Radium Fuel Hanger Surge Tank and Akebono upgrades, installed by Enthusiast Auto Care

HisStigness

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!

Rusty

Nice write up.

I have phunk's RRP kit. It works. Surprised that phunk quit selling it.

I've been running the RB rotors for years. Using the 10/8 CT pad combo for the past couple of years. I can put your eyeballs in the back of the windshield.

Don't forget brake cooling. The 2" Stillen kit is worth it. Going to a 3" hose isn't easy.

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HisStigness

Thank you man! Yeah he told me he had sold enough to the point that demand for them had dropped considerably. I'm incredibly happy with this Radium setup and equally happy with the new brake setup. The main reason I didn't go with Carbotech is my Z is my daily and everything I had been told from multiple people said that their pads make a lot of noise on the street.

I actually attempted to install the Stillen cooling kit but my oil cooler lines blocked the passenger side cooling hose, plus I just wasn't happy with how much rubbing was happening on various hoses in the engine bay.

HisStigness

To follow up, the one thing I have noticed is when my fuel gauge reads low like 1 dot left, the gas station pump only put in 16.5 gallons instead of the 18ish gallons it would put in when the gauge went that low on the stock setup. I was trying to get my tank low so I could do a full switch from 91 to E85. Eugene spoke to another person who has the Radium kit and he said he encountered the same thing.

I don't necessarily think of this as a problem, it's kinda nice to know now that when the fuel range goes to "----" there's actually a couple gallons of reserve left, whereas before if the gauge was that low, the tank was actually that low (I never liked how little amount of fuel needed to be in the tank for the low fuel light to activate). I called Radium to discuss it and they hadn't heard of it before, but their best guess is that since the system is now attempting to throw all of the fuel to the drivers side of the tank all of the time, the reading on that secondary sensor is higher compared to the sender on the passenger side, and as a result as the tank gets low it makes the fuel gauge read low.

I have to get my tank down to one dot on the gauge again and confirm that this is a consistent thing and then I'll report back. This might be something that can be adjusted in Ecutek for the voltage readings too.

Rusty

I use the 10/8 pads on the street. The only time they make noise is when you're almost to a dead stop. And depending how hard you are on the brake pedal. They do dust a lot.

You have to route the duct hose around the washer reservoir. Mine are no where near any other hoses.

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OptionZero

Switch to a vented hood for cooling and ditch the washer rezzy

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HisStigness

What’s that got to do with brake cooling...?

HisStigness

Gotcha man, sounds good! I’d be interested to see pics of how you routed the brake ducting hoses.

Rusty

There's pictures some where in my build thread.

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Orestp

Did the Radium surge tank cure the fuel starvation issue?

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HisStigness

Yep! I’ve taken hard right hand turns such as a highway on-ramp with as little as a quarter tank and have had no starvation issues. The kit works as advertised.

Referring to my earlier comments on the fuel gauge, if you take a hard right hander once the tank is below roughly 1/3, you may notice the gauge reading will drop sooner than expected due to how the sensors read the level in the tank. I’ve had numerous occasions where I’ve run the gauge down to 1 or even 0 dots left and it consistently has about 2 gallons left.

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