Everything You Need To Know About "Avensis Tuning"

The Toyota Avensis is sold as a comfortable family/executive car. They have been quite popular due to the high level of equipment supplied and their legendary reliability.

The Avensis was introduced when production of the Carina stopped back in 1997.

This does present an opportunity to the tuner and the humble Avensis can be turned into something a lot more exciting.

The Avensis was offered in a 1.6, 1.8 and 2.0 engines initially and the 1.6 does seem a little bit underpowered. In 2009 the Avensis range was fitted with a new range of efficient ZR engines.

So onto the Avensis tuning tips:- The 1.6 is really a waste of time from a tuning point of view - it can be done but you will not see very much of a power gain at all. You can still perform the modifications we recommend to the 1.6 engines but you should only expect a modest power gain of 10-20%, for the same amount of money you could do an engine swap and get a  massive 50% power hike.

Car Tuning Tips would focus on improving the handling and braking of the Avensis as it is really set up for comfort rather than cornering. An anti roll bar on the rear will really help to reduce the body roll.

The 1.8 and 2.0 blocks will need some major work doing before you see a significant power gain. You will need to fit larger valves, get the head ported and polished and have a 3 angle valve job done.

Reboring the engine is fiddly and expensive but proves to be a great way of a substantial power hike. Increasing the compression ratio of this engine will further maximise the power gains but the engines are already fairly high compression and will run better on super unleaded fuel as standard so be careful with this.

Blueprinting and balancing the engine wakes things up and combined with a lighter flywheel enables you to fully exploit the top end power potential of this engine. Other modifications you should consider for your Avensis engine (in no particular order) are Fast road cams, air intake and sports exhaust & port matching.

For the power mad Avensis owners you always have the option of fitting a supercharger or turbo. Another option you may consider is adding nitrous injection kits, this alone can add 25 bhp more power to your engine. What other modifications? Brake upgrades are popular and prove to be  a prudent modification on any Avensis tuning project.

A big brake conversion kit is the order of the day, go with a vented disk and larger pads with a high friction surface. Drilled disks are not really good for track work as they are more prone to crack but they look good and keep the pads sharp on road cars.

Further reading.

We suggest that if you want a bit more information on Avensis Tuning you consult the following sources. TorqueCars have a comprehensive  Avensis tuning article and also a very active, friendly and helpful Toyota tuning forum. If you have any tips to pass on please use our comments box below and we will update this article, after all we are all here to share knowledge. Please also let us know if we've missed out an engine or performance mod that you feel should be included in here.

This entry was posted under Makes and Models. Tags: toyota
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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