Christian came to us for tuning on his Z a few weeks back. He has a black powdercoated Stillen G3 Intake, Berk HFCs, and Tanabe Y-Pipe connected to the factory muffler.
Great clean look with the intake piping powdercoated black.
Final Results
Archives for : September2010
Antonio’s been a customer of ours for almost 10 years. He purchased his Z from our parts manager at Nissan a long time ago. Through the years he did some small upgrades and as its mileage climbed and the fact it was an early 1990 model (valve issues) developed low compression. To add insult to injury, his wife wrecked it slamming into and up a curb. The accident took place sometime around 2003 and he saved the cash to fix it all. His baby was in a real bad place. Antonio was determined to fix the chassis first. The accident took place sometime around 2003 and he saved the cash to fix it all. The frame shop ended up replacing the sub-frame along with a plethora of other things. Once the body was “fixed”, it sat for a few more years before Antonio could save up more cash to dedicate to the engine. Late 2009 came by and it was time to fix his ailing Z. Antonio wanted something that was very reliable and make good power. Nothing too extreme. We sourced a brand new Nissan long-block as the heart and soul. These are now non existent as far as I’m aware. Sport 700s, MSP Manifolds, larger I\C piping, Ash Massives, Z1 T.B.s, full SZ 3″ exhaust, 740cc injectors & 300Degree Rails, Selin Dual POP Kit, SZ Oil Pan, and RPS Twin Billet Carbon Clutch round up the majority of the mods.
To the untrained eye it all looks stock.
After getting the car all back to together and restored we found there were still gremlins plaguing the chassis and driveline. There was still much ado with the suspension. Since the car was hit in the front and rear it ruined the front wheel bearings and also the rear. The RR axle was also damaged and needed replacing. Those have since been replaced. It wasn’t until corner weighted it that we found just how bad everything was. We found that the LR corner was seriously underweight while a majority of the weight was on the LF. Ride height was seriously off. For this we looked to Powertrix and installed a set of their Sport Street Coilovers.
While playing with the front suspension more we also found that the front Stillen anti-swaybar was under extreme pressure. This is not good for handling, ride height and the bar needs to not have any preload on it. Having this off was throwing off the weight and ride height. Not correcting this issue would have us going round in circles. To accomplish this we used high quality SPL End-Links featuring the use of heavy duty 1\2″ bearings.
While one end of the anti-swaybar is tightened down you need to drop the car down on its own weight and attach the other side with no preload. The other side that is already tightened may need adjusting for the “loose” side to attach. Finally with these parts installed we were able to properly corner weight the car to have an almost 50\50 weight distribution (51\49). One more wheel bearing seems to plague this Z so we should have it riding smooth and noise free down the road. With a little more time & money a resto on the exterior will be done.
Tuning results after a 1000 mile break in on 91 Octane:
460 whp & 421 torque.
SZ Oil Pan & SZ 3″ Exhaust
On September 12th we attended the 6th Annual Japanese Classic Car Show in Long Beach (Queen Mary). It was a beautiful day for a car show and the cars were outstanding. It was great to see the old classics flexing their stuff. In no particular order I present to you some of the highlights. John Morton made an appearance along with signing some autographs. Be sure to click on the image for a full shot view.
Not in the show but an interesting find. MR-2 with Z32 wheels.
26,000 Original Miles
Blow-Through Carb Setup on a rotary
Mr. Morton
Last time we had Sean’s Z34 in the shop we added a few little goodies: Part 1
In this update we added a Stillen 19 row oil cooler to keep those oil temps at bay. Typical engine oil temps for a Z34 on the street for a warm day can easily reach 240-250 degrees. Don’t even attempt to take one to a track without a cooler. You will engage limp mode in a matter of a couple laps.
With the addition of a cooler one will see temps drop down an easy 20 to 40 degrees. Giving the owner a much better feeling that oil temps aren’t so far out of control.
Lastly we tuned Sean’s Z34 with our favorite UpRev software. You may have remembered that Sean’s car spun the roller’s with impressive numbers a few months ago, but now that the summer heat is upon us the numbers are a little lower.
We baslined @ 309 whp and after tuning we put down 316 whp. Nice solid gains throughout the entire powerband.
A well executed Z32 done by our good friend Scott Smith. Scott has one gorgeous Z with a lot of giddy up and go. Once his dedicated track slut, this Z32 serves as a weekend cruiser and dragster. Although we did his build some time ago we retuned with our 16x ECU Switcher. His Z33 has officially taken over road race track duty.
- SZ Race Long-block
- JWT 500 Cams
- SZ 3″ Exhaust Turbo-Back
- Nismo 740cc Injectors
- MSP Manifolds
- MSP Turbo Inlet Pipes
- JWT Sport 700 Turbos (.64 A\R)
- JWT Dual POP
- SZ Flywheel
- SZ High 5 Clutch
- NA Rear End & Sub-frame
- Stillen Intercoolers
We added our SZ ECU Switcher and went to work with 3 different fuel tunes.
91 pisstane for 493 whp & 429 torque.
100 Octane for 599 whp & 533 torque.
Q16 for 658 whp & 586 torque.
Scotty! You better get into the 10s! Good luck and go get ’em!
Last year we had a Z33 with a Vortech SC come in for some baseline dyno runs to asses it’s running condition. Our customer bought it already equipped with the blower and tuning. We were amazed (OK, not so much anymore) how bad the tune was. First of all the map the car was running off the piggyback UTEC wasn’t even the right one. We put it on the “right” map and did another pull. Results shown below.
So the blue run was the way the customer had been driving the Z around. After locating the Utec we set it on the “right” map and made another pull shown in green. Needless to say it was horribly off on either setting. We started by ditching the piggyback Utec in favor of our beloved Uprev. This Z had larger injectors and fuel pump which I had to figure out exactly what he had since the owner had no clue. He bought the car from a sand lot used car dealer with all mods installed.
Here’s the before and after. Red was on the Utec “tuned” map and blue is what we ended up with after we tuned it using Uprev. Safer and more power. 290 whp before & 323 whp after.
