Tuners tips on "DV Modifications"

How to modify and upgrade the PSA DV

"Comprehensive guide to tuning the PSA DV engine!"

Popular tuning sites like TorqueCars are regularly getting posts asking how to improve the DV from people inquiring about getting more power from the DV and wanting to know what are the best DV mods that work. So let us look into PSA DV parts and outline the best modifications on this great engine and point out some potential pitfalls along the way.

This pages aim is review and look at DV tuning and provide tips on the optimum mods that work. PSA DV are popular tuning projects and with carefully chosen upgrades like a remap, turbo upgrades and camshafts you will certainly increase your driving experience.

When talking about the ultimate parts for your DV engine, we are going to concentrate on the mods that give the best value for money.

Improving air intake on the DV

You need air matched to fuel for an engine to work. If there is insufficient fuel then it will run lean, if there is a lack of air it runs rich losing power which risks damage to the DV. We'll pick up on fuelling later in this article but for now we shall look at air supply.

So the goal to any engine modification task to pull fuel and air into each cylinder but this has a knock on effect with the air flow sensor.

It is not unusual that there's a restriction in the air flow sensor AFM/MAF on the DV when considerably more air is being pulled into the engine.

You'll see that 4 bar air sensors coping with quite large power gains, whereas the OEM air sensor limited bhp at a much lower level.

Intake headers flow the air from the filter and allow it to be drawn into the engine cylinders.

Shape and flow rate of the Intake headers can make a big difference to to fuel mixing and power on the DV.

I usually find plenum chambers are in desperate need of performance upgrades, although some manufacturers provide well optimised plenum chambers.

Increasing the DV valve size, carrying out port matching and head flowing will also improve performance, the fantastic side effect is it will make space for a better performance increase on other modifications.

DV performance cam tips.

Some DV engines respond better to mild camshaft durations check your engine on a rolling road.

The ECU mapping and fuelling also will say much on the power gains you'll make.

Longer valve durations can alter the power 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.

The cam profile plays a big part in the engines power output so cam upgrades make quite a large difference. The intake & exhaust durations will alter depending on the chosen cam profile, so large engines power gains are on offer for cam upgrades.

NB: Fast road camshafts tend to boost the power across the rev range, you might lose a little low down bhp but your higher rpm power will be better.

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

A Motorsport camshaft will just annoy you whilst in heavy traffic.

You should ideally optimize your engines power to your usage of the car so for a road car stick with a fast road DV camshaft

Stage 1, 2 and 3 mods for the DV

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 DV parts:

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

Stage 2 DV parts:

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

Stage 3 DV parts:

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

A remap allows a tuner to fully realize the full potential of all the tuning mods you've done to your DV.

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 figures achieved often depend much on the tuning mods you've carried out and the condition of your engine.

Turbo modifications on the DV

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 DV.

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.

When an engine is fitted with a turbo upgrades are relatively easy and most turbocharged engines are built with harder and stronger components.

There are practical limits for every engine, with some being extremely strong and some just sufficiently able to handle stock power

Discover these limitations and fit forged components to handle the power.

We see many tuners spending a fortune on turbo charger upgrades on the DV only to have the engine catastrophically fail when it's finished.

Big upgraded turbochargers commonly suffer no power at low rpm, and small turbochargers spool up quickly but don't have the high rpm torque gains.

Thankfully the world of turbochargers is always increasing and we are seeing variable vane turbochargers, permitting the vane angle is altered according to speed to lower lag and increase top end power.

Twin scroll turbochargers divert the exhaust flow into 2 channels and flow these at differently angled vanes in the turbo charger. They also increase the scavenging effect of the engine.

Beefing up the air intake by adding a supercharger or additional turbo will help you achieve very large power gains, although more complex to install. We have this article on twincharging if you want to read more.

Tips about fuel supply on the DV

You will need to ensure that the engine is not starved of fuel so must ramp up the fuelling when you start going beyond 20% of a bhp and torque hike. It is important to over specify your injector capacity.

As a rule of thumb add 20% to the flow rate when specifying an injector, this accounts for injector deterioration and provides some 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 DV performance exhaust upgrades

You should look to improve your exhaust system with an upgraded one is if your exhaust is actually causing a restriction in flow.

On most factory exhausts you'll see your flow rate is fine 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 will certainly help air flow out of the engine but do not go too big or you may end up will reduce the flow rate. Stick to one and a half to two and half inches as a rule of thumb.

Typically exhaust restrictions come around the filters installed, so adding a better flowing performance alternative will help avoid this restriction.

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

Faults issues and things to look out for on the DV

Like most engines an DV, 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 DV, failure to do this will exacerbate engine wear, on a tuned DV 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 DV why not pop over to the forums at TorqueCars where you can chat about DV tuning options and read about others projects who may be planning to do similar modifications on their DV.

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This entry was posted under Makes and Models. Tags: engine, PSA
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