Proton Putra Tuning

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The Putra is a brilliant car tuning project to fill your spare time. The key to Putra tuning is finding the right mods - a lot of money can be wasted if you do it wrong.

We review and look at Putra tuning and provide tips on the premier modifications for your car. Proton Putras provide a fun base for your project and with a few sensible mods you can certainly enhance your driving enjoyment.

Handling/Suspension upgrades

Improving the handling for many people first priority in your Putra tuning project.

We found that most Putra factory suspension setups need tweaking, a few degrees of toe out for cornering or toe in for stability, around 1.5, and a small amount of negative camber will dramatically improve your cornering and handling.

We suggest that you fit sports suspension and lower the car by 29mm - 43 mm. Larger drops require arch work - especially on models already equipped with performance suspension.

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 Putra.

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.

This list of the stages and motorsport parts are usually fitted by our members, decide how far you wish to go in your tuning project before you get started.

The Putra came with the same engine as the Satria Gti, the excellent 1.8L 4G93P

Getting the correct grade of modified modifications 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: Lighter flywheel, Engine Tunes/Remapping, Suspension upgrade (drop 29mm - 43 mm.), Alloy wheels, Panel air filter, Sports exhaust.

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

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

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

The whole point of our tips is to give a brief overview of customizing mods and point you in the right direction, our forum is best place to go if you need more detailed advice and tips on your tuning project, the best performance modifications and all aspects of modding cars.A fast road cam usually proves to be one of the best NASP power mods you can do from a single upgrade to your engine.

The intake and 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 challenging to drive in traffic. You'd need to follow a camshaft upgrade with other mods and finish with a reflashed ECU for the best performance gains.

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

If you find you experience flat spots and power surges after your sports upgrades you should check the fuelling and try a higher octane fuel as well. Improving the injectors is another beneficial modification and will deliver sufficient fuel.

If you've uprated your fuelling with bigger injectors you will also need to get a bigger fuel pump to supply it.

Intake and Exhaust Tuning.

Breathing mods are usually next up. Air induction kits are only beneficial to increase performance if your cars air intake is restricted! Adding an induction kit to most stock 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.

Derestricting the airflow into the engine is a primary goal of performance tuning so get a better flowing air filter if you find that the car is running lean. Induction kits can sound sporty but due to the warm air in the engine bay they will not add noticeable power and often rob you of power.

Do not go with the largest exhaust you can buy this will slow the exhaust rate - the best 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 polish and port and 3 or 5 angle valve job will really help to release the potential of the engine. When you tune up your Putra you will often find that the standard clutch starts to slip so get an uprated clutch. The best mods in our experience for your Putra are Remapping or piggy back ecu, fast road cam and air intake and exhaust.

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

We've also seen some tuners experimenting with twincharging applications and making some very high power gains.

Despite the large cost involved adding forced induction to a NA (naturally aspirated) engine will give large power gains. Superchargers are generally easier to add than a turbo. It is harder to map a turbo as the boost comes on exponentially with rpm.

It is easier to map a supercharger because the boost is correlating to engine speed on a linear curve. To cope with forced induction you will usually need to decrease the compression ratio of the engine .

Alloy wheel upgrades.

The benefits of alloys include lowering your unsprung weight and better brake cooling via the extra air flow they allow. Pay attention to your choice of tyres (tires) for your car, a good directional tread pattern tire can really enhance your cars handling. Please note although they can look cool on the Putra large alloys 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 gone larger than this 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 Putra options in more detail with our Putra 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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