Everything You Need To Know About "Mu Modifications"

How to modify and upgrade the Hyundai Mu

"Comprehensive guide to tuning and performance parts on the Hyundai Mu engine!"

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

The Hyundai Mu provide a fun base for your project and with the right uprated parts like remaps, turbo upgrades and camshafts you will increase your driving experience.

Here we review and look at Mu tuning and point out the premier modifications.

Just because particular parts are are common on Mu it doesn't mean it is good, so we'll focus on the greatest parts that will give your Mu the best power gain for you spend.

Without us subscribing to the mentality of 'if it's shiny and makes more noise it must be good' you seem to get in many tuning magazines and on car forums'.

Improving air intake on the Mu

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

So the aim to any tuning job to feed more air and fuel 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 MAF/MAP on the Mu when loads 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 was restricting bhp and torque at a much lower level.

Engine intake manifolds carry the air from the intake filter and allow it to be drawn into the engine cylinders with fuel for the squish phase.

The size of bore and shape and rate of flow of the Intake can make a large difference to to fuel delivery on the Mu.

On popular production engines plenum chambers are ripe for a performance upgrade, although some car makers provide fairly well optimized plenum chambers.

Adding a Mu larger valve kit, getting Mu port enlargement and head flowing will also raise bhp and torque, & importantly will raise potential for a greater bhp and torque increase on other tuning mods.

Mu performance cam tips.

Each engine responds better to more or less aggressive cam durations check your engine on a rolling road.

The engine timing and injectors and fuel pump also will make differences on the torque gains you'll make.

Altering valve durations can alter the torque 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 Mu cam will make a dramatic difference to the engine bhp. Choosing a higher performance cam profile raises the bhp accordingly.

NB: Fast road camshafts usually increase the torque through the rpm band, you could drop a little bottom end power but your higher rpm power will be lifted.

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

A Motorsport and race camshaft will just annoy you whilst driving around busy urban areas.

You should ideally optimize your power band to your usage of the car so for a daily driver stick with a mild fast road Mu camshaft

Stage 1, 2 and 3 mods for the Mu

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 Mu parts:

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

Stage 2 Mu parts:

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

Stage 3 Mu parts:

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

Mapping will help fully realize the full potential of all the parts you've done to your Mu.

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 the end result usually rely on the parts you've fitted and the condition of your engine.

Turbo modifications on the Mu

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 Mu.

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

If an engine is turbocharged, tuning mods are simpler to install and most turbo charged engines are built using uprated components.

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

It is important to find these limitations and fit better quality components to survive the power.

We've seen people spending a a stack of money on turbo charger upgrades on the Mu only to suffer the indignity of watching the engine catastrophically fail soon after it's been finished.

Bigger upgraded turbo chargers tend to experience low end lag, and smaller turbo chargers spool up more quickly but do not have the high rpm bhp gains.

Thankfully the selection of turbo units is always moving on and we commonly find variable vane turbo units, permitting the vane profile is altered according to speed to lower lag and increase top end bhp and torque.

Twin scroll turbo units divert the exhaust flow into a couple of channels and direct these at differently designed 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 performance gains, although more challenging to configure. We have this guide to twinchargers if you want to read more.

Tips about fuel supply on the Mu

Don't omit to improve the fuel delivery when you are increasing the bhp and torque - it makes the car more thirsty. We strongly recommend you to be generous with your injector capacity.

As a rule of thumb add another 20% when specifying an injector, this accounts for injector deterioration and affords you some spare capacity should the engine require 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 Mu performance exhaust upgrades

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

On most factory exhausts you'll see the flow rate is still 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.

Do not go with the largest exhaust you can buy this will slow up the exhaust flow rate - the best exhausts for power gains are usually between one and a half to two and half inches. Your exhaust design, the bend angles and construction are what have more effect on flow rates than your pipe width to a certain extent. So the exhaust design is a big factor.

The usual suspects causing problems in your exhaust flow rate can be located the emissions filters installed, so adding a higher flowing performance alternative will help avoid this restriction.

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

Faults issues and things to look out for on the Mu

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

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