A bit of a silly question...
 

I'm debating back and forth whether I want to get into FI, and if so, what route to take. However, one thing I've noticed is people selling off their entire car with a FI setup, or simply selling the FI kit, regardless of what it is, with less than 5000 miles on it. In some cases, I've seen as low as 2500 miles, or even 1000 miles.

My question is- why? It seems it is rather expensive to purchase and install these various kits- why would someone dump it or rarely drive it after spending 10-15k on modifying the car? Am I missing something?

Most of what I have seen is because the wife gets pregnant. Who would have thought that boosting a Z would make you so potent?

Priorities in life change. Things happen. People move, have kids, and decide to go a different route all the time. Sometimes guys just want another project too because after their car is done, they dont have a good reason to sit in the garage and drink beer.

It just seems odd there wasn't a few more minutes of foresight put in, prior to dropping that much money. I know pregnancies can happen, and I'm not referring to that, but more so the situations that can be foreseen.

And you can always keep modding, even after the FI is done... There's way too many supporting mods available still!!

I also thought that sitting in the garage and drinking beer was a a good enough reason to sit in the garage and drink beer, lol!

People get bored, also another reason is some just have money to burn. They get to point X in a project and then want to go onto something else. They view it from the perspective as you should enjoy the journey not the goal, where some want to get to the goal to enjoy the car.

I have owned my car for 4 years. I have put 10,000 miles on it, so only 2,500 miles a year. In that time i had a turbo kit on it, took it off and built the motor, put a supercharger kit on it, took that off, now am designing a supercharger kit for my ford raptor. Yes, people get bored.

I don't know how things are nowadays but we used to be able to pick up slightly used performance parts from people that didn't do enough research into what it costs to make proper upgrades (there's always a bunch of other upgrades that need to be made). This leads them to cut corners to finish the install which leads to disappointing performance. Instead of fixing the problem, they bail out. Just be sure to inspect everything - no telling what they may have screwed up.

Lol. It's a good idea to buy rubbers when you go FI.

Gets bored, gotta trade in to stock, not kid friendly, want more power (bored), want more power cheaper (LS swap)....

...and by LS swap he means trade it in for a camaro

I honestly don't really understand the phenomenon either. After boosting my Z I fell in love with it all over again... Doing the work myself has me a lot more invested I think, but I honestly believe I will keep this car for a very, very long time unless I hit some kind of financial hardship.

I think some folks believe they will put in some kind of FI kit and the build will just be over and done with, and they'll be able to enjoy the car like it was a stock corvette. The reality is, once you've deviated this far from stock there are always going to be little quirks here and there and you are more likely to have little issues crop up. It's never going to be like a 500whp OEM car.

That being said, if you plan all your upgrades well, get a really good tune, and are really anal about your installation - you can get pretty darn close!

In my case, I wanted the build, and I wanted the constant projects. It seems to me the majority (not all, but more than half) of the folks who are selling are those who farmed out the work... perhaps the reality of constant inspection, modification, etc turned them off when they finally got it back in their hands.

Those that DIY I think have a better idea of what they're getting into in the first place.

I still have a few minor gremlins here and there that I will have to chase down... but I have, in my opinion, an ultimate street car (gorgeous, tons of power, rides nicely, UNIQUE) that I may not have been able to afford if I wanted an OEM warranty.

Keep us posted on the Raptor project... And I hope you stay o n the forum...:driving:

Thanks man. Ill be here. There are a bunch of Air to Air kits about to hit the dyno this week and next. Should be some good conversation around that. :tup:

I guess from a buyer's perspective (at least for me), when I see an ad that reads along the lines of "full turbo build, only 1000 miles on it, selling at a loss", I start thinking "there's trouble there somewhere."

Like I mentioned earlier, I'm really going back and forth on whether to go FI. I had a 2007 Miata GT that had a Cosworth supercharger on it. It was the one car I bought, rather than built, but I knew the car well and the owner, to boot. The car never had issues, save for an O2 sensor that went bad (meh). I'm thinking if I did the same with the Nismo and kept the boost relatively low, I should have a car that is relatively worry free. I imagine once you start cranking the boost, that's when the potential for more issues to happen occurs. And yes, as already mentioned, it always comes down to the tune.

The beauty of the Miata vs. the 370, is that engine was still relatively easy to work on if need be. Every time I pop open the 370 hood, I cringe at seeing how tight the engine is sandwiched in the engine bay :rofl:

It's funny you say this. Among friends and family it's believed that the longest time I keep a car is 18 months and the more I mod it the faster I'll get rid of it. It hasn't quite been 18 months lately but I do have occasions where I'll take a platform to a certain point and plan from the beginning to move on after I get there. When I had a Titan that point came after full exhaust, headers ,cams cutouts and 90mm LS3 throttle body swap with a modified LS3 intake manifold. Sold it and bought a G37. From th get go I regretted the 7at but I went full bolt minus headers and then did a differential swap and carbon fiber driveshaft. That car was stonger than my 15' Nismo (pre boost). About a week before I sent the money for my BP kit I was a phone call from swapping the Nismo for a GTR. My nismo isn't done with tuning yet and I have less than 1k miles on the kit but I'm seeing myself in a GTR inside the next 2 years. I may be done then or maybe not. Maybe I'll leave the Nismo alone and see what I can do with a Titan again. Dunno that but thats just what I do and it would seem I'm not alone. Tear stuff apart make it better then do it to something else.

You need to drop that VK Titan motor into your Z like Chris Forsberg :driving:

Also a lot more problems tend to pop up when going FI that over time gets old real quick and makes it very easy to do a impulse sell after it gets to a certain point of annoyance.

This is true, but I was more referring to the low mileage setups being sold/traded. If there are that many issues within the first 5000 miles, something was done seriously wrong.

I'd actually go the other way and say most of your small annoying problems are going to crop up in the first 5k... Once you get them ironed out you are probably good =)

A bit of a silly question...
 

I don't drive mine nearly as much as I should. It's the pain of shuffling two other cars to get it out of the garage. Oh and the Texas heat. I park it for over 90deg season. Even though I don't drive it much, I still love it. I'll own it for 5-10 more years.

Unfortunately, the same can be said about a lof the junk people spend their money on.

FWIW, I boosted my G35 and daily drove it for six years. There are long term owners on the boards.

I daily drive mine - I have about 25K miles on my setup and it's still rock solid. But as far as people getting rid of it because their priorities changed - One thing to consider is how much it costs. It's around $10+K all in with supporting mods. For a lot of people, that takes some time to save up. And while they may be totally focused on saving for FI, things are slowly changing in their life during that time. So they finally save up for it and do it, and then realize that it's three years later, and their car has 25K more miles on it then when they first decided to do it, or that they are three years closer to having to start a family, or purchase a home...

So there is mention about foresight, and a lot of people don't have clear enough foresight to see the landscape that will exist when they finally save up for FI. I did a stint in the aftermarket car industry for about 10 years, so I've seen this happen to a lot of people. It's kind of like buying a Porsche - people want them starting when they are very young, but when they can actually afford one, they're too old to track it and do all of the hooligan stuff they said they would do. So they buy it, and garage it. Different scale, but same principle. Me, when I picked up my car, it had 35K on it, and I supercharged it immediately because I thought, "If I'm going to supercharge/turbo it AT ANY POINT, I would be kicking myself for not doing it when it only had 35K on it." No one wants to be in the position of finally deciding you want to do it, but realizing that the car you want to FI already has 100K on it. It's different for an intake or something small, a couple hundred bucks is a quick save and a quick spend. Not much changes in your life in the time it takes to go from "I want it" to "I have it" on something like that.