Archives for : February2011

Mike’s Red Dragon

See the red dragon in the picture?

You know when you get bit by an automotive bug you want more of it.  For Mike it came in the form of this 1995 300ZX TT.  It wasn’t long before he took it out to his local drag strip and craved more power.  He brought us his Z with “stage 3″ modifications.  Roughly making around 315 whp.  Over the course of a year we made improvements upon his platform.  We began by adding our SZ 3″ 4-Bolt Downpipes, and SZ 3″ to 2.5″ Test Pipes to mate up to his existing Stillen Catback.  For his drag racing rituals we installed our lightweight flywheel and High 5 clutch.  Moving on to the inlet tract we installed the Selin Dual POP kit, Ash Massives, 2.5” I\C piping, Z1 throttle bodies, and at the same time the plenum was off we upgraded his injectors with Nismo 740s.  A set of new old stock Leader Gears was also installed for added off the line giddy up.  The only thing holding him back now are the restrictive stock exhaust manifolds.  Upgrading his catback would also benefit him as well.  Knowing Mike though, if we do manifolds it will be time for bigger badder turbos.

Ash Massives mounted and ready for boost.

100 Octane Tune for which he runs at the drag strip.

Update to Melissa Drifts & Godspeed Turbos

I apologize to Melissa if this causes her any grief (I know this was already made public on the forums) but a couple months ago her Chinese Godspeed turbos gave up the power to make boost.  We haven’t personally seen what exactly failed on them.  They lasted only a few months and maybe a couple drift sessions.  Whereas her stock turbos had well over 100K+ miles and many years of drifting abuse.  Oh and her stock turbos are still in good shape.  I’m not surprised.

Selin Dual Intake and Dual POP History

A little history first……
Way back in the day JWT was the only one making larger turbo bolt on solutions for the Z.
The Single factory MAF has a zero to five volt scale and JWT found that the single MAF voltage happened to correspond to about the same HP. So the 5 volt signal was good for about 500 HP.
The JWT solution was to remove the stock intake TEE and used a single MAF on one side and a dummy MAF on the other side…….this measured half the air going into the engine and by splitting the injector size in half in the chip, the ECU could measure 1000HP.
Because the Z32 has a idle air control system that pulls all the air at idle from the left side of the engine where the MAF was placed, It measured all the air at idle causing a rich condition at idle and low speed.
The JWT fix for this was adding, what they called the low speed drive-ability kit.
What this did was cut the idle air hose with a TEE and run the same size hose to the other side, Because the hose was longer going to the other side this was not perfect and JWT added a small restrictor to the driver side to try and provide a better balance.
Well that all worked, but was not perfect and just bolting them on did not always offer a great idle.
What is interesting and why I bring this up, is because the reason JWT developed the dual pop was because of the electronic limit of the MAF.
The limit was 5 volts and this was about 500 HP.
Because of this electronic limit of the meter being 500HP, that got miss-interpreted and people started saying you do not need a dual pop until over 500HP…….
Well, electronically that was true, but power wise it makes a difference completely stock. We found in testing over 11 years ago that getting rid of the stock TEE and completely separating the two sides of the air intake system made great gains…….The only thing we did not know was if some of the gains were in the tuning of the chip that was required to go to dual pop at that time.
Jim Selin came along and decided to create a better solution…….
The Selin translator does not require a low speed hose and it also does not require a chip change to split the ECU value if your under 500HP. The reason it does not need these extra items is because it still measures all the air, Jim’s translator simply takes any air coming into the engine from either side and adds it together and sends it back to the ECU as one signal just like 1 meter does stock.
The reason dual pops work is that stock, the 2 sides are fighting for air in the tee, both sides are pulling from the same center section causing the turbos to work much harder to suck air.
By completely separating the two sides it makes it much easy for air to get into the turbo and the results speak for themselves.
When going over 500HP the Selin translator can be switched to average and this still measures all the air, but adds both sides and sends exactly half of the total it measures back to the ECU. This setting requires a chip change to cut the injector size in half to allow measuring higher HP up to 1000hp.
Jim came to us with a few customers watching to have us help him perform a test before and after going not from stock, but from a single pop to Jim’s dual pop set up.
This was done while strapped to the dyno and no other changes were made except installing the Selin complete dual intake set up.
The car had 2.5″ exhaust and a JWT pop and JWT chip.
We made sure the car was stable before starting the tests.
We then made 3 pulls to make sure the reading was consistent…..We then added the Selin Elbows, a second MAF with second pop, and the Selin translator…..
We then made 3 more pulls.
I believe Jim only posted one before and one after of the dyno work.
I think showing all of them helps people to see that it was not some trick or strange anomaly.
I will show separate Horsepower charts from the torque charts make it easy to read and include Air fuel ratio and Boost readings.
Again, this was all the same chip and only adding the second pop.

Horsepower

Torque