Archives for : 300ZX (Z32)

St. Louis 2013 Heavy Hitters Club

Earlier this year we tuned several high HP Zs.  Here are a few of them.  All running on ethanol fuel (50-70%).

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First up we have Anthony, running on HKS 2530s, JWT 400+ cams, head work, SZ 3″ Down Pipes & Test Pipes, ID 1000cc injectors, and 2.5″ IC Piping.  Amazing response and torque.  500 torque at just 4000 RPM.  Just made 700 whp and 683 torque!

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Nest up is Dennis, his Z came equipped with GT2860RS turbos, JWT 500 cams, full ASH piping, 1000cc injectors, SZ 3″ Down Pipes and Test Pipes.  726 whp and 638 torque.

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Petar came in with GTX2863 turbo muscle, JWT 500 Cams, SZ 3″ Down Pipes and test pipes.  Excuse the tach loss between 5000 and 5250 rpm.  798 whp and 720 torque.

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Equipped with a Haltech ECU and flex fuel sensor, Ray is equipped with old skool TD06L2-20G Mitsu turbos, SZ Inconel Manifolds, full 3″ exhaust. JWT 500 cams.  Running on ID2000cc injectors.

830 whp and 670 torque.

Z32 Stock Turbo Breather Upgrades

This Z32 TT came to us after not having run for a long time.  We went to work performing the required maintenance and upgrading along the way.  It WAS stock when it arrived and left a much happier Z.

We replaced all the original fuel injectors as a couple were bad and used Nismo 740cc injectors as replacements (“JECs” or DW need not apply here).  While the plenum was off we replaced all seals and gaskets, along with bypassing the water hoses.  Throttle bodies were upgraded with larger Z1 units.  Intercooler piping was upgraded with Ash 2.5″ units along with Massive Intercoolers and a Selin Dual POP Kit was added.  It retains the factory inlet piping and the factory exhaust manifolds.  SZ 3″ 4-Bolt Down Pipes, SZ 3″ to 2.5″ Test Pipes, and SZ Dual Tip Resonated X-Pipe Catback replaces the entire factory exhaust.  SZ\RPS Sport Street Clutch and SZ Flywheel were also installed to support the higher power output.

A Blitz sbc-iD Spec-R Boost Controller was also installed to increase the boost.

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Super clean and tidy while being a sleeper.

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We unfortunately could NOT get a bsaeline.  It came in misfiring and in terrible shape.  We achieved peak power at 6100 RPMs with 14 psi.  Peak torque of 411 ft\lbs at 4500 RPM.   91 octane fuel.

Doug’s 2by2 TT

Doug converted his NA 2by2 to a TT many years ago and recently brought it to us for a major overhaul.  It came to us equipped with an old and tired JDM transplant sporting Sport 500 turbos.  Doug wanted to keep the turbos the same for now along with the old 2.5″ exhaust from the turbos back.  We installed a Stage 1 IPP Long Block and added JWT 500 cams with new lifters.  Added a set of MSP Manifolds.  He already had Sard 850cc injectors and 300Degree rails, we did find that his TT fuel pump he had installed years ago dropping pressure so we installed a new pump with the appropriate modifications.  BDE Low Pro Motor Mounts were added to ease the install of the Ash inlet piping.  Ash 2.5″ intercooler piping was added along with a Selin translator with HR\VHR Pops.

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Very pleased with the results for Sport 500 turbos on 91 octane and full 2.5″ exhaust and a brand new engine.

More Z32 NA power

It’s been awhile since the last time I posted.  I apologize for not having been on top of the updates.

Many months ago Michael brought us his NA from San Diego.

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A most excellent gain of 24 whp at 6500RPM and gains all throughout the RPM band.

 

 

 

In from Texas

David came over from Texas to get his recently upgraded Z tuned.  Dane Miller did a very nice job of putting it together so there was very minimal fuss getting it tuned.

This Z32 sports a stock long block with 130k on the clock, JWT Sport 700s, stock camshafts, SZ 3″ Downpipes and Test Pipes and SZ catback.  Ash intercooler piping, inlet piping, Ash Massive intercoolers, and Selin translator round out the breathing and induction.  Nismo 740cc fuel injectors feed fuel via a new Nissan TT fuel pump.

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To switch between his different boost and fuel tunes we added our SZ switcher.

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476 whp and 436 torque on 93 octane Texan fuel.

q16Q16 for 617 whp and 575 torque on complete stock long block and cams.

Congrats to David!

Revisiting the NA-Cons

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Catch up with Cons’ last visit here.  This time the NA is sporting new looks with the addition of a J-Spec bumper and fresh paint.  A Selin Dual POP was added, we installed headers, SZ Sport Street TT, SZ Flywheel TT, and some high flow cat pipes.  Once we were done with the installs we put the Z on the dyno.  We got a good baseline of what the mods would do to the powerband.

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You’ll see the 3 runs pictured above.  The blue run was our baseline after installing all the new mods.  The NA lost power and torque up until 4600 RPMs (green run).  Goes to show you that throwing on some parts won’t make for a desirable outcome sometimes.  The blue run was from his last visit (from the link above).  We went to work tuning the Z with its new mods and we picked up power and torque just about everywhere with substantial gains above 5000 RPMs.  On the cursor you can see a gain of almost 30 whp and 20+ torque.  Not bad!

Cons’ TT

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Last time we tuned Cons’ Z32, it was almost 6 years ago.  Since then little has changed, however the new notable additions are Ash Massives and Ash Intercooler Piping.  Inlets are still stock.  The modifications that stayed the same are the following:  HKS 2530 turbochargers, JWT 400+ Cams, factory cam gears, SZ 3″ Down Pipes and SZ 3″ to 2.5″ Test Pipes, HKS Hiper Catback, RPS Clutch & Flywheel, Nismo 740cc injectors & 300Degree Rails, Selin Dual POP Kit, and SZ Inconel Manifolds.

Special thanks to Arnel for the great photos!

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91 Octane tune with average boost levels of 15-16 psi.  Just over 500whp!

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Here’s a great before and after on 100 octane.  As I was writing this I realized that Cons’ Z was spinning tire on the roller by studying the dyno graphs.  So the blue run isn’t even the true power and torque the Z is producing.  It will be even higher.  The red run was back in 2007, fast forward to 2013 and the blue run is much nicer looking.  At the cursor point we picked up 140 torque and 107 whp!

Revisiting Big Power NA-VG

Mike came back to us sooner than later in his quest for making his NA complete.  He added a set of BDE Intake Cam Gears and we then added a pair of the BDE Bullseye Exhaust Cam Gears.  After a few hours on the dyno and tweaking all 4x cams we ended up with nice gains where it counts!

We gained 26 torque and 21 whp at 4100 RPMs!  Much better all-motor response!

Icing on the Cake

German has one sleeper of a Z32.  Originally this Z started life as an NA and recently it was converted to a TT.  When it originally came to SZ it had what I call the “generic ricer boy” modifications.  Don’t get me wrong, a front mount intercooler has its place on many cars but on a Z32 90% of the units out on the market are garbage.  This Z had a Greddy 3-Row FMIC which is actually a nice core but it doesn’t stack up to the Ash Massives.  The FMIC adds piping length, blocks airflow to the radiator, engine oil cooler, air filters (if not moved to SMIC location), and does not retain the engine’s crossflow design.   The Z also came equipped with GT2860RS turbos, JWT 500 cams, and built shortblock.  Back in 2011 when German first brought us the Z we made many recommendations to improve his overall package.  Fast forward to 2013 and we had our chance to take action.

We went to work with removing the Greddy FMIC and replacing it with Ash Massive SMICs, Ash 2.5″ IC Piping, Ash Inlet Piping, and Z1 58mm throttle bodies rounding out the breathing.  We installed a set of HR\VVHR JWT POPs for air filters and two dummy MAFs.  We’ll get to that later.  The Z was running fixed solid intake cam gears, we yanked them out, added VTC solenoids and a set of BDE intake cam gears to bring back Nissan’s awesome variable cam timing.  On the exhaust side we had nothing to change, it already came to use with our SZ 5-Bolt 3″ down pipes, test pipes, and a B&B catback finishing off the tunes.  German brought us a Snow Performance Water Injection kit.  We love what water injection brings to the table by lowering detonation thresholds and cooler intake temps to keep heat soaking down.  We can also make more power.  This is where it can get hairy.  Without the proper failsafes in place, that added power may bring trouble.  A tune made to extract power from water\meth means more boost than one would run on regular pump fuels.  If no water\meth gets injected and the boost is up you can destroy a perfectly good engine.  So in order to combat this, Snow Performance’s Safety Injection box was added along with a solenoid to bypass the boost controller’s solenoid.  We added a switch to also turn the system OFF\ON.  The kits come with instructions to always be ON.  We like the ability to turn it OFF\ON with the flip of a switch.  We used the factory rear mounted WW reservoir to keep the Snow Performance Boost Juice stocked up and loaded.  A low fluid sensor float was added to let the driver know if the system is getting low on fluid.  After the reservoir we added a solenoid to keep boost juice from making its way into the engine drawn from vacuum or from getting pushed out due to boost.

The intake manifold was replaced with a beautifully finished chrome piece along with a chromed CAS, bracket, and water pipes.  The intake manifold was ported and polished to add the new Z1 throttle bodies.  We cleaned up his PCV breather system.  Exhaust cam gears were adjustable so we tweaked them for optimal power throughout the entire powerband.  The reason we used dummy MAFs was that the MAFs services were no longer required.  We installed an AEM Series 2 ECU to replace the Nissan ECU and MAFs.

I always regret not taking a ton more photos.  Especially to show the before and after much better.  Along with all the detail, quality of work that goes into everything we do here.  You can see almost everything is buttoned up and ready to go.  No one would know any better to what this Z has cooking underneath its bonnet.

The AEM Series 2 ECU.  I have nothing but praise for this ECU.  Much better than the Series 1!  The Haltech though has definitely won my heart over.  We wired the engine’s e-fan to be controlled by the AEM.

I mentioned earlier in this article that we saw this Z back in 2011.  We have a great comparison of its transformation on the dyno results.

The red run was back in 2011 before we performed our magic touch.  Blue is how it runs today on standard 91 CA octane fuel.  No water or meth.  We gained 150 foot pounds of torque at 4500 RPMs and 135 whp!  Amazing!

This is on the Snow Performance Boost Juice and Kit.  We were limited to the amount of boost we could run.  Next time we will be adding a Blitz sbc-iD Spec-R Boost Controller.  It currently has an Apex’i AVC-R.  It had just a spike of 21 psi at 4800 RPMs.  By the top of the RPM band we were only at 16-18 psi.  It has much more left in it!

Congratulations German!  Thank you for the opportunity to let us put the icing on your cake!

Big Power NA-VG

Mike came to us after his NA build.  We would have loved to get our hands on this build as we would have done things differently.  In the near future we will be tweaking things ourselves to get more out of this NA Z32.

Compression has been bumped to 12:1, JWT Regrind Cams, Solid Intake Cam Gears (we will be adding VTCs with the slight possibility of changing camshafts if budget permits), Selin Dual POP, Z1 TBs, Headers, HFC Pipes, and Labree Catback.  It came to us with shitty cheap injectors and we ended up replacing them with quality Nismo injectors.  Sometime this year we’ll have updated results with new mods to get more NA power!

Not to shabby for a naturally aspirated VG30!  With the addition of VTC the bottom and mid range will come up a noticeable amount.  We gained alot on John’s little NA a few years back.  Adding some BDE Adjustable Exhaust Cam Gears will get us to squeeze more.  This is all on 91 octane and 12:1 compression.