STILLEN Longtube G3 Intakes. Review, Dyno and Impressions.
 

Alright, so I finally got a chance to test out the STILLEN G3's. First of all, thanks to STILLEN for letting me test out their products!! I have had nothing but good experiences so far with either Josh or Kyle. Second, a quick thanks to Jack @ HPLogic for hooking me up with a free install and some free runs so that everyone here could see the results. I specifically did this test for STILLEN and the members of the370z.com.

First of all, let me tell you guys that we did some baseline runs today. The result was 246HP. If you remember my last baseline on the same dyno was 256HP. The difference there is because I didn't have time to let the car cool down before today's baseline. The car was pretty hot (over 200) when we did this run. So you can pick either baseline. One is hot and the other is cold. Now that I think of it, it is actually a really good thing that I did that baseline today with the car under a lot of heat. You will see why soon.

Quality and Packaging:

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Everything was as expected; wrapped up individually and with plenty of protection. I expected nothing less.

Pipes were nice and shiny! Welds look great. Everything is top quality. Nice T clamps provided as well.

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And the whole kit was there. Filters look big and beefy. Hey, I'm half way to a FMIC!

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What More can I say about it. Its a lot of kit for a set of intakes that's for sure :) Instructions were nice and detailed too, or so I was told since I didn't get a chance to look them over ;)

Installation:

I've been hearing a lot of people whining about the installation and all I gotta say is that I don't understand why. Its a very complete intake system and it merits the effort. Taking the bumper apart took 10 minutes. There's screws underneath the chin spoiler and I suggest you get the car off the ground a bit to make things easier. Once the bumper is off, taking the stock intakes out takes maybe 5 minutes. A at this point its still clips and righty tighty lefty loosey guys...

The next thing we did was hook up the top portions that get rid of the corrugated part. Make sure you line up all the C clamps so you can get to the screw once they are on. I would advice you to leave them a little loose for the time being so that you can jiggle them around to line them up with the bottom sections. Don't forget to tighten and recheck everything when you are done.

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The next part was the dreaded cutting part. This part took us about 45 seconds per side. It is just common sense guys, get something sharp like a saw or if your lucky enough to do it at a shop, a nice air powered saw will do. Just slice about a half-inch radius half circle out of both sides of the hole. Not rocket science, just cut out chunks. This shouldn't take you more than a couple minutes per side. Don't be afraid of drilling or cutting, its usually much easier than it sounds. Just be careful not to cut any of the wires around the holes, that could be very bad.

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Run them through, Line them up. Push back the horn so that the filters fit.

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Once all is said and done... I didnt read the instructions, so this could all be upside down, but I dont think so :) It should look like this.

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And Outside

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OK Dyno Numbers.

Here is the Dyno chart of TODAYS BASELINE VS LAST WEEKS BASELINE VS AVERAGE RUN WITH THE G3's

http://i325.photobucket.com/albums/k...331024x768.jpg

Yes, that says 278HP. That wasn't the highest run (282HP when COLD), but it was a good one. Average run was around 275WHP.

THAT IS A 20WHP GAIN OVER MY 256HP BASELINE. That means folks, that after doing INDEPENDENT testing of these intakes.. we are looking at real world 15-20WHP gains.

If you are confused right about now and wondering what the hell. Join the club.

Here is the BASELINE VS AVERAGE RUN GRAPH. Sorry about the numbers on the left got cut out, but the results were 246HP baseline VS 274HP with the intakes.

http://i325.photobucket.com/albums/k...361024x768.jpg

And here is the AFR for that run of 274HP. Thats 11.8 where the mouse pointer is.

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All in all, as you will see in the videos. I was pretty much speechless. I have never seen a 20HP gain from intakes on an N/A car. I have a feeling we can easily push over 300WHP with STILLEN intakes and exhaust. That is the way I am going.

Videos

VIDEO OF RUN 2. RUN number 1 car made 282HP, because it was COLD versus warmed up in the rest of the runs. Make your own inference about that run versus the 256HP baseline which was also cool. Not going to get into the outliers, only focusing on the average ...Sorry about the sound and abrupt ending. The vibration from the sound the intakes make made the harddrive protection on my camera shut recording down.




Anyway, I have more to say, but I have to run right now. More will follow later. I hope you enjoyed it.


Here is one of the average runs:



Quick Dyno reading by Jack himself from HPLogic.

Finally......

Josh called me to tell me to tell you that you should go ahead and post what you have ;)

Seriously, I'm dying to hear more independent confirmations on the Gen3 intakes :)

lol... I told him go ahead.. :)

Did the AFR's change much?

Thanks for the edit :tiphat:

did you guys dyno with the bumper on? i am not sure if it will make a difference, but the location of the intakes appears to be more covered than what i was thinking... is it located where air doesn't naturally flow to because am thinking the foam and the chasis would block circulation?... i don't know if this even matters but im curious... the good thing about it though, it is that for sure water is not going to get to it... then again i am looking at it through pictures so am not quite sure...

Thanks RCZ! :tup:

Video/write-up/dyno = rep points!

Crazy results, thanks for doing this! :tup:

So the AFR thing is interesting to me - do you have that info from either of the baseline runs? With the intakes you're hitting at or slightly under 11.8, which if anything sounds a bit on the rich side of a perfect tune. I was expecting that some of the gains were coming from the new intake leaning things out, so this seems weird (but in a good way) to me. Am I even thinking about all this correctly?

Wow, I really didn't think that intakes would be able to make this kind of difference on a VQ engine. I thought they already breathed pretty well. So with HFC and Stillen exhaust you could be looking at 310whp, awesome!

I would suspect this is a non-issue. You're not really trying to force air into the filters. When you hit the throttle, they *suck* the air in. As long as they're not placed in some wierd low-pressure area, they'll pull in whatever air they need just fine. The important thing is that the air they have available to suck is cold (relatively speaking). They look fine to me from a water perspective as well, assuming you don't do something stupid like ram a garden hose nozzle up under your intake grille and try to kill them.

Thanks for the explanation! also this is indeed an amazing write up! thanks man... if i was working for STILLEN i would continue sending you products to perform independent testing/write ups... this pretty much made my decision to purchase the intakes... :tup:

Good job, RCZ! I'll be getting another dyno on mine next week, so we can compare results then. (Plus we'll be able to see what these intakes combined with the exhaust and HFCs yield number-wise.)

I'm glad we are seeing some different dyno results. The results posted by stillen was a little dissapointing to me because of the 18hp gain was really only after 6500k rpm -7500anything below that was about on par with stock numbers.. from your graph we see big gains from 0 all the way up to redline.

LOL! It's not our first rodeo.. :)

We did over 50.. yes.. five zero.. iterations of this intake design before we were happy with it.. all of it on the dyno..

Every little detail of the intake can make or break the horsepower gains..

Thanks for the review Raul, it seems like everything went smooth, I'm glad.

I think your gas mileage this tank might not be so good.. after 5,500rpm this thing screams.. but you've got to dump the right pedal to get there..

:icon18:

^ I was thinking about this while driving back home. Its so tempting to ride out the gears now :)

I think maybe you put that in just for me ! :icon18:

Super write up ! Great pics ! THANKS for taking the time to capture all the data and post !... I think we all have our validation that these are the ones to get... I'll be pretty dang surprised if we see anything better

hehe, it wasn't, but it fits rather well :)

RCZ... Well done Sir!! This is excellent and most encouraging news. Not to mention this thing sound HAWT!!!

I know it has been covered before, but I must ask... Are we SURE this will not cause further cooling issues with the partial blockage of the radiator with the bumper on??

Josh feel free to chime in on that also...

Well done RCZ - thats funny, I seem to remember a discussion where I was saying something to the tune of 310 WHP with a top quality I/H/E setup and you agreed with it....hmmmmmm, eh? :)

Still, it'd be nice to know for sure rather than suspecting. I mean, they were on the dyno, the bumper was probably sitting a few feet away... would have been nice for them to slip it on and see if there's a difference.

Why so you can retro fit it to your kia sedona?? :rofl2: Do you even have a 370z???

*sigh*....

He's my RL friend.

He also has a sense of humor. You, apparently, do not.

I do, and my post was a joke.. A lot of haters in the forum and an awful lot of people with no Z that like to make comments.

Very true. He's not one, though. And the point is fairly valid, I'd have probably dyno-ed with the bumper on just to close off any loose ends. But, Im sure, RCZ will baseline it again once he goes to do his exhaust.

And why does someone need to have a Z to make a comment about dyno tuning with a bumper on, anyway? heh. Or was that simply saying that people without Z's or much knowledge about cars in general like to come on here and make blanket statements?

FWIW, I'll be doing my dyno with the bumper cover on, not off. I'm going to see if they can fit me in on Monday. Of course, I have a different exhaust setup than RCZ, so it's not going to directly answer the question of whether or not he'd have seen the same gain had he put the bumper cover back on prior to the post-install dyno. But it'll at least give us some contrasting/corroborating numbers.

Hey RCZ, have you noticed any change in the interior sound from the intakes? I haven't noticed anything significant from mine, but I suspect that's because any change from the intakes is being drowned out by the sound from my Stillen exhaust / Berk HFCs.

RCZ is running just stock exhaust, is he not?

I believe so, yes. I think he plans to go with the Stillen/Berk setup like mine for the exhaust. Not sure when, though. Hopefully, at some point in the not too distant future our cars will have the exact same setup (which is where we're headed), then it'd be REALLY interesting to compare our dyno numbers and see if there are any major variances.

Agreed. The Stillen exhaust is what I have my eyes on myself, so i'll be VERY interested in seeing your results. Will you be using a Mustang dyno, also?

thanks RCZ woo big increase in hp

ok i have Question
If some water got inside the intake due to the place where they are . Is it going to effect the car i mean like while driving in the rain

These have been proven to be fine on the G37, which is even more open being the grille is in front of the filters.

I'm using Dyno Dynamics (known as the 'heartbreaker dyno'). It reads slightly lower than Mustang, even. From the information I've been able to find just by researching on the net, if you take a Dyno Dynamics reading and multiply it by 1.18, that gives you an approximate equivalent DynoJet number. Mustang Dynos read lower than DynoJet, but higher than Dyno Dynamics, and have a DD multiplier of 1.115. So if you wanted to convert my current DD reading of 291.7 whp to an approximate Mustang equivalent, multiply by 1.115 for a reading of 325.25. Conversely, if you want to convert RCZ's current Mustang reading of 278 whp to a DD equivalent, multiply it by 0.9 for a reading of 250.2. Note that all these calculations are approximate because the conversion factors are non-linear (i.e., they change as you go up and down the HP scale). Personally, I find the 250.2 number suspect, as we ran bullitt5897's bone stock 370Z on the same DD dyno that we ran mine on, and his car came in with 256 whp. I find it inconceivable that RCZ's car would pull less whp on that same dyno when he has the G3 intakes. I think this all just goes to show what an inexact science this can be when comparing different cars on different dynos, so we would be well advised to take this all with a grain of salt.

There's more info in this thread if you're interested -> http://www.the370z.com/vq37vhr/2199-...alculator.html

How about when you wash the car?

I want.. Is there going to be a group buy for this?

Or when combined with Mines Intake Air Scoop Type II?
Mines - Intake Air Scoop Type II Set, Dry Carbon

RCZ, Great write up and impressive results.
But I must say, these results were somewhat confounding based on your earlier dynos. You said that when you dyno'd with no filters, you saw no gains. Suggesting that air flow through the filter was not a limiting factor. Now however, you see 15-20HP gains with the long tubes. If the filters truly make no difference in HP gains, then we are led to believe that 20HP gains are to be made by rerouting the air to the throttle body through these tubes rather than the stock airboxes? Is the stock airbox design that poor/restrictive?
:confused:

Promising gains regardless of where they came from. I don't care if its some STILLEN black magic trick. This is a significant step toward the 300HP N/A mark.

No problems when washing the car.. and the Mine's scoops would be roughly the same open area as the G37 grille, if not less.

Water becomes an issue when you're submerging the filter, and revving the engine.. if you submerge the filters at the level they are and gun it, you're trying to drive through a river.. and that's not going to work on many levels.

Also the filter location being where it is versus down near the road also helps maximize the cool air pickup.. air coming off asphalt in any sort of warm weather can really effect the intake air charge..

Thanks for the reply! Makes sense!

The stock filters probably arent BAD...its their location, and the fact that a lot of engine bay heat can easily be brought in. Moving them outside of the engine bay is probably a fairly large improvement.

Knight,
the Intakes on the Z seem to be covered up in the front by the bumper and the metal bar plus foam.
on the G37, it's right in front of the grille and ppl drove it in the rain, nothing bad happened. Just dont floor it while it's raining heavily. there was only a little piece of plastic protecting the filters. if the G survived, i;m sure the Z can manage as well or even better.