Modifying and improving: "D4Ft Modifications"

How to modify and upgrade the Renault D4Ft

"Comprehensive guide to performance parts and tuning the Renault D4Ft engine!"

TorqueCars are frequently seeing threads requesting info on how to improve the D4Ft from people inquiring about getting more power from the D4Ft and wanting to know what are the ultimate D4Ft power upgrades. So let us look into Renault D4Ft upgrades and outline the best modifications on this great engine and point out some common pitfalls along the way.

Car Tuning Tips will provide a guide to D4Ft tuning and report on the best modifications for your car. Renault D4Ft provide a fun base for your project and with carefully picked sports tuning mods like a remap, turbo upgrades and camshafts you will improve your driving opportunities.

The ultimate D4Ft tuning mods on an engine are usually the ones that give the best power gain for your hard earned cash.

We won't be swayed by popular D4Ft tuning mods, they need to be cost effective.

Improving air intake on the D4Ft

You need fuel and air for an engine to work. If there is insufficient fuel then it will run lean, if there is not enough air it runs rich sapping power which risks damage to the D4Ft. We'll pick up on fuelling later in this article but for now we shall look at air supply.

So the fundamental goal to any tuning job to shove more air and fuel into the D4Ft engine but this has a knock on effect with the air flow sensor.

You'll commonly see there's a limit in the air flow sensor MAP/MAF/AFM on the D4Ft when a lot more air is being fed into the engine.

When tuning you may well find you need to get an air sensor or flow meter capable of upto 4 bars to cope with quite large power gains, whereas the OEM air sensor limited power at a much lower level.

Engine intake manifolds take the air during the suck phase from the filter and allow it to be fed into the engine and mixed with fuel.

Design and flow characteristics of the Intake headers can make a substantial change to fuel engine efficiency on the D4Ft.

Commonly we find the headers are ripe for motorsport parts, although some OEM provide decently flowing headers.

Increasing the D4Ft valve size, carrying out D4Ft port enlargement and head flowing will also raise bhp, and as an added benefit will afford you an improved bhp increase on other modifications.

D4Ft performance cam tips.

Some D4Ft engines respond better to different cam durations so set your engine up on a rolling road.

The ECU mapping and fuel pump and injectors also will make differences on the bhp gains you'll hit.

Extending exhaust or intake durations can alter the bhp band and on most engines the exhaust and intake durations do not need to match, although most cams and tuners use matched pairs there are some advantages to extending the intake or exhaust durations.

Altering your D4Ft camshaft will make a dramatic difference to the engine engines power. Choosing a higher performance camshaft profile raises the engines power accordingly.

NB: Fast road camshafts normally bump the power across the rev range, you may lose a little bottom end power but your higher rpm power will be higher.

Motorsport and race camshafts, bump the higher rpm power band but as a result the car will not idle smoothly and low end power nearly always suffers.

A Race camshaft won't do well if in heavy traffic.

You should ideally match your torque band to your usage of the car so for a car driven daily stick with a shorter duration D4Ft camshaft

Stage 1, 2 and 3 mods for the D4Ft

Before we break the best tuning upgrades down into stages of tune, let's list the most effective tuning upgrades for you.

1. Suspension Upgrades - always improve your cars handling
2. Brake Upgrades - Even before adding power improve those brakes
3. Intake - make sure the intake is not restricted, use filters and intake upgrades to improve this
4. Exhaust - as with 3 ensure there is not restriction in the exhaust, cats are the usual bottleneck
5. Tunes - remapping, piggyback ECU's and aftermarket ECU's can all make decent gains
6. Fuelling - when you've increased power you'll need to match this with more fuel
7. Turbo upgrades - Improving the intake with a large turbo and better flowing intercooler will be the biggest power gain you'll see (but one of the most complex).

This video guide to tuning cars is a great starting point to work from in your project.

Stage 1 D4Ft parts:

Remaps/piggy back ECU, Panel air filters, Intake headers, Drilled & smoothed airbox, Fast road camshaft, Sports exhaust manifold.

Stage 2 D4Ft parts:

Ported and polished head, high flow fuel injectors, fuel pump upgrades, Fast road cam, Sports catalyst & performance exhaust, induction kit.

Stage 3 D4Ft parts:

Adding or Upgrading forced induction (turbo/supercharger), Twin charging conversions, Internal engine upgrades (head flowing porting/bigger valves), Crank and Piston upgrades to alter compression, Engine balancing & blueprinting, Competition cam.

Remaps should help to to establish the full potential of all the mods you've done to your D4Ft.

You will typically expect to see gains of approximately 20-30% more power on turbocharged vehicles and you can expect to see around 15% on NASP engines, but power output often differs on the mods you've done and the condition of your engine.

Turbo modifications on the D4Ft

To get a turbo working on a NASP engine there is a lot involved, from lowering compression ratio to improved fuel supply and mapping, so we have found a great guide to helpavoid the common pitfalls or end up with an unfinished project because you were not told what you were getting into by doing this on the D4Ft.

The more air you can get into an engine, the more fuel it can burn and uprating the induction with a turbocharger upgrade makes impressive power gains.

If an engine has forced induction tuning parts are more reliable and turbocharged engines already contain uprated components.

There are tuning limits for every engine, with some being incredibly solid and some only able to handle stock power

It is important to find these restrictions and install higher quality crank and pistons to handle the power.

We see many drivers spending a a stack of money on turbo upgrades on the D4Ft only to have the car throw a rod when it's been enthusiastically driven.

Larger turbo chargers commonly suffer low end lag, and smaller turbo chargers spool up really quickly but don't have the top end bhp gains.

In the last 10 years the range of turbo units is always improving and we now see variable vane turbo units, permitting the vane angle is altered according to speed to lower lag and increase top end bhp.

Twin scroll turbo units divert the exhaust flow into two channels and flow these at differently angled vanes in the turbo charger. They also improve the scavenging effect of the engine.

Beefing up the air intake by adding a supercharger or additional turbo will help you achieve very large torque gains, although more difficult to get working. We have this guide to twinchargers if you want to read more.

Tips about fuel supply on the D4Ft

Don't overlook the need to improve the fuel delivery when you are increasing the bhp and torque - it makes the car more thirsty. We would recommend you to over specify your flow rate on the injectors.

The rule of thumb is to add 20% when buying an injector, which takes into account injector deterioration and gives a bit of spare capacity should the engine need more fuel.

Don't forget that different fuel grades will usually require different settings, a high octane fuel will burn more efficiently than lower octane fuel for example. A car will trim fuel supply to keep within the ideal air fuel mix but at the extreme ends you may need to adjust your injector capacity, or the mapping or you'll get flat spots and potential lean or rich fuel issues..

Recommended D4Ft performance exhaust upgrades

You only need to to upgrade your exhaust system with an upgraded one is if your exhaust is actually causing a restriction in flow.

On most factory exhausts you'll find the exhaust flow rate is good even on modest power gains, but on a serious tuning project with a big boost in power you will certainly need to get a better flowing exhaust.

Sports exhausts can usually air flow out of the engine but avoid an exhaust that is too wide or you could will reduce the flow rate. Stick to one and a half to two and half inches as a rule of thumb.

Usual exhaust restrictions are in the emissions filters installed, so adding a faster flowing high performance alternative will help avoid this restriction.

Decatting (NB:catalysts reduce harmful engine emissions) is illegal in most countries and regions.

Faults issues and things to look out for on the D4Ft

Like most engines an D4Ft, should have few issues if it gets properly serviced and looked after.

We cannot stress enough the need for oil changes with the correct grade of oil on the D4Ft, failure to do this will exacerbate engine wear, on a tuned D4Ft this is more important than ever and close attention should be paid to your maintenance schedule.

If you are interested in learning more or getting impartial tuning advice for your D4Ft why not pop over to the forums at TorqueCars where you can chat about D4Ft tuning options and read about others projects who may be planning to do similar modifications on their D4Ft.

We need your help to complete and improve this page, so do give us your feedback in the comments box below.

We want to know your experiences with parts on your D4Ft, it helps us improve our tips and keeps us current so please use the comments box to drop a tip.

This entry was posted under Makes and Models. Tags: engine, Renault
You can leave a response below or join our forum to discuss this article and car modification in detail with our members.

If you liked this page please share it with your friends, drop a link to it in your favourite forum or use the bookmarking options to save it to your social media profile.

Check out TorqueCars new YouTube channel, and see their awesome new content...