Car tuning
Tuning a car can have a dual meaning. Generally tuning a car means adjusting the timing and the air/fuel ratios to the carburater.This helps to keep the car performance at an optimum level. However car tuning can also have a different connotation where in the performance of the car is upped. Many people who buy a new car are bitten by the bug of innovation. They would like to have their car perform better than the given parameters of the company. For this they tweak the car engine or in other word tune it with a view to upgrade the performance of the car. This could be for a variety of reasons but the most prominent is to use the car for speed racing or just to freak out on the country road at a high speed. Tuning a car is an excellent hobby for some people. There are others who resort to this tuning on a mass scale to benefit many more people. For such people car tuning is like an industry with millions of dollars in turnover. Such people modify the car engine at state of the art workshops.
Many cars are tuned to individual preferences and this can cost quite a sum of money. Cars when manufactured from an assembly line be it Honda or General Motors have certain fixed parameters that are median to the average user. These have been worked out after meticulous study and compilation of data. These are assembly line cars and cater to the average driver. They are not custom made like the Rolls Royce which do not need to be tuned or have their driving parameters changed. This is because all Rolls Royce cars are custom built to individual specifications. Your leg length and arm length are all taken into account when you order a Rolls. No wonder a Rolls Royce could set you back by upward of 400,000 pounds.
Most cars cater to the average user. So incase you wish to individualize your car then you will need to tune it. This tuning could be for racing or plain driving to improve fuel efficiency or better handling. Car tuning can also be done to improve engine power at a higher RPM.
Car tuning basically covers two major aspects. Firstly we have what is known as engine tuning. In this the engine of the car is modified to increase its power or BHP. That is the car engine generates more power than specified by the manufacturer. Secondly tuning also refers to modifications to the body of the car to increase its aerodynamic aspect and also the drag coefficient. This could take the shape of altering or fixing spoilers on the body or replacing the existing wheels with lighter alloy wheels.
A modification to the car engine is a professional job and cannot be done by an amateur. Engine modifications can range from a simple chip tuning to nitrous injection. Chip tuning means changing or modifying an EPROM chip in a car's or other vehicles electronic control unit (ECU) to achieve better performance.
The second option of nitrous injection makes the car develop additional horsepower. This is done by allowing an engine to burn more fuel than it could normally do. Burning more fuel creates higher cylinder pressures which in turn help push down the pistons with greater force. This increases the power that the engine delivers.
Car tuning sometimes also involves a complete engine swap. Here the original car engine is removed and replaced with another engine. This again is a precision job and only an expert or a proper equipped workshop could handle it.
Any car delivered from a manufacturer has a fixed torque and bhp. For example a Mitsubishi lancer develops 87 BHP at 5500 RPM and a Sonata 165 BHP at 5800 RPM. The corresponding figures for torque for these cars are and 23.6 at 4250. In case these figures are to be improved upon then the car is tuned. We must remember that adding parts to increase horsepower and torque is called mechanical performance tuning.
When we add body kit or/and modify of a car then it is referred to as optical tuning
A suspension of a car controls the ride and road handling of the vehicle. The suspension of a car is standardized at a factory with the median user in mind. Tuning involves modifying the springs, shock absorbers, sway bars, and other related components of a vehicle. This could be for a better ride or to adapt the vehicle suspension for a different type of role like a drive on a country road. Sometimes by fixing shorter shock absorbers on the car its look improve as the car hugs the ground more than earlier. Shorter springs also lower the center of gravity for the car and this results in a smoother ride. In case you are fond of speed driving them you may opt for stiffer absorbers that improve body stiffness and are very valuable during driving along corners at high speed. The stiffer sway bars reduce body roll and help improve a car's high speed turning grip. Strut bars are also added sometimes. When added these bars are a great help when cutting corners at high speed as the car is then more stable.
If you plan to use your car for off road driving then larger tires can help increase ground clearance.Body tuning also involves adding or modifying spoilers. Sometimes this is done to improve the aerodynamic performance of a vehicle.More often, these modifications are done mainly to improve a vehicle's appearance, Very rarely does an after market body kit improve performance, the majority add weight to the car body and that worsens; car handling.
If you wish to alter or upgrade upgrade factory-installed equipment than it is called interior modifications. These are more common than engine modifications.
The most common type of interior modification is by replacing the original multimedia devices or adding additional ones.Thus audio amplifiers, speakers and subwoofers, DVD players, and LCD televisions are added to make driving a pleasure for the individual as well as give him the satisfaction of having an individual stamp on his car. Extra additions to the body frame. are referred to as exterior modifications. These include adding spoilers; HID (High Intensity Discharge) Xenon & Neon head lights, Alloy Wheels, and carbon fiber body components.
It is a matter of debatewhether external modifications to the car body have any real advantage ias far as aerodynamic performance. is concerned.However engine tuning generally has an effect as the engine power at a particular RPM is increased. Whatever the disadvantages or advantages car tuning has come to stay.
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