we need to get a bit more power out of the top end.

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.

Tuning modifications.

These are the motorsport mods are usually installed by our members, decide how far you wish to go in your tuning project before you start.

• 1.3L S4PE
• 1.6L S4PH
• 1.6L S4PH IAFM
• 1.6L S4PH CPS

Getting the correct grade of modified mods for your planned usage of the car is vital. Stage 3 (competition) mods just don't work well on the road hard to control in slow traffic.

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 24mm - 37 mm.), Sports exhaust, Lighter flywheel, Panel air filter, Alloy wheels, Remap.

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

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

In this article we shall give your a good starting base to the best upgrades for your car, but we'd encourage you to spend some time on the site looking into the details of each type of performance part.Fast road cams offer one of the biggest bhp gains for your money as far as a single uprated parts goes on a NA (naturally aspirated) engine.

The intake and exhaust flow play a huge role in your cars power band, but be careful here, getting this wrong can upset the idle and make the car impossible 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.

Don't forget to uprate the fuelling when you are increasing the power - it makes the car more thirsty.

Using higher octane fuel is another option if you find you are suffering from detonation or premature ignition on your Proton project after fitting other performance kits. 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.

The next area for modification is the intake and exhaust. Induction kits will only help to add power if your cars air intake is struggling! Adding an induction kit to most low power engines will see NONE OF A 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 performance 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 generally help improve air flow through the engine but avoid an exhaust that is too wide or you could very well end up with a reduced flow rate. So generally speaking, keep to 1.5 to 2.5 inches for best results.

Head work including a polish and port and 3 or 5 angle valve job will really help to release the potential of the engine. In nearly all cases of GEN-2 tuning your clutch will start to fail and this needs an upgrade - read our tips on clutches for more information. The best mods in our opinion for your GEN-2 are Remapping or piggy back ecu, fast road cam and air intake and exhaust.

Turbo engines are just pleading to be flashed. You will see phenomenal power gains on most modern turbo charged cars including diesels making a tune/remap one of the most cost effective and phenomenal modifications for your money.Adding forced induction will see massive power gains but this is usually too expensive to be cost effective. Turbos are usually harder to add than a supercharger. Turbos increase power in increasing proportion to rising engine speed and this can make mapping difficult.

The nice directly proportional boost and rpm characteristics of the supercharger make them more straightforward to map. Decreasing the engines compression ratio will allow you to add forced induction, water injection may also help prevent detonation.

Alloy wheel upgrades.

The benefits of alloy wheels include reducing your unsprung weight and better brake cooling. Pay attention to your choice of tyres (tires) for your car, a good directional tread pattern tire can really enhance your cars handling. Large GEN-2 alloys can decrease performance. If you get big alloys you will be changing your final drive ratio.

Due to this fact we would advise sticking to a maximum wheel size of 16 inches, although we know some of our members have installed larger rims with no problems.

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 GEN-2 options in more detail with our GEN-2 owners. It would also be worth reading our unbiased Proton 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 Proton. 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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