How To Increase Horsepower And Torque (7 Quick Steps)

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If you’ve ever wanted to learn how to increase horsepower and torque for your car, then this article is for you. There are a couple of ways to do that, including tweaking your exhaust, changing your catalytic converter, installing cold-air intake, etc.

Increasing the torque of your engine simply means to “fine tune” your engine to perform at its possible best. There are equally some car mods you can install to achieve this purpose.

Not everyone may find it cool, but car modifications are really good and “worth it” to some extent. Basically, your new car is supposed to deliver its peak performance; however, as you keep driving, after many miles, you may begin to notice a drop in the torque and performance of your engine.

To revive your engine and make it run more efficiently, you need to tweak certain aspects of the car to increase the horsepower and torque.

How To Increase Horsepower And Torque

How To Increase Horsepower And Torque

These tips shared below are safe and won’t cause any harm to your engine. While most of them are things you could do by yourself, the advanced ones should be done by an experienced/professional auto mechanic or technician.

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1. Give Your Engine A Wash

This is the simplest way to improve your engine’s performance. Apparently, as your keep driving, every day, dirt, grimes, and several other sediments can get into several sides and corners of your engine; they accumulate to form buildups, which affect the engine’s performance.

However, when you wash the engine, you’d definitely notice an improvement in the performance. Now, while this practice doesn’t directly increase your engine’s horsepower and torque, it is more like a “sine qua non” for fine-tuning your vehicle.

2. Install Cold-Air Intake

Now, to the main modifications that can directly affect your engine’s horsepower and torque, installing a cold-air intake has a track record of increasing engine torque and horsepower. A cold-air intake increases the amount of “cool” air that gets into your engine while it’s running.

With more air introduced to the engine, the temperature in your engine bay would stay low, reducing chances of overheating, and also increasing your engine’s torque. There are quite many cold-air intake designs, look out for the one that fits into your car.

3. Tweak The Exhaust

While the stock exhaust system on your car may not be showing any signs of a faulty component or failure, if you want more power for your engine, you to upgrade your car’s exhaust. This includes installing a “Cat Back” exhaust, changing your stock exhaust header and muffler.

Also, if your exhaust’s catalyst converter is no longer doing its job, you should change it right away. There are advanced aftermarket exhaust systems you can install for this purpose; they are already tweaked, and thus, they’d most likely work for you.

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4. Change The Catalytic Converter

It is important to note that when tweaking your exhaust system, you need to ensure you’re installing a high-flow catalytic converter. However, sometimes, using a custom catalytic converter can go against the regulations in your state because custom cat converters can change the sound your car makes.

A high-flow cat converter isn’t too different from your stock option; its major advantage is that it works faster, which is advantageous to the engine. But before you make this crucial change to your car’s exhaust system, ensure it complies with your state’s regulations.

5. Don’t Use Conventional (Regular) Oils

While it’s entirely okay to use mixed motor oils, semi synthetics, or full synthetics for your engine, if you want to get the best from your engine, you should stick with full synthetics and nothing more. Synthetic oils have a track record of unlocking engines’ best performances.

How does using synthetic oils increase your engine’s horsepower and torque? It’s pretty simple, your engine already has the capacity, you only need to apply anything that would unlock that “Peak” performance, and synthetic oils have the capability to do that.

When you regularly change synthetic oils, it would leave your engine clean at all times, thanks to the premium additives typically used for formulating synthetic engine oils. Furthermore, the additives used in synthetic oils can increase engine horsepower and torque.

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6. ECU Tuning and Forced Induction

Talking about modifying your car to achieve increased horsepower and torque, ECU tuning and forced induction may be needed. These modifications would effectively increase torque in the following ways.

Forced induction allows more air into your engine; thus, increase the amount of power generated by the engine. You may also need a turbocharger or superchargers, depending on the torque increase curve you decide to follow.

If you’ve done forced induction, then you need a fine ECU tuning, which proves to deliver potential torque gains. When your car is being manufactured it is fine-tuned in a way the manufacturer believes is best; however, the manufacturer’s aim and yours might not be the same.

Hence, you can tune your vehicle’s ECU to optimize the engine to function just the way you want it. This is a critical modification, you shouldn’t attempt doing it yourself, except if you’re an auto expect.

7. Little Things That Matter

You may be wondering, “What are the little things that matter?” Well, these little things include your fuel injectors, valves, and filters (air, oil, and fuel filters). If you haven’t changed or checked on components, it’s time you do that because they can really mar or improve your engine’s performance.

The spark plugs are also an important component to check out. Finally, inspect your engine coils – they also play a role in how much power your engine generates for a drive.

Summary

These are the possible things you could do to increase your engine’s performance. Mainly, what it takes to increase torque and horsepower is fine exhaust tweaking; customizing your exhaust system can leave you significant torque and horsepower gains.

Another place to pay attention to, is your filters, plugs, and electric coils. Regardless, a regularly maintained vehicle would always run at its best without any further tweaking or customization. Finally, it is advisable and more advantageous to use synthetic oils over regular/mixed oils.

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