All about tuning

There’s no four-wheel drive here, no expensive and heavy separate hub-carriage suspension, and no widebody to increase track width. It’s simply a hot Elantra packed to the gills with the basics of modern performance: bigger brakes, a limited-slip differential, a six-speed manual gearbox (or eight-speed DCT), adaptive suspension, and more power from its 2.0 liter Theta II turbo engine. But there’s a little ace up the Elantra N’s sleeve: its Integrated Drive Axle (IDA).

This car’s front suspension may look pretty ordinary, but sharp eyes will notice one crucial difference, which is the lack of an axle nut in the center of its aluminum hub. It is, rather unusually, a machined flat surface that only acts as the center hole of the wheel. This is the IDA.

There are several important geometries in the front suspension of any car, especially those of a MacPherson front-wheel drive car like the Elantra. But the most important thing is the pivot axis, which is a virtual line that runs from the upper pivot point of the suspension to the lower one. In this case, the upper part is the upper part of the shock and the lower part is the lower ball joint.

Optimizing the pivot axis directly affects the friction radius and is often a primary consideration in suspension design. The friction radius is the distance between this virtual pivot axis line and the center of the tire. This distance has a large influence on steering feel and torque steer and acts as a steering lever. The larger the friction radius, the more leverage, which gives the torque going to the front wheels more leverage to ruin the party. In general, small bush radius is good, large bush radius is bad.

But even with the minimized friction radius, there is still another consideration: the distance between the axle joint and the pivot shaft. It’s another leverage point where torque going to the wheels through that axle joint can cause torque steer, but it’s hard to pack that axle joint close to the pivot axis. Typically, a shaft must be indexed to the hub using a long splined section and a bolt to secure it to the hub. Hyundai has removed this and made the axle a semi-permanent part of the hub, bringing the axle joint much closer to the pivot shaft. Hence the integrated drive shaft.

As a wrench, this scares me slightly because future maintenance will certainly be more difficult, but it’s a neat concept that saves weight and packing space. Hyundai says it comes from rallying, which is a maintenance-intensive motorsport. Most likely the front suspension takedown point is now inside the inner knuckle instead of outside like most cars. For what it’s worth, there was no torque steer to speak of while driving the Elantra N.

Best of all, the rest of the front suspension looks easy to maintain and still uses the classic two-bolt method of attaching the strut to the hub instead of the annoyingly popular caliper strut mount. And the brakes are huge 14.2-inch single-piston vented units that should be up to any task with your brake pad of choice.

Moving to the rear, things get much simpler, with a semi-rear trailing arm suspension with just four links. The trailing arm does the wheel placement fore and aft, while there is a lower control arm that carries most of the lateral load. Then naturally a camber link controls the camber and a toe link controls the toe.

The rear brakes are ventilated and large at 12.4 inches and are clearly meant to take on an extra task in the form of brake vectoring to aid balance and balance between corners. There’s not much fancy in the rear beyond that, with some pretty basic geometries mostly carried over from the standard Elantra. There’s a dual-compound trailing arm bushing that simultaneously increases ride comfort and also fine-tunes reflexes by having a harder rubber compound that’s only used under certain load conditions.

Reading between the lines of the rear suspension tells a simple story: There’s plenty of kinematic pointing, as indicated by how much shorter the dropper link is than the lower control arm. There’s also a good dose of kinematic negative camber gain, although not as much as I’ve seen in competitor cars.

Things get a little more interesting in the engine bay, with the 2.0-liter turbocharged inline-four known as the Theta II engine. As part of a round of upgrades following the Veloster N, this engine received a larger turbocharger consisting of a 5mm larger compressor wheel and a 6mm larger exhaust turbine, which is quite substantial. Power gets a marginal increase of 276 horsepower, just 1 hp more than the Veloster N’s ​​275 hp. But torque is up substantially to 289 lb-ft from 260 lb-ft, showing that the turbo has plenty of more in the deposit.

As I mentioned in my review, the engine tuning was interesting. It felt like it was slowing down somehow, with the initial boost of boost being quick and ferocious, but the ECU would back off the boost slightly just as it leveled off. I could hear it in the Elantra’s thrust, but I could also hear the turbocharger’s whistle reduce slightly as the ECU adjusted power, along with a slight reduction in boost pressure on the cluster display. manometer It’s just an observation, but I have a hunch that a lot is left on the table in terms of tuning, or that the engine is throttled for transmission protection reasons.

There’s some neat equipment under the hood of the Elantra N. A small but appreciated oil-to-water oil cooler uses engine coolant to remove heat, while a small secondary water pump keeps the coolant circulating when the engine is off or needs extra help. The extruded charge tubes are made of aluminum in the name of weight savings and for better throttle response.

Up top, there’s extensive heat shielding around the turbocharger, including a shield patch on the underside of the hood. Physically, the turbo is quite large and similar in size to a Mitsubishi (MHI) TD05 rack turbo. It’s actually made by a Korean supplier called Keyyang, though. It’s not your typical IHI or MHI turbo, but it’s effective all the same. Details on Keyyang’s partnership with Hyundai are scarce, though close collaboration with Hyundai’s R&D base in Namyang, Korea is likely, in a similar arrangement to Toyota and Denso. From what I could find, their relationship started in 1995 with Keyyang building diesel turbos for Hyundai, a year after Keyyang was established.

Of course, the engine is direct injection with the injectors located next to the intake manifold. There is a bump on the intake manifold that houses an actuator, which actuates a two-stage intake manifold. Most of the charge pipes are metal with small housing couplings that help with throttle response, and the primary charge pipe on the throttle body has a black coating that probably helps with resistance to the heat.

Finally, the gearbox is a six-speed manual unit, while the electronic limited-slip differential clutch package is housed in an extension outside the gearbox. Instead of using a conventional mechanical limited slip that lives inside the gearbox, the so-called N Corner Carving Differential uses a clutch pack to distribute torque to either front wheel. It is, again, very similar to what Volkswagen uses with Haldex, but much more sensitive and less involved electronically. Most importantly, it can send the vast majority of torque to either wheel, although Hyundai has yet to confirm the exact percentage.

The biggest advantage of this style of limited slip is the ability to have a true zero differential lock, which allows for very strong turning and mitigates understeer on deceleration. But with the clutch pack, the differential can lock up and provide traction on acceleration. It’s having your cake, a cake and a slice of pizza and eating it all, all while losing a little weight in the process.

What I like most about the Hyundai Elantra N, besides the way it drives, is that it does a lot without a lot of fancy engineering. The Honda Civic Type R has an incredible engineering masterpiece involved in its separate bucket-carrier suspension, which mitigates torque steer and aids steering, but the mechanically simpler Elantra N is somehow still it has better steering calibration. The Toyota GR Corolla has an advanced all-wheel drive system with two limited-slip differentials and the ability to split torque at the rear, but the Elantra rarely struggled for grip.

Sure, it has an integrated driveshaft, but that’s not a defining piece of engineering that transforms the car like the Type R’s front suspension and the GR Corolla’s all-wheel drive do. Instead, every part of its performance repertoire has been tuned to maximize both its potential and driving fun. But the Elantra N is also simple enough to modify and work on that future tuners and modders will have fun owning one too.

The Elantra N is a great example of the value of tuning rather than revolutionizing the wheel. There are good parts here, but the way they fit together is what makes the whole thing a great set. It’s a no-nonsense machine, and the car is all the better for it.