The Lowdown on "Prince Modifications"

How to modify and upgrade the Peugeot Prince

"Comprehensive guide to tuning the Peugeot Prince engine!"

Forums like the one at TorqueCars often are getting emails requesting information on how to improve the Prince from people wanting to know what are the best Prince modifications. So let us look into Peugeot Prince parts and outline the best upgrades on this great engine and point out some common pitfalls along the way.

This pages aim is detail the best approach to Prince tuning and outline the optimum modifications. Peugeot Prince make awesome project engines and with carefully chosen enhancements like remaps, turbo kits and camshafts you will really improve your driving pleasure.

The ultimate Prince mods on an engine are in our opinion the ones that give the biggest return for your money.

We won't be swayed by popular Prince mods, they need to be cost effective.

Improving air intake on the Prince

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 too little air it runs rich losing power . 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 job to shove more air and fuel into each cylinder 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 AFM/MAP on the Prince when loads more air is being drawn into the engine.

We note 4 bar air sensors coping with quite large power gains, whereas the OEM air sensor limited bhp at a much lower level.

Intake manifolds flow the air during the suck phase from the filter and allow it to be sucked into the engine and mixed with fuel.

The shape and flow characteristics of the Headers can make a noticeable change to fuel delivery on the Prince.

Many mass produced engine intake manifold are improved through a performance upgrade, although some car makers provide reasonably good intake manifold.

Larger Prince valves, carrying out port matching and head flowing will also boost bhp, the fantastic side effect is it will permit a greater bhp increase on other parts.

Prince performance cam tips.

Each engine responds better to extreme cam durations than others.

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

Longer 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.

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 normally push up the power throughout the rev range, you may sacrifice a little low end torque but your top end will improve.

Motorsport camshafts, push up the top end band but as a result the car will not idle smoothly and low end power nearly always suffers.

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

You should ideally match your torque band to your typical driving style so for a road car stick with a fast road Prince camshaft

Stage 1, 2 and 3 mods for the Prince

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 Prince parts:

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

Stage 2 Prince parts:

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

Stage 3 Prince parts:

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

ECU mapping should help to to establish the full potential of all the upgrades you've done to your Prince.

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 outcome may depend much on the upgrades you've done and the condition of your engine.

Turbo modifications on the Prince

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 Prince.

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 your motor has forced induction upgrades are more reliable and most turbo charged engines will have uprated components.

However you will find an engines will need better parts at higher power limits

Discover these restrictions and upgrade to better quality crank and pistons to survive the power.

It's not unheard of drivers spending a a stack of money on turbo charger upgrades on the Prince only to suffer the indignity of watching the engine block literally blow up when it's used on the roads.

Bigger capacity turbos commonly suffer no power at low rpm, and small turbos spool up much more quickly but do not have the peak rpm engines power gains.

In the last 10 years the range of turbochargers is always improving and we now see variable vane turbochargers, where the vane profile is altered according to speed to lower lag and increase top end power.

Twin scroll turbochargers divert the exhaust flow into a couple of channels and flow these at differently angled vanes in the turbocharger. They also boost 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 gains, although more challenging to configure. We have this in depth look at twinchargers if you want to read more.

Tips about fuel supply on the Prince

You will need to ensure that the engine is not starved of fuel so should ramp up the fuelling when you start extending past 20% of a performance hike. Experienced tuners recommend to over specify your flow rate on the injectors.

The rule of thumb is to add another 15% when specifying an injector, which takes into account injector deterioration and affords 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 Prince 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 in flow.

On most factory exhausts you'll find your flow rate is good 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 for best results.

Usual exhaust restrictions are in the emissions filters installed, so adding a higher flowing sports 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 Prince

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

We need your help to complete and improve this page, so do give us your feedback in the comments box below.

We want to know your experiences with parts on your Prince, it helps us improve our tips and keeps us current so please use the comments box to drop a tip.

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