Increasing your car’s torque can be as simple or complex as you want to make it. If you are not an experienced mechanic, there are modifications you can try without getting elbow-deep in grease. However, more significant modifications may yield better results. Keep reading to find out what our panel of car enthusiasts recommends for increasing torque.
Craig Campbell, Founder & CEO at Auto Parts Guideline.
Add Exhaust Headers
The process of bringing air in and exhausting it out is highly essential. If the exhaustion doesn’t go well, combustion can be impaired. Improving your exhaust headers and using wider valves can help you with ventilating the cylinder more completely, allowing more air and fuel to come in during the next cycle. This improves the performance and torque of the vehicle.
Install a Turbocharger
Torque is all about air intake and fuel combustion inside the cylinders of the engine. A turbocharger brings more air into the cylinders to produce more heat for better fuel combustion. It makes the engine more responsive and roll [faster], improving the torque. Turbochargers are also responsible for boosting the engine horsepower, which is also essential to increase the torque.
Increasing torque in your vehicle can come at quite an expense. That is why it is always best to start with the cheaper options to gain that little extra bit of torque.
When you buy a car off the lot, the manufacturer purposely reduces the engine power through the ECU to save you gas money, get you more miles from the engine, and make other high-performance cars seem more appealing.
The best way to increase your car’s torque without any complicated maintenance or repairs is simply a ‘tune.’ A ‘tune’ is a device that will update your car’s ECU or computer and give it different instructions on how to deliver power to the engine.
You will unlock your engine’s full capacity with this tune. It can add 15-30 horsepower and 20-30 lb-ft of torque on most basic cars.
If you have a turbocharger, supercharger, or any other modifications such as a cold air intake, this tune can also add more power to all of those parts that can make your horsepower increase even more. For instance, if you have a turbo set-up, you can make the tune add another lb. of a boost to the turbo, which gains you an instant 50 horsepower.
Plus, the process is very simple! You just plug the hand-held tuner into your car’s ECU port under the steering wheel. It will take a few minutes, [but] you’ll notice the change instantly.
Obviously, there are some dangers with increasing turbo boost and other factors, but for the most part, tunes are pretty safe and will pose no damage to any internal part of your engine.
Devin Lambert, Owner of Devin Lambert, an authority car website.
Ryan Roxas, Founder of Effortlessdrive.
An effective modification that will increase torque significantly is to install a turbo or supercharger. Forced induction forces air into your engine, increasing the power the engine provides. Depending on the torque curve you prefer, a turbocharger will need time to spool before it provides torque benefits. So, its power is felt later on the rpm range, but it typically creates more power than superchargers.
On the other hand, the supercharger power is felt throughout the rev range and does not lag like the turbo. This means that it is better in the lower rpm range compared to turbos. If your vehicle does not have any sort of forced induction, any of these two modifications should increase torque significantly compared to other modifications.
However, if your car already has some sort of forced induction, then a quality ECU tune has the potential for significant torque gains. Coming out of the factory, your car is tuned to balance performance, fuel economy, and engine safety. By performing an ECU tune, you are able to optimize your vehicle for the application you want. In this case, it can be used to boost power to your vehicle without doing any external modifications. It is best to either visit a shop that specializes in tuning your specific vehicle or use premade software for your vehicle if you are unfamiliar with tuning. A poorly tuned car can be catastrophic for your car and can even lead to a blown engine.
This is a crowdsourced article. Contributors’ statements do not necessarily reflect the opinion of this website, other people, businesses, or other contributors.
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