The Lowdown on "Tau Modifications"

How to modify and upgrade the Hyundai Tau

"Comprehensive guide to tuning the Hyundai Tau engine!"

The Hyundai Tau, a formidable V8 engine, is more than just a powerplant; it's the beating heart of luxury models like the Genesis and Equus, ready to bring power and refinement to your daily drives. Picture this: the Tau humming under the hood, poised to unleash its power on the open road.

Now, let's delve into the specifics because, let's face it, that's where the magic happens. The Tau engine is a testament to Hyundai's commitment to performance and innovation. It's not just an engine; it's a powerhouse designed for a premium driving experience, featuring advanced technologies and a balance of power and efficiency.

So, if you're ready to take your Hyundai Tau to new heights, stay tuned. In the paragraphs to come, we'll be your guide through the world of modifications and upgrades, aiming to make your Hyundai not only luxurious but do so without causing financial turbulence.

But this isn't a solo journey – I want to hear about your Hyundai Tau project! Use the comments below to share your experiences, ask questions, and let's create a vibrant community of enthusiasts sharing insights and helping each other out.

Get ready because the next part of our adventure is about detailing the best mods and upgrades for your Hyundai Tau, ensuring you not only save time but also experience the thrill of driving a finely-tuned luxury vehicle.

Our friends at TorqueCars are frequently getting emails about how to improve the Tau from people inquiring about getting more power from the Tau and wanting to know what are the best Tau mods that work. So let us look into Hyundai Tau upgrades and outline the best modifications on this great engine and point out some problems along the way.

The Hyundai Tau provide a fun base for your project and with the right motorsport enhancements like a remap, turbo improvements and camshafts you will greatly enhance your driving enjoyment.

Here we review and look at Tau tuning and provide tips on the greatest mods that work.

When talking about the top parts for your Tau engine, we are going to focus on the parts that give the biggest return for your cash.

Improving air intake on the Tau

You need air matched to fuel for an engine to work. If there is little supply of fuel then it will run lean, if there is little flow of air it runs rich sapping power . 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 engine performance tuning job to feed more air into your Tau but this has a knock on effect with the air flow sensor.

It is common that there is a restriction in the air flow sensor AFM/MAF on the Tau when loads more air is being drawn into the engine.

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

Intake manifolds take the air from the intake filter and allow it to be sucked into the engine cylinders with fuel for the squish phase.

Shape and flow rate of the Intake can make a substantial effect on to fuel atomisation on the Tau.

It's not uncommon that intake headers are ripe for a performance upgrade, although a few OEM provide well optimised intake headers.

Larger Tau valves, getting port matching and head flowing will also lift performance, the fantastic side effect is it will allow you to get increasing the performance increase on other mods.

Tau performance cam tips.

Some Tau engines respond better to more aggressive cam durations so set your engine up on a rolling road.

The ECU mapping and injectors and fuel pump also have a large bearing 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 and 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 usually increase the power through the rpm band, you might lose a little bottom end torque but the high end rpm power will be lifted.

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

For a daily driver you must carefully try to match your engines power to your typical driving style.

I'd be surprised if you find a Tau Motorsport and race camshaft is a pleasure to live with when in heavy traffic.

Stage 1, 2 and 3 mods for the Tau

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 Tau parts:

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

Stage 2 Tau parts:

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

Stage 3 Tau parts:

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

ECU mapping helps unlock the full potential of all the tuning mods you've done to your Tau.

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 your results may rely on the tuning mods you've carried out and the condition of your engine.

Turbo modifications on the Tau

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 Tau.

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

If a car is turbo charged mods are giving better power gains and you will discover turbo charged engines already contain better components.

However every engines have limits

It is important to find these limits and fit more solid crank and pistons to cope with the power.

We've seen car owners spending a loads on turbo upgrades on the Tau only to see the car go up in smoke just after it's completed.

Big upgraded turbos often experience no power at low rpm, and small turbos spool up much more quickly but don't have the high rpm torque gains.

Thanks to new tech the world of turbo chargers is always increasing and we now see variable vane turbo chargers, permitting the vane angle is altered according to speed to lower lag and increase top end performance.

Twin scroll turbo chargers divert the exhaust gases into two channels and feed these at differently angled vanes in the turbocharger. They also help the scavenging effect of the engine.

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

Tips about fuel supply on the Tau

When you lift the performance you will need to increase to the fuel system.

More performance needs more fuel. Care modifiers usually say to over specify your injector capacity.

The accepted safe increase is to add 20% capacity when fitting an injector, this allows for injector deterioration and affords a little 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 Tau performance exhaust upgrades

You should look to upgrade your exhaust system with an upgraded one is if your current exhaust is actually causing a restriction.

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.

Don't go with the widest exhaust you can get you'll reduce the exhaust flow rate - the best 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.

Usual exhaust restrictions are traced to the filters installed, so adding a freer flowing high performance alternative will help avoid this restriction.

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

Faults issues and things to look out for on the Tau

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

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