Seat Tarraco Tuning

"Tuning guide to the most effective Seat Tarraco modifications."

The Tarraco is a good project car to carry out. With the right mods your Tarraco can be transformed into an awesome motor.

Don't waste money, do your homework and follow our unbiased guides to each performance upgrade to avoid disappointment.

Handling/Suspension upgrades

Many Tarraco owners uprate the handling of their cars with performance suspension mods as a priority, this will certainly increase your enjoyment of the car.

Good suspension tweaks that substantially benefit handling for the Tarraco include a couple of degrees negative camber and 1-1.5 degrees of toe in or out on the front wheels. Toe in for stability, or Toe out to improve cornering. It would also pay to improve the brakes, by adding larger discs and or higher friction pads..

We would go to a maximum drop of 23mm - 38 mm on most models. You risk grounding out if you go lower than this.

Top end power should be your overall aim with a nice fat wide 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 mods.

This list of the stages and performance upgrades are usually installed by our members, decide how far you wish to go in your tuning project before you begin.

Getting the correct grade of sports parts for your planned usage of the car is a time and money saver. Stage 3 (competition) mods just won't work well on the road hard to control in slow traffic.

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

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, Sports exhaust, Panel air filter, Suspension upgrade (drop 30-40mm), Lighter flywheel.

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

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

Your goal when tuning should be a nice flat torque range. You don't want all the power to be at the top end of the rev range unless you are creating a motor sport car.

The aim of our hints is to give a limited introduction of tuning performance parts and point you in the right direction, our forum is best place to go if you need more detailed advice and tips on your modified car project, the best performance kits and all aspects of modding cars.One of the most cost effective mechanical modifications you can do on your NA (naturally aspirated) engine is to fit a fast road cam .

It improves the intake and exhaust durations and increases the power if done right. Ideally you'd add other mods and finish up with a remap. We'd also caution you not to go with a motor sports profile cam as this affects the engines idling and general town driving characteristics.

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

If you find you have flat spots and surges after your motorsport kits you should check the fuelling and try a higher octane fuel as well. Increasing the injectors is another beneficial modification and will deliver sufficient fuel.

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. Contrary to popular belief there is often a small if any power gain obtained 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!

For most Tarraco engines TorqueCars would suggest you just go with a washable panel air filter. On heavily tuned engines and turbo vehicles an induction kit will help release the power providing you address the problem of supplying cold air.

Sports exhausts generally help improve air flow from the engine but do not go too big or you could very well end up with a reduced flow rate. So generally speaking, keep to 1.5 to 2.5 inches as a rule of thumb.

Getting a professionally flowed (ported and polished) head with larger valves can fully release the engines power. Your clutch can fail if it starts to break and the standard clutches are only ever good for power gains of up to 45%. Fit a performance clutch to avoid power losses through the transmission. The best mods we would do for your Tarraco are Remapping or piggy back ecu, fast road cam and air intake and exhaust.

NA (naturally aspirated) engines do not achieve big power gains if you tune/remap them, unless you have done extensive modifications. With turbocharged engines this is another story. A tuned/remapped turbo will give large power gains and take full advantage of the strength of the block.

We've also come across some owners toying with twin charging conversions and making some very high power hikes.

Adding forced induction will see significant power gains but this is usually too expensive to be cost effective. It is usually cheaper to add a supercharger than it is to get a turbo working. Turbos provide boost in increasing proportion to increasing engine speed and this can make mapping difficult.

The nice steady boost and rpm characteristics of the supercharger make them simpler to map. Adding forced induction will usually require a lower compression ratio or water injection.

Alloy wheel upgrades.

Due to the fact that alloy wheels are lighter they improve performance and they can help to cool the brake disks. If you are serious about performance then you will need to carefully choose your tires - ideally with a directional tread pattern tire. The drawback to large alloys on your Tarraco is that you're changing your effective final drive ratio and this will have a detrimental effect on performance and acceleration.

For this reason we would advise sticking to a maximum wheel size of 19 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 Tarraco options in more detail with our Tarraco 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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