Mike Smith came by last week after picking up a fresh batch of his manifolds. Get’em while they’re hot 😉
Before these bad boys make into the hands of customers they’ll need some machining. A big thanks to Mike Smith for his hard work and dedication. You are truly an inspiration for us. It is an honor to be your friend.
Brian and Jason both brought in their Titan trucks for a header install and tuning. One problem that plagues all Titans is the factory exhaust manifold cracks. Since the manifold and cat pipe are all one piece there ends up being a tremendous amount of stress on the manifold due to in part by the weight on the manifold and thermal expansion. Up first is Brian who brought in a set of Stillen Headers for his Titan.
Somewhere in that picture is the Stillen Header.
Pic from below of both headers installed. What a joy installing headers on a 4wd truck.
Dynoing the Titan is a tad tricky due to the AT transmission. It wants to downshift as soon as one goes WOT. I had to start above 3800 RPMs. Blue run was after we installed ONLY the headers. No baseline before hand unfortunately. Red run was after we tuned the Titan for some excellent gains. To fully appreciate the headers a tune is a must on these engines\trucks. You can see the AFR on the blue run was bad. Although peak WHP wasn’t crazy the gains throughout the band were huge. Peak torque shot up over 59 wheel torque. You can clearly see the the cursor at 4250 showing some sweet gains. Almost 80 wheel torque gained and 60 whp! Not bad for only headers and tune.
I took a picture of what came off of Jason’s Titan’s manifold. You can easily see the crack. By law or mandate, Nissan and other car manufacturers are responsible for replacing this part since it deals with the cats (emissions components). Sadly though, the dealer will try to pass it off since its a hard job to do (replace manifold) and hard to see it while on the vehicle.
Here you can see how the factory tied the factory manifold (TOP) in with the main cat. One reason they do this is to get the cat hot quicker and keep the cat hotter for cleaner emissions. This however does not help manifold longevity. The new shiny ceramic coated header is from Doug Thorley.
These headers from D.T. had cleaner ports than the Stillen pieces.
Where’s Doug? If you take a close look you can see the D.T. plaque on the header. Another nice thing about the D.T. headers was NOT having to extend the O2 sensor wiring like we had to do on the Stillen units. We also installed a set of Berk’s HFC B-Pipes for even less exhaust restriction.
Your probably wondering why Jason’s truck baselined ALOT lower than Brians. Brian’s truck was not lifted and had factory sized tires. Jason on the other hand had his Titan lifted and equipped with massive monster truck tires. It took two of us to put his wheels back on. Not only are they heavier but he loses a ton of gearing too. This in turn hurts performance (f-ing duh!). WOT started after 3800+ RPMs so ignore it before then on the graph. Blue run is Jason’s baseline. Red is after we installed the D.T. headers, Berk B-Pipes, and tune. Peak power on Jason’s truck came up nicely. Looking at 5k you can see we gained 40 wheel torque and almost 40 whp. This truck would have easily made over 300+whp with the factory sized tires.
Mr. Billy S brought us his Z32TT AT last year with some basic mods. His Z came equipped with JWT Sport 500s, stock auto trans, stock intercooler piping, Nismo 555cc Injectors, stock exhaust manifolds, Chinese 2.4″ down pipes, stock cat pipes, Borla catback, Selin Dual POP Kit, and Snow Performance Meth\Water injection kit. Need less to say the dyno results weren’t spectacular with his list of mods. We took the time to “educate” Bill on how to better improve the efficiency of his setup without having to make any “huge” changes. Throughout the course of a year, Bill put on 2.5″ IC piping and we installed a built SZ transmission, SZ 3″ 4-Bolt DPs, SZ 3″ Test Pipes, and SZ 3″ Catback to top it all off. Bill also stepped up the nozzle size on the Snow Performance kit. Exhaust manifolds were not upgraded. Bill is currently planning his next “big” upgrade. Some of us just can’t get enough.
This dyno graph shows you the difference from his old mods to the new mods. If you read the paragraph above you’d know what the differences were. The after shows a dramatic difference across the entire powerband with the largest gains found in the mid-range. At 4k we freed up another 70 torque and 50 whp. This is on 91 octane. Click the graph to see its full size.
This graph again shows you the difference between the mods and this is on meth injection (Boost Juice). On his old mods and running meth we found NO added power from turning up the boost. This is when efficiency comes back into play. No need to run more boost and make the same or less power. The after is very impressive. Running meth and 91 octane fuel with the new mods we saw 110 whp & 105 torque gains at 5500RPMs. We were able to run higher boost with the new breather mods and make power like planned. This won’t be the last of Mr. Sutton’s quest for more power.
When Dean M. brought us his baby for tuning and some clutch job, he thought he was “done” modding his Z. Anytime we @ SZ see any room for improvement we’ll let you know. Dean is rocking some Sport 500s, purple top 555 Nismos, SZ 2.5″ DPs & TPs, HKS “old skool” dual tip catback, stock exhaust manifolds, JWT Dual POP, and Greddy Profec-B EBC. We let Dean know that there were significant improvements in the Z32 mod world and that before he planned upgrading turbos he can easily perform other supporting mods to give him better response and possibly the same or more power than a turbo upgrade would provide.
This story does not end here as we tuned Dean’s Z as is w\o adding any new funky fresh mods. After discussing his long term goals we agreed that in the next few months we would add our SZ 3″ DPs and 3″ to 2.5″ TPs. I’m working on the catback change. Hopefully Dean will agree! If so we’d go full SZ 3″ TPs and SZ Catback. Next in line would be Z1 TBs, Ash I\C & Inlet Piping, along with some Ash Massive I\Cs, topping it all off with some Nismo 740cc injectors and 300Degree Rails. We performed the following dyno sometime last year with his current and old skool mods.
While we had Dean’s Z for servicing, we added the Aruba Dave brace. Nice piece with clean welds.
Here’s Dean’s Dyno graph for his “old skool” mods. Both on 91 & 100 Octane. Another one of those where more boost doesn’t make more power. He’s got a potato in the tail pipe! 😉 Stay tuned for Dean’s new skool mod results in the upcoming months.
Dean’s Z is @ the shop at this very moment for some suspension work. Turns out those Teins really do ride like shit. Well, its relative but Dean’s ready to ditch his Tein EDFC setup in favor of some new Nissan shocks and Eibach springs.
Till next time! Keep the rubber side down.
Another congrats is in order for our boy Mark. He came by a few weeks ago to surprise us with his new purchase.
I’m starting to wonder that this blue color isn’t quite as rare as I thought. 😉
Here the GTR is getting wetsanded to remove the factory “orange peel”.
It’s hard to tell in the picture but there is a big difference shown here on the rear fender.
I had the opportunity to drive Mark’s GTR and it’s an amazing vehicle. Thanks for the ride!
This blue bomber received a set of Swift Springs and Kics 20mm Wheel Spacers. The Swift Springs are an excellent choice for a street driven Z being both comfortable, a little lower, and better handling.
Owning a 1996 300ZX means having to live with OBD-II. Although OBD-II today is a great tuning tool for newer car models, the 96′ Z was left in the dust. 1996 was the first year OBD-II was implemented in North America and it was also the last year the 300ZX was produced in North America. This left the 96 a red headed step-child when it came to easy breezy modifications like its younger kind. The 1996 year had 20 less HP, less aggressive camshafts on both the intake and exhaust for both the MT and AT alike (totally different than any of the other years). The 90-95 MT cam spec for duration is 248 on the intake and 248 on the exhaust. The AT 90-95 has a 240 intake and 248 exhaust. Drum roll for the 96………… they use a 232 intake and 240 exhaust! They also have less lift then the earlier Zs. No VTC system (Nissan’s Variable Cam Timing) also hurts power all around. The 96s also use their own special OBD-II ECUs which are tougher to tune and throw codes for non emissions friendly mods. So some have resorted to retro fit their 96s to 95 specs as far as the wiring, ECU, and cam setup goes. This maybe an easy option for some but in states like California it’s a tough option to go through with. Talk about some bad odds.
Enter Alex. He has a 96 Z32 TT and has the mod bug. Alex has been our customer for almost 10 years now and he’s slowly turned the wick up throughout the years. This past December he wanted to “bump” it up some with the way of our 3″ 4-Bolt Downpipes (Stock Turbos), 3″to 2.5″ Test Pipes, Ash 2.5″ I\C Piping (w\ SZ Outlet Pipes) & Massives, Selin Dual POP, Nismo 740cc Injectors, Z1 Throttle Bodies, J-Spec Bumper, and some cooling mods for the track (auto-x & road course) duty.
Freshly painted J-Spec & addition of Powertrix C.F. Ducts.
Ash product installed.
Here are his results on 91 octane. We had to rely on an AFC for fuel tuning……because its a 96.
Here’s where it gets interesting. Exposing the shortcomings of modifying a 96 TT. Increasing boost and fuel octane (100) did nothing for it. Easily seen here are the boost differences between the 91 octane tune on 14.7 psi and 100 octane on almost 19 psi. Gains are seen early on between the two only until about 5800 RPMs. After 5800 RPMs the engine cannot efficiently make use of the added boost. Running the engine at this level will only add stress to it. The cursor on the graph shows the differences at 6000 RPMs. Boost is 12.78 psi on 91 octane and 16.74 on 100 octane. One would expect more power but that is not the case. On 12 psi the engine is more efficient making power and torque. It makes 20 more HP & torque on less boost (12 psi). To make use of the quirky 96 and 100 octane would be to limit boost past 5800 RPMs.
Up next for this 96 will be the addition of pre-96 cams while adding Nissan’s VTC system without modifying the ECU & Harness via SZ funky, fresh mods. Keeping it California legal.
Creamsicle anyone? This Z32TT packs some orange punch through some Sport 700 Turbos, MS Manifolds, Selin Dual POP, and SZ 2.5″ Downpipes & Test Pipes. Mods are simple and basic.
After having sat for a few years Ubaldo brought us his creamsicle to get it back on the road and have it tuned.
Not bad for the amount of mods and our 91 Octane.
Although its hard to see clearly that’s 300,648 miles from one of our customer’s Z32!
I apologize for the infrequent posting lately! More posts coming soon.
Our good friend Lee brought by his beautiful blue 2012 GT-R over to the shop for us to drool over. Amazing automobile. Quality and performance are amazing as Lee gave me a ride and let Greg drive it. Maybe next time, he’ll let me drive it 😉
Congrats to Lee! You deserve it.
