Fiat Panda Tuning

"Thank you for reading my Panda tuning guide."

We look at Panda tuning and report on the ultimate mods that work. Fiat Pandas make a good tuning project and with a few sensible sports tuning mods you can substantially improve your driving experience.

The Panda is a good car modification project to do. If you do your research then you can create an awesome Panda but don't be fooled there are lots of modified kits out there that will simply not suit it read our unbiased guides first.

Handling/Suspension upgrades

Handling modifications are the thing most do first for the Panda.

Setting some negative camber on the fronts and a degree or two of toe out, will substantially enhance your Panda in handling and cornering.

Drop the car by as much as 27mm - 45 mm and fit performance stiffer dampers, bigger drops will need other modifications in most instances.

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

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.

Engine Tuning.

Typically these tuning modifications are usually fitted by our members, decide how far you wish to go in your tuning project before you start.

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

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Modifying to Stage 1:

 Remap, Lighter flywheel, Sports exhaust, Alloy wheels, Suspension upgrade (drop 30-45mm), Panel air filter.

Modifying to Stage 2:

 Ported and polished head, fuel pump upgrades, Fast road cam, Power/Sport clutch, high flow fuel injector.

Modifying to Stage 3:

 Competition cam, Sports gearbox, Internal engine upgrades (pistons/head/valves), Adding or upgrading forced induction (turbo/supercharger), Engine balancing.

Peak power is nice in motorsport but for a daily driven car you need a long torque band and perhaps extending the rev range.

In this article we shall give a brief overview to the best modifications 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 most cost effective mechanical performance upgrades you can do on your NASP engine is to fit a fast road cam .

It improves the intake and exhaust durations and pushes up the power if done right. Ideally you'd add other mods and finish up with a reflashed ECU. We'd also caution you not to go with a motor sport cam as this upsets the engines idling and general town driving characteristics.

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

If you find you experience flat spots and surges after your performance modifications you should check the fuelling and try a higher octane fuel as well. 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 Pandas uprated injectors.

Intake and Exhaust Tuning.

Now we move on to the intake and exhaust and ensure proper flow through the engine. Please note that WE DO NOT RECOMMEND INDUCTION KITS, unless you have tuned your car with over 30 percent more power and are finding that the standard air intake has become a limitation.

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 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.

Do not go with the largest exhaust you can get this will slow up the exhaust flow rate - the best for power gains are usually between 1.0 to 1.5 inches. It is the shape and material more than the bore size.

Head work including a head port and polished and 3 or 5 angle valve job will really help to release the potential of the engine. In nearly all cases of Panda tuning your clutch will start to complain and this needs an upgrade - read our article on clutches for more information. The best mods in our experience for your Panda are a remap especially on a turbo, a fast road camshaft and sports exhaust, with a good air intakeRemaps offer phenomenal power gains on all turbo charged cars. On NASP engines the benefits are doubtful. However a flashed ecu on a NASP engine will help unleash the potential if you have done a lot of mods.

We've also come across some owners experimenting with twincharging conversions and making some seriously high power figures.

Adding forced induction will see big power gains but this is usually too expensive to be cost effective. Superchargers are generally easier to add than a turbo. Turbos increase power in exponential proportion to increasing engine speed and this can make mapping difficult.

Superchargers will give a boost which is directly proportional to engine speed so is easier to map. Alternatively you could perhaps install water injection to cut down knock.

Alloy wheel upgrades.

As alloy wheels are lighter they improve performance and they will help to cool the brake disks. 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. directional tread pattern tires work well on Panda, and make a big difference over budget tires. Large Panda alloy wheels can decrease performance. If you get big alloy wheels you will be changing your final drive ratio.

With this in mind try to keep the overall rolling diameter of the wheel your OEM settings. In all cases we do not recommend going over 15-16 inches.

For more information on Tuning your car please join us in our friendly forum where you can discuss Panda options in more detail with our Panda owners. It would also be worth reading our unbiased Fiat tuning articles to get a full grasp of the benefits and drawbacks of each modification.

Please help us improve these tips by sending us your feedback in the comments box below. We love to hear what our visitors have got up to and which mods work best for them on each model of car. Comments are used to improve the accuracy of these articles which are continually updated.

This article was written by Waynne Smith on TorqueCars, and I appreciate your feedback and suggestions. This entry was filed under Fiat. You can leave a response below or join TorqueCars forum to discuss this article and car modification in detail with our members.

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