Discover "Beta Modifications"

How to modify and upgrade the Hyundai Beta

"Comprehensive guide to tuning the Hyundai Beta engine!"

Forums like the one at TorqueCars often are seeing threads requesting information on how to improve the Beta from people inquiring about getting more power from the Beta and wanting to know what are the greatest Beta power upgrades. So let us look into Hyundai Beta parts and outline the best modifications on this great engine and point out some potential pitfalls along the way.

The Hyundai Beta are awesome to work on and with carefully chosen mods like remaps, turbo kits and camshafts you will dramatically enhance your driving pleasure.

Here we examine Beta tuning and summarise the premier mods that work.

When talking about the best parts for your Beta engine, we are going to focus on the upgrades that give the best power gain for you money.

Improving air intake on the Beta

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

So the primary aim to any engine performance tuning task to feed air and fuel into the Beta engine but this has a knock on effect with the air flow sensor.

You'll commonly see there is a limitation in the air flow sensor MAF/MAP on the Beta when considerably more air is being drawn into the engine.

We see 4 bar air sensors coping with quite large power gains, whereas the OEM air sensor sapped bhp and torque at a much lower level.

Air 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 rate of the Intake headers can make a big difference to to fuel atomisation and engine efficiency on the Beta.

We often see intake headers are needing motorsport parts, although a few makers provide decently flowing intake headers.

Fitting big valve kits, doing a bit of port work and head flowing will also improve bhp, and importantly will allow you to get a better bhp increase on other parts.

Beta performance cam tips.

Different Beta engines respond better to more or less aggressive camshaft durations check your engine on a rolling road.

The engine timing and fuelling also will say much on the bhp gains you'll get.

A longer valve duration 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.

Significant air intake, and exhaust improvements on the Beta can be made from cam upgrades. Changing the cam profile alters the intake and exhaust durations on the engine and can dramatically change the torque and power output.

NB: Fast road camshafts usually boost the power through the rpm band, you could sacrifice a little low down bhp but your high end rpm power will be lifted.

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

A Motorsport and race cam is not great in heavy traffic.

You should ideally match your bhp range to your cars usage so for a car driven daily stick with a fast road Beta cam

Stage 1, 2 and 3 mods for the Beta

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 Beta parts:

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

Stage 2 Beta parts:

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

Stage 3 Beta parts:

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

Remapping allows a tuner to to establish the full potential of all the upgrades you've done to your Beta.

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 often depend much on the upgrades you've carried out and the condition of your engine.

Turbo modifications on the Beta

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 Beta.

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

When the engine has forced induction upgrades are going to net you a larger power gain and you'll see that turbo engines are made using uprated components.

However engines will have power limits

Discover these limitations and install better quality crank and pistons to utilize the power.

There are many guys spending a a stack of money on turbo upgrades on the Beta only to suffer the humiliation of seeing the car explode on it's first outing after it's been completed.

Larger capacity turbos tend to experience no power at low rpm, and small turbos spool up really quickly but do not have the top end bhp gains.

Thanks to progress the world of turbos is always increasing and we now see variable vane turbos, allowing the vane angle is altered according to speed to lower lag and increase top end torque.

Twin scroll turbos divert the exhaust gases into a couple of channels and push these at differently profiled 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 article on twincharging if you want to read more.

Tips about fuel supply on the Beta

When you boost the power you will need to uprate to the fuelling.

More power needs more fuel. Experienced tuners recommend to be generous with your flow rate on the injectors.

The rule of thumb is to add another 20% when fitting an injector, this allows for injector deterioration and affords a bit of 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 Beta performance exhaust upgrades

You may need to upgrade your exhaust system with an upgraded one is if the current exhaust is creating a flow problem.

On most factory exhausts you'll see the flow rate is ok 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 generally help improve air flow from the engine but do not go too wide 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.

Usual exhaust restrictions are in the catalyst installed, so adding a better flowing high 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 Beta

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

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