The good and the bad: mods+uprev lost power (SOLVED)
 

Hi people,
so I just installed few bolt-on breather mods:
- CAI (already there, just opened from 2.5'' to 2.75'', see AAM ones)
- HFC + CBE
and got an UpRev tune.
The Good: here is the current dyno (red), compared to stock (blue).
http://i.imgur.com/wIkFAOnl.jpg
The Bad: despite that dyno chart, the car feels slower. Acceleration is smoother than before but it definitely feels like it has lost power.
Example: today I was driving 70mph in 6th gear and tried to floor it, car was not making it past 3k RPMs. I also tried to pull a 0-60 (disclaimer: not in traffic), it took more than 8secs. I was like "wtf, do I have a V-TEC?" :p
Anyway, I think this has to be the tune. I will contact the shop which did the job but if you have any idea or experienced the same, just throw it in here. :confused:

With the, would not go past 3k RPM, was it just bouncing at 3k like a limiter was on it? The car has a speed limiter (155ish), but would need to check the RPM v gear info to verify where that hits.
On the 0-60, you might be having some throttle lag or other issues.

Why would you floor it in 6th gear? It is possible the that the numbers could be fudged or even the graph. Odd though that you feel the car is slower.

To answer your questions: I am comparing how the car behaves now Vs before (only intakes with no tune).
- 3k RPM in 6th problem: not bouncing, stable. It looked like the engine did not have enough power to speed up and definitely I was not hitting the limiter. Before mods: in 6th gear car was much more responsive. I know with N/A we have to downshift to get more power but even downshifting seems that RPMs don't raise up fast enough
- 0-60 problem: I see, theDreamer do you think I should start logging my own data? I felt this problem before the tune and was thinking it was because I needed one with intake pipes opened to 2.75''... but now..

Update: engine light came on. A buddy came with an OBI-II reader. The car is complaining about the MAF sensors reading, so as I suspected somehow the car was not tuned for my large intakes or something like that ...?
I know it sounds weird but...

Not weird to me. There is zero, zero, zero reason to change the tube size on a NA car. On a turbo that's blow through, yes, but a NA, no. All it ends up doing is making the tune more time consuming to change the MAF curve around and I see no good coming from basically hacking or tricking the ecu into thinking something else with the AEM boxes. If stillen makes a 2.34" ID pipe the whole way from behind the filter to the TB, then so should everyone else since that's the ID of OEM too.

So on Monday I will go back to the tuner and evaluate if it's the case for me to go back to 2.5'' intakes, which seems most likely the case. My Z is my DD (and only car) and don't really wanna risk high/extreme tuning settings...

I can finally update this thread as my car should be fixed now, had to go back and forth from my tuner a few times. These info have bee backed up by UpRev and hopefully I'm reporting them correctly, I apologize in advance I'm gonna say some BS.

• Apparently there is is a so called 'cold map' that the 2013, once flashed, fell back to and for some reason the ECU wasn't going back to the tuned map. I believe the cold map had a stock-ish configuration, hence the lack of power. Lack of power in my case comes without a proper tune because of my mods. So the solution was to literally copy/paste the tuned map over the cold map. Now the car seems to behave like it should.
• Also, always the 2013 seems to try to run A/F mix as lean as possible (even stock) and installing HFC translates into having a CEL. We disabled it but this info needs more backed info, so take it as it is as I don't really have more info. I am planning to message Fast Intentions and ask if they've heard about 2013s having CEL with their HFC/TP products. I am maybe thinking of setting up A/F monitoring though as this leanness kinda freaks me out. I'll probably be looking in what the market offers as of gauging...

I think that's it for now, I'll update this if I have more info/corrections to do. :tup:

(solved)
 

So, for those who had the patience to read through my pain, ehr.. posts, here's the final update. Unfortunately after my last post the car went back to the same issues and even worse.
I am going to write the full story here, more as a personal journal than actually because I believe there are people interested out there :)
Note: I will let the numbers talk as all the info in here are backed up by dyno charts (see bottom of the post) [2][3].

Chapter 1: My car before
It all started with my car being happy. I did only RJM clutch, clear bra and tinted windows when I decided to get new intakes. I looked around and pulled the trigger on the AAM CAI. These intakes, as many of you know, come in two
modes and, since my car was stock at the time, I decided to leave them in S-Line. I have to admit, those intakes in S-Line really impressed me, and I also wrote a very positive review about them [1]. Up to here, green light, all good, butt-dyno was telling me the car gained some little power in the mid range, and the sound was good too.

Chapter 2: The new mods: the good and the bad
Finally the day of my Fast Intentions CBE and HFCs arrived! Oh, joy, I had already planned a tune so I decided to go ahead, change the exhaust and remove the CAI restrictions, switching therefore to R-Line mode. I have to say that I am at fault here as, to remove the restrictions, I scratched them and decided to toss them. This was a BAD move.
On the first engine start a bright CEL came out but I didn't really care about that... I mean.. I was getting a tune so that should've fixed it. So I brought my car to the tuner and after a day it was ready. The dyno chart (Dynojet) was looking good, car definitely was doing +20whp from the stock baseline. I left, drove around a bit and went home. The next morning, when I started the car my happy face frowned. Car was lacking almost all the power, no torque whatsoever and the CEL came back. So with a buddy of mine, we checked which code the ECU was throwing:
So I brought the car back to the tuner shop, the car was running super lean and the ECU, on a cold start, was falling back to the cold map (stock-ish like) and not reverting to the original. So, based on Uprev's advise the tuner copied the tuned map over the cold one, so no matter what the car would've used that. I've got to say every time I was leaving the tuner shop, the car was doing good for a few hours. Anyway, that didn't solve the problem.
Now, also, the car was behaving oddly. On a cold start, the car was experiencing lack of power but if I drove around for a couple of minutes shut off the engine and turned it back on, that had its power back. Notice that CEL never went away and was coming back after clearing it. Also, the "power" I'm referring to had a different feeling that stock, it had a sort of tiny lag when going WOT and then rev up. So, again, not good.

Chapter 3: MAF scaling tune
At this point, my tuner (and I first) called AAM and Uprev (again) and he started testing the car with different MAF values as suggested by AAM. He kept the car for a couple of days but the car got even worse. So he flashed back the original tuned map. It's a pity we couldn't get the tune right, but that would have probably required too much time. My Z is my DD, I use it to go to work and even leaving it at the shop for a full day is difficult.

Chapter 3: The solution
At this point I had to make a decision on what to do and, despite my happiness with the AAM product, I pulled the trigger again and got the Stillen Gen3 intakes. My tuner offered me to re-dyno-tune the car for free, so I went that route. I can only say.. WOW! The new intakes and the new tune got me back the perfect N/A feeling the car used to have and made even +6whp (compared the previous tune) [3]. Now my car feels just "awesome".
There you go Josh@Stillen :tup: another super-happy customer for you.

Acknowledgments:
Props AAM and Uprev for assisting with the problem and a huge thanks to my tuner Rob @ Z Car Garage in San Jose, CA.

Pictures:
http://i.imgur.com/tfRYv68l.jpg

References:
[1] http://www.the370z.com/intake-exhaus...ne-r-line.html

[2] AAM CAI Dyno (compared to best run in baseline) - MAX 318whp

[3] Stillen G3 Dyno (compared to another run in AAM) - MAX 324whp

Seems you had more issues the day after. Seems more tuner error than cai.

Correct. I stated already in my post where I am selling the CAIs that we could not get the tune right with the AAM in R-mode.

@cdoxp800: afaik with 2.75'' intakes MAF scaling is apparently necessary.

Yeah I saw that... What I got from all this is the tuner isn't very good. 1. He didn't change the cold map. 2. Can't or doesn't scale the MAF right (I tune and this is very easy). 3. Needs to call other people for help for something everyone knows how to do. 4. Dyno's in the wrong setting (PS. You're making about 4% less than what the graph shows). I think it was a waste going to 2.75" pipes when you're NA making barely 300hp to begin with which the stock size is more than capable of handling, so I'm in to see if this tune holds together and the cars fine tomorrow which before didn't seem the case.

Because the AAM intakes have a metering orifice that is larger than the stock airbox. Thus, you have to scale the MAF table when tuning to restore your open-loop calibration to something normal.

Edit: my stupid tablet replaced 'oriface' (which was orifice misspelled, doh) with 'preface'.... stupid auto correct.

I've been with this tune for a month now (I hadn't had time to post about it before and wanted to be sure this time) and the car has been doing great.
Now, about the tuner... well... he is de-facto the Z place to go if you are in NorCal (people from the area correct me if I'm wrong). I am not expert enough to judge his capabilities but I think that he definitely overlooked the fact that I had CAIs that needed a proper tune, although stated by me multiple times that I had 2.75'' pipes. Anyway...