Seat Arona Tuning

"Thank you for reading this Seat Arona tuning guide."

The Arona is proving popular, thanks in part to it sharing many of the VW group engines.

This ensures that you have a good selection of performance parts to choose from. We outline your best mods, and pass on some tips we've picked up when tuning the Arona we've garnered from our members.

The Arona is a good car tuning project to have. With the right mods your Arona can be transformed into an awesome motor.

Don't waste money, do your homework and follow our unbiased guides to each performance upgrade so you don't waste your money.

Handling/Suspension upgrades

Handling modifications are high on most peoples lists for the Arona.

Fully adjustable suspension allows you to fine tune the handling of you Arona dramatically improving your drive.

We would go to a maximum drop of 24mm - 36 mm on most models. You risk handling compromises if you go lower than this.

Turning our attention to the Arona'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.

Typically these motorsport upgrades are usually installed by our members, decide how far you want to go before you start.

Getting the best modified upgrades for your planned usage of the car is vital. Stage 3 motor sport mods just won't work well on the road difficult in stop start 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: Sports exhaust, Alloy wheels, Suspension upgrade (drop 30-40mm), Engine Tunes/Remapping, Lighter flywheel, Panel air filter.

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

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

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

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

In this article we shall give a limited introduction 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 mod.One of the best mechanical uprated modifications you can do on your NA (naturally aspirated) engine is to fit a fast road cam.

The intake & exhaust flow 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 reflashed ECU to fully realise your gains.

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

Using higher octane fuel is another option if you find you are suffering from pinking or premature ignition on your Seat project after fitting other modified kits. To get sufficient fuel you may need to increase the injectors on your engine.

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

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 a small if any power gain got by fitting an induction kit, they only become beneficial and are recommended after you raise the engines power to the point where the standard air intake box cannot cope!

Induction kits can work well on turbo engines and larger engines (if supplied with a suitable cold air feed or air box), generally though we'd just recommend for Arona engines you should settle for a sports panel air filter preferably made from cotton.

Do not go with the biggest exhaust you can get this will slow up the exhaust flow rate - the best exhausts for power gains are usually between 1.5 to 2.5 inches. It is the shape and material more than the bore size.

Getting a professionally polished and ported head with larger valves can fully maximise your power gains. Your clutch can fail as the power goes up if it starts to slip and the standard clutches are only ever good for power gains of up to 45%. Fit an upgraded clutch to avoid power loss through the transmission. The best mods in our experience for your Arona are remaps, sports camshafts and induction improvements.

Remaps offer phenomenal power gains on all turbo charged cars. On NA (naturally aspirated) engines the benefits are doubtful. However a flashed ecu on a NA (naturally aspirated) engine will help unleash the potential if you have done a lot of mods. Adding forced induction will see big power gains but this is usually too expensive to be cost effective. It is generally easier to bolt on a supercharger than it is to fit a working turbo. With a turbo the boost curve is related exponentially to the engine speed making it more challenging to map.

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

Alloy wheel upgrades.

The benefits of alloy wheels include a lower unsprung weight and better brake cooling. If you are serious about performance then you will need to carefully choose your tires - ideally with a directional tread pattern tire. We'd like to point out although they can look cool on the Arona big alloy wheels 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 installed larger rims without problems we would stick 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 Arona options in more detail with our Arona 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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