Seat Altea Tuning

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We look into Altea tuning and point out the best mods that work.

Seat Alteas make awesome project cars and with carefully picked modified mods you can definitely increase your driving opportunities.

The Altea is a good project car to try. If you do your planning then you can create an awesome Altea but don't be fooled there are lots of competition inspired mods out there that will simply not suit it read our unbiased guides first.

Handling/Suspension upgrades

Many Altea owners uprate the handling of their cars with fast road suspension parts as a priority, this will certainly increase your enjoyment of the car.

If you set the toe out to 0.8 to 1.3 degrees on the front, and add a tiny bit of negative camber then cornering will radically be enhanced.

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

Top end power should be your overall aim on the Altea with a nice fat peak torque band.

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.

Engine Tuning.

These are the sports mods are usually fitted by our members, decide how far you wish to go in your tuning project before you get started.

Getting the right performance upgrade kits for your planned usage of the car is vital. Stage 3 motor sport 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: Alloy wheels, Engine Tunes/Remapping, Suspension upgrade (drop 30-40mm), Lighter flywheel, Panel air filter, Sports exhaust.

Typical stage 2 mods often include: Power/Sport clutch, Fast road cam, high flow fuel injector, 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 really need to keep as much low end torque as you can and aim to achieve a long power band across the rev range rather than a narrow top end power hike.

Engine swaps are quite popular mods for this model, here are engine guides to all the VAG engines we've covered.

• 1.4 1.5 TFSi tuning
• 1.4 TSi/TFSi/Twincharge tuning
• 1.8T engine Tuning
• 1.8 & 2.0 TFSi (mk1) Tuning
• 1.8 2.0 TFSi (ea888) Tuning
• 2.0 TFSi carbon issue & care guide
• 2.5tfsi tuning
• 3.0 V6 24v TFSI Tuning
• 2.8 V6 30 valve, 24 valve 3.0 V6 30v and 3.2 VR6 Tuning
• 3.6 VR6 Tuning
• 1.6 TDi tuning
• 1.9 TDi tuning
• 2.0 TDI 140-170 tuning
• 2.0 TDI tuning (EA188)
• 2.5 TDI tuning
• 2.7 & 3.0 TDI tuning

The whole aim of our hints is to give a brief overview of car tuning modifications and point you in the right direction, our forum is where you can ask for more detailed advice and tips on your modified car project, the best performance upgrades and all aspects of modding cars.One of the best mechanical uprated mods you can do on your NA (naturally aspirated) engine is to fit a fast road cam .

The intake & exhaust durations play a large part 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 cam upgrade with other mods and finish with a performance chip for the best performance gains.

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

Most power losses, and erratic idling after parts are done can usually be traced to fuelling or timing issues.To get sufficient fuel you may need to uprate the injectors on your engine.

Uprate the fuel pump to cope with the extra fuel requirements of your tuned Alteas uprated injectors.

Intake and Exhaust Tuning.

Breathing mods are usually next up. Please note that WE DO NOT FEEL YOU GET POWER GAINS FROM INDUCTION KITS, unless you have tuned your car a lot and are finding that the standard air intake has become limited.

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 out of the engine but avoid an exhaust that is too large 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 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 When you tune up your Altea you will find that the standard clutch starts to suffer so get an uprated clutch. The best mods that we recommend for your Altea are fast road camshaft, remap, induction and exhaust, suspension.

Remaps offer big power gains on all turbo charged cars. On NA (naturally aspirated) engines the benefits are doubtful. However a tune/remap on a NA (naturally aspirated) engine will help unleash the potential if you have done a lot of mods. The most phenomenal power gains for NA (naturally aspirated) engines usually involve the addition of forced induction. Turbos are usually harder to add than a supercharger. With a turbo the boost curve is related exponentially to the engine speed making it more challenging to map.

The nice proportional boost and rpm characteristics of the supercharger make them simpler to map. Alternatively you could install water injection to minimise knock.

Alloy wheel upgrades.

Alloy wheels will help the brake cooling and are usually lighter than the steel ones. Further improvements can be made to your cars handling with the addition of track legal slick tire. The drawback to large rims on your Altea is that you alter your effective final drive ratio so this will have a detrimental effect on performance and acceleration.

Although some people have installed larger rims without issues 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 Altea options in more detail with our Altea owners. It would also be worth reading our unbiased Seat 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 Seat. 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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