What's up guys, posting this up as a review for a friend of mine who installed the new Radium Fuel Hanger Surge Tank (FHST) kit and Akebono brake upgrades for me, as well as to touch on some things to consider if you choose to go with the Radium kit to cure your own fuel starvation issue as I had. Apologies if any pics aren't the right way up, I haven't been able to figure out how to rotate them on here.
Now before you ask "why didn't you go with the tried and tested CJM road race fuel pump??", I spoke with Charles of CJM directly on Facebook and found out his kit was no longer in production. He did however give me his blessing that I would be satisfied with Radium's version of the kit. I ordered the kit with an AEM 340 E85 pump already installed in the surge tank and a second one of those pumps to replace my factory pump. In addition, I ordered a CJM billet aluminum top hat to replace the plastic one on the factory pump assembly so there would never be a worry of it breaking.
On top of all of that, my Akebono brakes were due for new pads and rotors (after 4 years of daily driving and a Laguna Seca track day, not bad lol), so I decided to go big or go home and go with Racing Brake 2 piece rotors front and rear, and paired them with Endless MX72 Plus pads. These pads are fairly new and are meant to behave like the standard MX72's while having a 50 degree C higher max temperature threshold. I'm glad to say they work well when cold even though Endless says the starting effective temperature is 50 degrees C.
I had all of this work done by Eugene Turkov of Enthusiast Auto Care in Concord, CA. Eugene is a Nissan and Infiniti guru who knows these cars inside and out, and is also an Ecutek Master Tuner for our platform. I would not trust anyone else with my car. I knew I would need his expertise for my little project. If any of you would like to get in touch with him about tuning or any work you need done, he can be reached at infiniticare.com
Eugene decided to deviate from the Radium instructions a little bit because he knew the new fuel pumps, particularly the one going in place of the factory pump, drew too many amps for the stock fuel pump relay. In an effort to maintain reliability, he sourced a second relay and tied the signal for that as well as the relay for the pump in the surge tank to the factory fuel pump fuse and powered the relays directly off the battery. He also used thicker gauge wiring for the same reason. Eugene was very meticulous of soldering just about all of the connections and hydraulic crimping everything to ensure none of wires ever unplugged. In addition, instead of simply pulling the pins out of factory connector for the fuel level sensor on the drivers side, he cut the entire connector off and rewired it so it could still be used to make any possible future fuel pump troubleshooting easier.
Once the fuel system was done and he had fired it up to check for leaks and set the fuel pressure, Eugene turned his attention to the brakes. This wasn't your bs 45 min brake job. Eugene follows exactly what the factory manual says which involves cleaning the pistons (for the front calipers that means removing them entirely), sanding off the rust from the hubs and using a sprayable graphite coating to help prevent future corrosion, checking the new rotors for run out and indexing them on the hubs as necessary, readjusting the parking brake, and finally bleeding the system.
One thing to note, Racing Brake says that on some model years, the hardware of the rear rotors contacts the brake shield (in reality the inner shield for the parking brake specifically) and it needs to either be bent or cut off. This was the case for my Z which is a 2010, and we found a method to bend the small inner lip away from the rotor. I am unsure of what years don't run into that install issue. After the car was done I found a big empty parking lot nearby to bed the new pads and rotors in. Endless called for 2 sets of 10-12 stops for 3-5 seconds from about 60mph down to 20mph, and letting them cool for 20-30 min after each set of stops. Once I completed that process the brakes stopped me as if I was hitting a concrete wall, I highly recommend this setup for serious canyon carving or track days just on my initial impressions.
Thanks for reading and if you have any questions, feel free to reply here or message Eugene through his website!