Ken from Idaho brought over his Z32 for some tuning sometime last year.  Ken’s Z is absolutley beautiful inside and out.  This Z is equipped with an auto trans hence the title of this post.  Ken’s running a stock long-block with 2560R turbos, MS Manifolds, Selin Dual POP, SZ\300Degree 740cc Fuel Kit,  SZ 2.5″ DPs, TPs, and Catback, Stillen I\Cs, SZ Auto Trans, and Blitz Spec-R Boost Controller.

A cleanly executed engine bay.

The original charcoal grey paint was in immaculate condition.

Tuned for 91 Octane (Red Run) and 100 Octane (Blue Run).

By far one of the highest NA Z32s we’ve seen.  John’s Z has lots done to it.  Something we’d like to see is a change of cams after looking at his power delivery.  It has regrind cams in it now.  To remedy some of this we installed a set of adjustable exhaust cam gears which gained more power and smoother power & torque delivery.  We also added a Selin Dual POP, fixed his VTC, and tuned it.  A before and after is shown below.  A list of some power mods John has are:

• Factory 120+k Miles Engine
• Stillen Headers
• SZ Hi-Flow Cat Pipes
• SZ Single Oval Catback
• Regrind Cams
• Tomei Adj Exhaust Cam Gears
• SZ Flywheel & Sport Street Clutch
• Electric Cooling Fans
• Selin Dual POP & Translator
• UD Underdrive Pulley
• SZ Tuning

The red run was with a single POP filter untuned.  The blue run is with the Selin Kit, VTC fix, and tuning.  A peak gain of 10 whp & 12 torque.  The  most impressive gains to be found were at the mid-range (20 to 25 whp & torque).

Ed’s been a good customer of ours for quite some time.  We’ve always come to know him as “Ed with the Front Mount”.  Ed was sporting the Apollo FMIC kit which in our opinion sucks balls.  I’d like to add as I was reading on another forum that FMICs CAN work on a Z32 when designed properly.  The only one to our knowledge is the TDM FMIC Kit.  We run it on our blue drag Z32.  It has less bends and a very high quality core.  The (Apollo) kit increases piping length and also adds more bends.  This in turns adds to restrictions and loss of power, along with blocking airflow to the radiator.  Slowly Ed fixed maintenance issues and did small upgrades along the way.  Recently he finally decided to have us ditch his FMIC setup in favor of larger 2.5″ I\C Piping, Ash Massives, and Z1 T.B.s to round out the combo.

Ed’s current mods:

• Stock Turbos & Manifolds
• Stock Engine
• SZ 2.5″ Downpipes & Test Pipes
• HKS Hyper Catback
• RPS Twin Carbon Clutch
• Selin Dual POP Kit
• Nismo 740cc Injectors & 300Degree Rails

This is a before and after from just changing out to the old FMIC to the larger I\C piping, Massives, and T.B.s.  Red run was the old FMIC, Blue run the new setup.  Some gains down low and impressive gains up top.  Almost 50 ft\lbs and 60 whp gain at 6500 RPMs.  Efficiency is key, more power on same boost levels.

Back in July we headed off to Vancouver, B.C. to meet up with our good friends.  We had been there before to do some tuning but this time we sure weren’t expecting what followed!  We took for the airport 7 a.m. Friday morning and arrived to Vancouver around 2 p.m.  I could not believe how “nasty” Canadian customs is.  I was interrogated by the first officer with a very bitter cold attitude (like your job?).  What are you doing in Canada?  How long will you be staying?  Where will you be staying?  How do you know the people your staying with in Canada?  Where do they live?  Just some of the questions I was asked.  Shortly after we pick up our bags and head to the EXIT, boy was I wrong.  I got picked out by another officer and was told to follow them into another back room.  Great, I had some tuning equipment in my bags not to mention we brought our AFR wideband stand that looked like a pipe bomb to an untrained eye.  Again I was attacked with 20 questions in under 20 seconds.  I thought a cavity search was next.  Lucky for me I didn’t have to open up my bags and I was allowed to enter the Canadian country.  BTW, vorpalz (Rob K.) has a very nice writeup with more pictures of our adventure, be sure to read and view it by clicking on this.

Beautiful view from the plane.

We were picked up by Rick H. and his lovely wife.  Grabbed a quick bite to eat and made it over to Meatman’s (Josh) home\workshop.  We knew Josh had been working frantically that entire week to get his car back on the road after eating a rod bearing (or so he only thought at the time).  Arriving to Josh’s property I was amazed of his “little” place.  Beautiful and a lift for his Z!

The Workshop

Josh’s Zed

Scurfie’s Silver Zed and McGuiness’ peeping in front of it.

Tom’s beautiful Z

Little did we know that this VG was going to be out in a couple hours.  Greg and I listened to Josh’s engine and it didn’t sound pretty.  Not only was there some nasty lower end noise it cranked over with low compression.  We put our heads together and decided to fix it with parts Josh had laying around.  Thus began our mad adventure.

Josh anxiously pulling his Zed into the workshop.

Josh had a good assortment of tools although there were plenty of times we wished we had something better to accomplish some tasks.  I learned a new name for “zip ties” as we commonly know them here.  In Canada they are also known as “zap straps”.  How freakin’ cool is that?

Pretty SZ 3″ SS Exhaust.

Rob confirming that his test drive after one of our fixes was successful.  Greg riding shotgun.

We all worked like mad men.  Determined to get Josh back up and running AND tuned the next day.  Greg and I were running on little sleep as it was.  We started around 6:30 that Friday afternoon and finished around 7:30 a.m. Saturday morning.  Luckily for Josh we were on a mission and he had a good looking (internally) short-block sitting around.  We transferd all of his parts including his old heads on to that thing.

So not only did it have low compression.  It had bad rod bearings and main bearings!  Way to go Josh!  He knows how to punish a VG on the road course.

Rick’s wife stuck around with the boys all night long!

Here you can see Josh (Nike shirt) looking for something.  What was I looking for again?  😉 McGuinness looking on.  There were plenty of times we faced big bumps compromising the end job.  With enough determination we saw it through.  By the time 2-3 a.m. hit I was beat.  I slept a few hours in Josh’s Zed.

My bed for a few hours.  I remember waking up while the car was up in the air and recalling the boys stabbing the trans into place.  WTF was that? (thinking to myself) Oh, yeah.

Around 6:30 a.m.  Buttoning everything up.  Boy it was a sweet thing to hear that engine crank over.  It sounded so healthy and quiet.  Everything had come to plan.  I don’t think anyone could believe it.

Greg making sure she’s pretty to see the light of day.  It’s all in the details.

Rick’s Zed

Josh looking and probably thinking to himself, how the hell?  Damn this rocks!  Greg and I went to our hotel room to take showers, ate breakfast, and went over to the dyno for another long day of tuning!

Did I tell you we were a little tired?

Some of the dyno results:

Josh’s fresh rebuild made a nice amount of power.  Sport 530 powered.

Scurfield’s Zed proved to have some gremlins that needed to be addressed before it could undergo more power.  Sport 700 powered.

Rob’s (vorpalz) Zed powered by Sport 530s on 91 Octane.

Tom’s Zed powered by 2871Rs on Q16.  Well done.

We finished up tuning 9 p.m. Saturday night.  We went to the hotel, ate dinner, fell asleep by 10:30 and woke up by 5 a.m. the next day to catch our flight back to L.A.  We love Zs, Zeds, can’t you tell?  Don’t forget your zap straps!

This is a rare find.  JDM RHD Slick Top TT from the factory.  Canadians do have it good.

TT.Netters may recognize the red car as being Jim Nichols Z32.  That would be Dave N.’s dad.  Jim, Dave, Cliff, and Ben all came down to get Jim and Cliff’s Z32s tuned.  Jim has a very clean Z with standard bolt ons and still has factory CAT pipes.  His basic engine mods are:

• Stock Turbos
• SZ Downpipes
• OE CAT Pipes
• 740cc Injectors
• JWT Single POP
• SZ Catback
• Boost Jets
• Stillen SZ Modded Intercoolers

Nothing crazy but makes for a nice solid Z car.

Cliff on the other hand has a 96 2by2 that he himself converted to a TT.  Cliff has our full SZ 2.5″ exhaust setup, Z1 Stage 1 turbos, Nismo 615cc injectors, larger intercoolers, etc..

Cliff’s car came in with a terribly lean AFR, this was corrected however along the way we suspected his VTCs were not working.  His low end power was lacking.  After some tests we concluded the valves behind the cams were MIA.  Cliff went back home, tore it down and fixed the problem to come back and get it finalized.  Here’s a graph showing the difference with VTC.

Blue was without VTC and red is with VTC.  Big difference!  Thank Nissan for implementing VTC for the VG30DEs.  One of the many advantages over the RB26.