complete engine overhaul questions.

wstar · 11-26-2011, 06:31 PM

I don't know where you're getting that SC's are in issue on this car. There have been plenty of solid SC installs on it, and GTM can set you up with a 500rwhp SC if you ask them to. You don't get to the same peak HP numbers as easily as a TT setup, but IMHO the power is more usable in a practical sense, and the whole setup's a bit less tricky and overcomplicated. I'd recommend the GTM over the Stillen. There are a number of solid Stillen installs out there, but IMHO it just seems like the satisfaction rate has been higher with GTM's kits in the big picture.

On the 3.7 NA side, I don't think it's struggling to breath as much as you think. There are just practical limits to how much volume you can push through this engine. The Stillen Gen3's seem like plenty of intake for the engine. Combine them with a solid exhaust setup (the practical pinnacle being FI's long-tube headers + catback) and a good dyno tune and you're getting about all you're going to get out of this engine with just bolt-ons. A whole lot of personal experimentation has been done on this engine in stock 3.7 NA form with bolt-ons over the past 3 years by a lot of smart mfgs and home DIY-ers.

It would be surprising if anyone found further significant gains in this area at this point without boring/stroking the block. Once you do that you've got a whole new engine of course, and you might need to play with the heads too, but then you run into the practical problem of whether or not you can do it in a way that's VVEL-compatible, since nobody's had much luck yet actually programmatically altering VVEL's workings with an ECU tuner. By the time you sort out this 4.5L setup it's just going to cost you a lot more than the proven SC/TT routes.

Skeeterbop · 11-26-2011, 06:42 PM

Honestly, this is kind of annoying. Any time somebody talks about an NA build they get bashed (maybe bashed is a bit extreme) for thinking outside the established norm. I have thought about it and will eventually build myself an NA motor. I have yet to see a build that cracks the engine open. All the NA cars I've seen are usually just bolt ons, not a full build in my book. Is it going to take a lot of money? Heck yeah it will, but whether it is worth it or not is strictly down to the owner of the car in question. Who knows what can be done until somebody tries it. Also, if you get done building the engine and it doesn't make the power wanted you could still slap on a TT and know that your internals are strong enough for a bit of boost. The biggest reason there isn't a proven route with NA is because most (ok nearly everyone) people go the easy route with a TT/SC (not saying it is necessarily easy, just easier than a fully built NA setup).

370Zsteve · 11-26-2011, 06:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skeeterbop

Honestly, this is kind of annoying. Any time somebody talks about an NA build they get bashed (maybe bashed is a bit extreme) for thinking outside the established norm. I have thought about it and will eventually build myself an NA motor. I have yet to see a build that cracks the engine open. All the NA cars I've seen are usually just bolt ons, not a full build in my book. Is it going to take a lot of money? Heck yeah it will, but whether it is worth it or not is strictly down to the owner of the car in question. Who knows what can be done until somebody tries it. Also, if you get done building the engine and it doesn't make the power wanted you could still slap on a TT and know that your internals are strong enough for a bit of boost. The biggest reason there isn't a proven route with NA is because most (ok nearly everyone) people go the easy route with a TT/SC (not saying it is necessarily easy, just easier than a fully built NA setup).

In for updates

theDreamer · 11-26-2011, 06:59 PM

Skeeter, it is not us trying to put him down, the OP seems to be incorrect on some facts which might alter his choice.
On the topic of NA builds, I think it is because most people view the value of a TT/SC over a 20k NA build to reach the same point. Also, some of the parts needed will have to be one off parts at this point as no one is selling certain items yet. This limits who will jump into this boat which sucks for all Z owners, but it takes money.

KingZee · 11-26-2011, 07:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by theDreamer

Skeeter, it is not us trying to put him down, the OP seems to be incorrect on some facts which might alter his choice.
On the topic of NA builds, I think it is because most people view the value of a TT/SC over a 20k NA build to reach the same point. Also, some of the parts needed will have to be one off parts at this point as no one is selling certain items yet. This limits who will jump into this boat which sucks for all Z owners, but it takes money.

The argument of whether it's possible or not seems to be the focus but it shouldn't be, the question for me is, is trying even worth it? Why TRY to build an NA for $20k when there are proven ways to do it for $7k? Cause you don't like the sound of the engine? To each his own I guess.

theDreamer · 11-26-2011, 07:04 PM

Also, the 20k number used is a rough estimate based on basic bolt ons and some forged internals.

Skeeterbop · 11-26-2011, 07:06 PM

haha, you may be waiting a while, I want to pay off the car before i do something like this, which hopefully will be in the next year or so. I have found long blocks for ~$2k used through various junk yards. I would like to think some parts that would be replaced could be resold to save a little on the expenses, but I'm not counting on it. When I get around to it though, I plan on not stroking it out and possibly replace the VVEL with a cam (maybe use the VQ35heads?). My plan isn't for ultimate power gains though, rather I want to make as responsive an engine as possible and I think that by replacing the internal bits with stronger and lighter bits will aid me in that goal. I'm not entirely closed to the TT/SC option, but i want to see what can be done with a NA setup first. Then if i do go boosted the internals are more than capable of anything I would want to throw at them. Keep

and maybe in a few years I'll have something to show you

Skeeterbop · 11-26-2011, 07:09 PM

Good points from all. I know if i wanted all out power, I would go with a TT from the start. I guess that's where I differ from most. I could care less if after I'm finished it has 300hp or 500hp, all I'll be looking for is revs

and any hp increase will be a bonus. And yes, any NA build at this point is looking at a few expensive one off items (especially if you replace the VVEL)

KingZee · 11-26-2011, 07:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skeeterbop

Good points from all. I know if i wanted all out power, I would go with a TT from the start. I guess that's where I differ from most. I could care less if after I'm finished it has 300hp or 500hp, all I'll be looking for is revs

and any hp increase will be a bonus. And yes, any NA build at this point is looking at a few expensive one off items (especially if you replace the VVEL)

Ok, your goals are vastly different from OP's. What you're saying actually makes sense.

theDreamer · 11-26-2011, 07:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by KingZee

Ok, your goals are vastly different from OP's. What you're saying actually makes sense.

What...no, NA builds are crazy.

Skeeterbop · 11-26-2011, 07:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by theDreamer

What...no, NA builds are crazy.

"I don't know Karate, but I do know Karazy and I will use it!" lol

KingZee · 11-26-2011, 07:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skeeterbop

"I don't know Karate, but I do know Karazy and I will use it!" lol

Jeffblue · 11-26-2011, 08:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skeeterbop

Also, if you get done building the engine and it doesn't make the power wanted you could still slap on a TT and know that your internals are strong enough for a bit of boost. The biggest reason there isn't a proven route with NA is because most (ok nearly everyone) people go the easy route with a TT/SC (not saying it is necessarily easy, just easier than a fully built NA setup).

The one thing you are forgetting is that typically an NA motor, especially a built NA motor, designed to rev really high has a high compression ratio. If it doesn't make the power you want you can't just 'slap' turbos on. High compression and boost aren't a good combination. You could put turbos on but wouldn't be able to run much boost. a built NA motor is different than a 'built' motor for FI.

chii370 · 11-26-2011, 08:31 PM

well, skeeterbop has kinda hit the nail on the head with the first reply, the whole point here is no ones done it. yes it will be expensive, and it might not be for everyone. but all results are just based on speculation right now. and as for the TT SC claims i made, i have a friend that was in guam with me, had a white 370 base with a stage 2 GTM TT, and it DID NOT make claimed power.... not even close, not to mention other issues like overheating and a host of other annoying things. and i dont know how many "i bought a SC and im dissapointed" threads ive seen in the past 3 years all over the internet. TT.... not so much, but ive heard a TON of people bitching about there SC build. Your right, just as many are satisfied. Yes theres a lot of perfect builds out there that do exactly as intended. but you still keep missing the point to all this.

personally i drive my car EVERY DAY "except winter" and i plan to do so until the wheels fall off. dont even start a bitch fest about gas and all that... i dont care. point is, if your one of the people who blindly slapped on a TT or SC on a STOCK car your running a huge risk of shaving off years of its life and reliability. thats the difference between building a engine thats MADE to take the abuse opposed to forcing a stock engine to perform outside its normal specifications.

i can bet, ten years from now all these 500-600 hp TT 370s will all have to have rebuilt engines, transmissions and all kinds of other problems. lucky if it even hits 150k miles without blowing up. especially if you beat on it, and thats what happens 99% of the time dont lie. short term reliability has been rock solid so far i will give you that, but this engine is NOT designed for that and it will fail.... mark my words. building an engine up is by far not a cure all to that but it most definitely makes it far less likely to be a problem since its BUILT TO DO IT.

I dont feel like dealing with a blown engine 8 years from now when the car has half of its miles it could have. this is my daily driver, and some day i plan on passing it on to my son or daughter as our generations "muscle car" just like my dad did with me with a matador red with white stripe 1971 AMC javelin SST 401 fully restored. so i would rather not give it to them in useless pieces lol.

Red__Zed · 11-26-2011, 08:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chii370

well, skeeterbop has kinda hit the nail on the head with the first reply, the whole point here is no ones done it. yes it will be expensive, and it might not be for everyone. but all results are just based on speculation right now. and as for the TT SC claims i made, i have a friend that was in guam with me, had a white 370 base with a stage 2 GTM TT, and it DID NOT make claimed power.... not even close, not to mention other issues like overheating and a host of other annoying things. and i dont know how many "i bought a SC and im dissapointed" threads ive seen in the past 3 years all over the internet. TT.... not so much, but ive heard a TON of people bitching about there SC build. Your right, just as many are satisfied. Yes theres a lot of perfect builds out there that do exactly as intended. but you still keep missing the point to all this.

Quote:

personally i drive my car EVERY DAY "except winter" and i plan to do so until the wheels fall off. dont even start a bitch fest about gas and all that... i dont care. point is, if your one of the people who blindly slapped on a TT or SC on a STOCK car your running a huge risk of shaving off years of its life and reliability. thats the difference between building a engine thats MADE to take the abuse opposed to forcing a stock engine to perform outside its normal specifications.

a built NA engine is generally going to be less reliable than a bolt-on FI engine. High performance NA builds mean constant high compression and an aggressive valvetrain. Bolt on boost is generally very reliable, provided the tune is decent.

Quote:

i can bet, ten years from now all these 500-600 hp TT 370s will all have to have rebuilt engines, transmissions and all kinds of other problems. lucky if it even hits 150k miles without blowing up. especially if you beat on it, and thats what happens 99% of the time dont lie. short term reliability has been rock solid so far i will give you that, but this engine is NOT designed for that and it will fail.... mark my words. building an engine up is by far not a cure all to that but it most definitely makes it far less likely to be a problem since its BUILT TO DO IT.

A proper, reliable build would require an incredible amount of R&D. The parts just aren't available for the VQ, and neither is the info.

Quote:

I dont feel like dealing with a blown engine 8 years from now when the car has half of its miles it could have. this is my daily driver, and some day i plan on passing it on to my son or daughter as our generations "muscle car" just like my dad did with me with a matador red with white stripe 1971 AMC javelin SST 401 fully restored. so i would rather not give it to them in useless pieces lol.

Your better option in that case is certainly not an NA build then.

In seriousness, there are forums dedicated to cars that came with the VQ35. It is worth taking a look to see what people have done with NA builds. The VQ series has a pretty tough time being taken to high levels of NA power, no matter what you do with the engine. There are a couple of reasons for it, mostly related to parts availability and flow issues. There are quite a few good resources out there, and Nissan has a couple of whitepapers available as well that discuss engineering tradeoffs that were made for the DE (and were kept in play for the VHR)

11-26-2011, 06:31 PM	#31 (permalink)
wstar A True Z Fanatic Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Houston, TX Posts: 4,024 Drives: too slow Rep Power: 3594	I don't know where you're getting that SC's are in issue on this car. There have been plenty of solid SC installs on it, and GTM can set you up with a 500rwhp SC if you ask them to. You don't get to the same peak HP numbers as easily as a TT setup, but IMHO the power is more usable in a practical sense, and the whole setup's a bit less tricky and overcomplicated. I'd recommend the GTM over the Stillen. There are a number of solid Stillen installs out there, but IMHO it just seems like the satisfaction rate has been higher with GTM's kits in the big picture. On the 3.7 NA side, I don't think it's struggling to breath as much as you think. There are just practical limits to how much volume you can push through this engine. The Stillen Gen3's seem like plenty of intake for the engine. Combine them with a solid exhaust setup (the practical pinnacle being FI's long-tube headers + catback) and a good dyno tune and you're getting about all you're going to get out of this engine with just bolt-ons. A whole lot of personal experimentation has been done on this engine in stock 3.7 NA form with bolt-ons over the past 3 years by a lot of smart mfgs and home DIY-ers. It would be surprising if anyone found further significant gains in this area at this point without boring/stroking the block. Once you do that you've got a whole new engine of course, and you might need to play with the heads too, but then you run into the practical problem of whether or not you can do it in a way that's VVEL-compatible, since nobody's had much luck yet actually programmatically altering VVEL's workings with an ECU tuner. By the time you sort out this 4.5L setup it's just going to cost you a lot more than the proven SC/TT routes. __________________ 7AT Track Car! Journal thread / Car setup details

11-26-2011, 06:42 PM	#32 (permalink)
Skeeterbop A True Z Fanatic Join Date: Jan 2011 Location: Fort Bliss, TX Age: 40 Posts: 1,440 Drives: 2011 GM 370 base SP Rep Power: 16	Honestly, this is kind of annoying. Any time somebody talks about an NA build they get bashed (maybe bashed is a bit extreme) for thinking outside the established norm. I have thought about it and will eventually build myself an NA motor. I have yet to see a build that cracks the engine open. All the NA cars I've seen are usually just bolt ons, not a full build in my book. Is it going to take a lot of money? Heck yeah it will, but whether it is worth it or not is strictly down to the owner of the car in question. Who knows what can be done until somebody tries it. Also, if you get done building the engine and it doesn't make the power wanted you could still slap on a TT and know that your internals are strong enough for a bit of boost. The biggest reason there isn't a proven route with NA is because most (ok nearly everyone) people go the easy route with a TT/SC (not saying it is necessarily easy, just easier than a fully built NA setup). __________________ Srenity: "Yeah no rest needed to spread the love when your 20 that's for sure...."

11-26-2011, 06:59 PM	#34 (permalink)
theDreamer A True Z Fanatic Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Texas Posts: 30,879 Drives: 370z Rep Power: 4210	Skeeter, it is not us trying to put him down, the OP seems to be incorrect on some facts which might alter his choice. On the topic of NA builds, I think it is because most people view the value of a TT/SC over a 20k NA build to reach the same point. Also, some of the parts needed will have to be one off parts at this point as no one is selling certain items yet. This limits who will jump into this boat which sucks for all Z owners, but it takes money. __________________ theDreamer's Z // Fast Intentions // Uprev // GTM // HKS // TEIN theDreamer's Silvia // URAS // GREDDY Houston Zs // Facebook // Twitter // Instagram

11-26-2011, 07:04 PM	#36 (permalink)
theDreamer A True Z Fanatic Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Texas Posts: 30,879 Drives: 370z Rep Power: 4210	Also, the 20k number used is a rough estimate based on basic bolt ons and some forged internals. __________________ theDreamer's Z // Fast Intentions // Uprev // GTM // HKS // TEIN theDreamer's Silvia // URAS // GREDDY Houston Zs // Facebook // Twitter // Instagram

11-26-2011, 07:06 PM	#37 (permalink)
Skeeterbop A True Z Fanatic Join Date: Jan 2011 Location: Fort Bliss, TX Age: 40 Posts: 1,440 Drives: 2011 GM 370 base SP Rep Power: 16	haha, you may be waiting a while, I want to pay off the car before i do something like this, which hopefully will be in the next year or so. I have found long blocks for ~$2k used through various junk yards. I would like to think some parts that would be replaced could be resold to save a little on the expenses, but I'm not counting on it. When I get around to it though, I plan on not stroking it out and possibly replace the VVEL with a cam (maybe use the VQ35heads?). My plan isn't for ultimate power gains though, rather I want to make as responsive an engine as possible and I think that by replacing the internal bits with stronger and lighter bits will aid me in that goal. I'm not entirely closed to the TT/SC option, but i want to see what can be done with a NA setup first. Then if i do go boosted the internals are more than capable of anything I would want to throw at them. Keep and maybe in a few years I'll have something to show you __________________ Srenity: "Yeah no rest needed to spread the love when your 20 that's for sure...."

11-26-2011, 07:09 PM	#38 (permalink)
Skeeterbop A True Z Fanatic Join Date: Jan 2011 Location: Fort Bliss, TX Age: 40 Posts: 1,440 Drives: 2011 GM 370 base SP Rep Power: 16	Good points from all. I know if i wanted all out power, I would go with a TT from the start. I guess that's where I differ from most. I could care less if after I'm finished it has 300hp or 500hp, all I'll be looking for is revs and any hp increase will be a bonus. And yes, any NA build at this point is looking at a few expensive one off items (especially if you replace the VVEL) __________________ Srenity: "Yeah no rest needed to spread the love when your 20 that's for sure...."

11-26-2011, 08:31 PM	#44 (permalink)
chii370 Track Member Join Date: Jul 2010 Location: . Posts: 642 Drives: . Rep Power: 16	well, skeeterbop has kinda hit the nail on the head with the first reply, the whole point here is no ones done it. yes it will be expensive, and it might not be for everyone. but all results are just based on speculation right now. and as for the TT SC claims i made, i have a friend that was in guam with me, had a white 370 base with a stage 2 GTM TT, and it DID NOT make claimed power.... not even close, not to mention other issues like overheating and a host of other annoying things. and i dont know how many "i bought a SC and im dissapointed" threads ive seen in the past 3 years all over the internet. TT.... not so much, but ive heard a TON of people bitching about there SC build. Your right, just as many are satisfied. Yes theres a lot of perfect builds out there that do exactly as intended. but you still keep missing the point to all this. personally i drive my car EVERY DAY "except winter" and i plan to do so until the wheels fall off. dont even start a bitch fest about gas and all that... i dont care. point is, if your one of the people who blindly slapped on a TT or SC on a STOCK car your running a huge risk of shaving off years of its life and reliability. thats the difference between building a engine thats MADE to take the abuse opposed to forcing a stock engine to perform outside its normal specifications. i can bet, ten years from now all these 500-600 hp TT 370s will all have to have rebuilt engines, transmissions and all kinds of other problems. lucky if it even hits 150k miles without blowing up. especially if you beat on it, and thats what happens 99% of the time dont lie. short term reliability has been rock solid so far i will give you that, but this engine is NOT designed for that and it will fail.... mark my words. building an engine up is by far not a cure all to that but it most definitely makes it far less likely to be a problem since its BUILT TO DO IT. I dont feel like dealing with a blown engine 8 years from now when the car has half of its miles it could have. this is my daily driver, and some day i plan on passing it on to my son or daughter as our generations "muscle car" just like my dad did with me with a matador red with white stripe 1971 AMC javelin SST 401 fully restored. so i would rather not give it to them in useless pieces lol.

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