For many people, the Kia Optima is not what they think of when thinking about performance cars. While the Optima is in the realm of standard sedans, the 2.0L turbocharged under the hood has a lot of power potential with the right modifications. The most important modification of all is tuning, which allows the boost to be increased dramatically.
Of course, not everyone wants to flash their ECU, since that’s more of a permanent job and often is traceable with advanced tools. Luckily, there is another option: tuning boxes. With a tuning box, the signals from various sensors are modified before being sent to the ECU, which effectively tricks the ECU into changing parameters.
In the case of the Optima’s 2.0T engine, air/fuel ratio, ignition timing, boost, and other parameters are modified to increase power. This is an application where you can often see very big power increases since Kia left a lot of performance on the table. Thanks to one of our awesome customers, we can see those huge power increases on a dyno graph!
Customer: “I have your tuning box from last year and I am really enjoying it. I finally went to the dyno yesterday to see what difference the box makes…Wow….from a baseline of 222whp to 283whp and 266wtq to 307wtq…61WHP GAIN!!! Thanks guys and even the tuner was VERY impressed…”
Learn more and order your VR Tuned Tuning Box for Kia Optima here