Renault Kadjar Tuning

"Tuning guide to the best Renault Kadjar modifications."

The Kadjar is a great car tuning project to play with. Think carefully and research Kadjar tuning to avoid making the usual costly errors we regularly.

Sharing the Qashqai platform we see a four wheel drive option on the Kadjar. Engines are well build and feel nippy, even the smaller diesels, thanks to clever turbo design.

It was refreshed in 2018 with a new set of engines.

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 mods for your Kadjar

1. Kadjar Suspension Upgrades - Upgrading your suspension greatly enhances your Kadjar road holding and cornering. Poly Bushes and Coilovers are typically fitted to achieve this
2. Brake Mods - Enhancing your stopping power needs to be high on your agenda.
3. Remaps - A Remapped Kadjar ECU provides the biggest gains in terms of cost, aftermarket ECU upgrades, and piggyback ECUs are all alternatives.
4. Fast road Camshafts are one of the most significant mechanical changes, but they must be setup by someone who knows what they are doing and they are not always easy to source but you might find a local firm to regrind a stock camshaft.
5. Air Induction and Exhaust Upgrades - NB: 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.
6. Turbo upgrades - Adding a turbocharger 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 you'll see massive gains.
7. Head work - The goals of porting and flowing the head are to get air flowing into the engine while removing flow restrictions and turbulence.

Kadjar Tuning Stages

Typical stage 1 mods often include: Suspension upgrade (drop 21mm - 39 mm.), Engine Tunes/Remapping, Panel air filter, Lighter flywheel, Sports exhaust, Alloy wheels.

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

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

Kadjar Handling/Suspension upgrades

Improving the handling for most drivers, is rated as a top priority mod in your Kadjar tuning project.

Fully adjustable suspension allows you to fine tune the handling of you Kadjar often benefitting your drive.

We suggest that you fit performance suspension and lower the car by 21mm - 39 mm. Larger drops require arch work - especially on models already equipped with uprated 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 Kadjar.

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.

Kadjar Engine Tuning.

• 1.2L TCe 130 Petrol
• 1.3L TCe 140 Petrol
• 1.3L TCe 160 Petrol
• 1.4 dCi 110 Diesel
• 1.6 dCi 130 Diesel
• 1.5L dCi 115 Diesel
• 1.7L dCi 150 Diesel

The following uprated mods are usually carried out by our members, decide how far you want to go before you begin.

Getting the best sports parts for your planned usage of the car is essential. Stage 3 motor sport parts just don't work well on the road difficult in stop start traffic.

You need to keep as much low end power as possible and aim for a long power band rather than a narrow top end power spike.

In this article we shall give your a good starting base to the best mods 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. Fast road cams offer one of the biggest torque gains for your money as far as a bolt on uprated parts goes on a NA (naturally aspirated) engine.

A flowed (porting and polishing) the head will allow you to maximise your air/fuel charge. Leave this to a professional though with a proper flow bench and machine tools In nearly all cases of Kadjar tuning your clutch will start to complain and this needs to be uprated - read our tips on clutches for more information. The best mods that we recommend for your Kadjar are fast road camshaft, remap, induction and exhaust, suspension.

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 toying with twincharged conversions and making some impressively high power figures.

The most phenomenal power gains for NA (naturally aspirated) engines usually involve the addition of forced induction. Turbos are generally harder to add than a supercharger. 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 easier to map. Decreasing the engines compression ratio will allow you to add forced induction, water injection may also help prevent detonation.

The exhaust & intake valve durations play a big 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 tune/remap to fully release the power gain.

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

If you find you suffer from flat spots and surges after your motorsport modifications you should check the fuelling and try a higher octane fuel as well. Upgrading 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.

Kadjar Intake and Exhaust Tuning.

Now we move on to the intake and exhaust and ensure proper flow through the engine. Contrary to popular belief there is usually very little if any power gain to be had by fitting an induction kit, they only help and are recommended after you increase the engines power to the point where the standard air intake box cannot cope!

Derestricting the air flow into the engine is a primary goal of tuning so get a better flowing air filter if you find that the car is running lean only if you find the car is running lean. Induction kits can sound great but due to the warm air in the engine bay they will not do much to increase power and usually rob you of power on most cars.

Kadjar Exhaust Mods

Sports exhausts can help increase the flow of air through the engine. But if your exhaust is too big, ie: it's over 2.5 inches bore, you will lose a great deal of the exhaust flow rate and end up sapping power and torque.

Alloy wheel upgrades.

The benefits of alloy wheels include reducing your unsprung weight and better brake cooling. We can't go into too much detail here about tires but they are how the car puts the power down on the road so are a critical choice. soft compound tires work well on Kadjar, and make a big difference over budget tires. The downside to large alloys on your Kadjar is that you alter your final drive ratio and this will have a negative effect on performance.

Although some people have gone larger than this without problems we would restrict ourselves to a 18 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 Kadjar options in more detail with our Kadjar owners. It would also be worth reading our unbiased Renault tuning articles to get a full grasp of the benefits and drawbacks of each modification.

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