wstar's Journal

travisjb

Great to have you back in here posting... there needs to be a critical mass of people that have value to add - and you're part of that!

M370 was good for me because in time trial / racing you are classed based upon peak power not power under the curve... it trades peak power for usable power... it's a good trade to make! not as much bang for the buck as intake / exhaust on this car, but worth it if for some of us

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2009 370Z #104
*For Sale*

wstar

Let the parts ordering commence!

Over the past couple of days, put in orders for:

Fast Intentions Long-Tube Headers (Ceramic Coated)
Motordyne M370 Intake Manifold
2x RU-2820 K&N filters
Stillen 7AT cooler

I imagine the manifold, filters, and 7AT cooler will get here relatively soon, and I'll install all of that in one day with the bumper off.

(Yeah, I know the filters can be cleaned, but tbh they're not that expensive, I'd rather just throw a new set on while the bumper's off and be done with it this time around. Maybe I'll clean, re-oil, and bag the old ones when I'm done and use them for the next swap).

Of course Fast Intentions is backlogged on headers (the popularity isn't surprising given how great their catback is), I'm looking at 8 weeks out before those ship. So that'll happen separately mid-summer.

Once that's all on the car, it'll be time for UpRev and some dyno tuning. I guess I should start looking into the UpRev process now in case that has its own delays to account for.

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wstar

Ordered UpRev's Osiris Standard today. Stillen 7AT cooler and new K&N air filters already shipped. Motordyne has billed for the Manifold, but I haven't seen any email from them on shipping yet.

Installed Torque on my phone, w/ random bluetooth OBDII adapter ordered from Amazon. Neat app, since I already have a mount for my Android phone set up permanently in the Cubby area for GPS Nav. A lot of basic PIDs (e.g. fuel trims, O2s, coolant temp, rpm, etc) work out of the box, the gauge display options are nice. There are a number of useful PIDs my other dedicated handheld units can sense on our car that it doesn't know about though (e.g. Ambient Air Temp, Transmission Fluid Temp, etc).

This comes down to a bunch of the PIDs being proprietary Nissan secrets that they sell to scantool mfgs Still digging around the internet for some site that might have stolen or reverse engineered a list (since Torque does let you input custom PID specs). Worst case I may look into sniffing the protocol and reverse engineering the PIDs.

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Journal thread / Car setup details

wstar

Motordyne M370 Intake Manifold Installed today. Install was a breeze, no point in a DIY really. They shipped me either one hose too short, or one too few hoses (either would have made it work), but I had some 3/8" ID hose here anyways, so I just cut some of my own. They also sent me a free Motordyne T-shirt, so it's all good

I will note one thing: if you don't have a bottle of Throttle Body Cleaner laying around, pick one up before you install this. You'll have the TBs off the manifold and it's an excellent opportunity to clean out any accumulated gunk with access to both sides of the throttle plates.



Took it for a short test lap around the neighborhood to make sure nothing was leaking, falling off, or throwing codes. All seems well. Subjectively, feels like I gained a little torque / responsiveness in the low-mid rpm ranges, which is exactly what I was hoping for. Nice job Motordyne

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Nismo221

In for the info. I'm thinking of installing

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Stillen Gen 3, Motordyne M370 Intake Manifold,
25 row oil cooler, Z1 test pipes, Greddy Ti-C 70mm dual exhaust, 15mm front/20mm rear spacers, RE-11's, V1 detector, LED interior lights, LED tag lights, Password JDM CF engine and radiator cooling covers.

Motordyne

Right on wstar. On your PCV hose, it should be routed under the manifold instead of the long way around.

Glad to hear you are happy with the results.

wstar

So, I went back to EngineLogics to run on their dyno yesterday. For reference, my previous dyno run was around 15K miles ago. Background from then: I already had Stillen's Gen3 intakes and short headers, Berk HFCs, and Stillen's catback at the time, which is a pretty complete bolt-on setup, and I made right at 300hp even at peak. EngineLogics' dyno is a DynoDynamics, they keep it calibrated really well, and it's known for reading lower than just about any other dyno in town.

Since then I had only made a couple of very small changes that would maybe affect a dyno run by a small amount: an underdriven lightweight crank pulley, and a lighter wheel/tire setup (oh, and swapping a leaky and mangled Stillen catback for Fast Intentions). I was expecting all along that those wouldn't make much difference.

More recently, the dyno-affecting changes have been the M370 intake manifold and a canned tune from UpRev. This dyno trip was mostly about validating where the car's at right now, making sure it wasn't running dangerously lean, etc, before I put on FI's long tube headers (coming in ~6 weeks) and then give it a proper dyno tune.

The results were crappy. The first few pulls were peaking around 280hp, which is a 6.7% drop in peak horsepower. They had my old data to overlay with the new, and it wasn't just a small shift at peak. The graphs overlaid almost perfectly in the lower RPM ranges (which to me, validates that the dyno is still calibrated the same, any weather difference isn't a huge factor, etc), but in the upper RPM ranges the whole curve of the torque and horsepower looked worse than my older data.

Their first comment on the comparative data was that I seemed to be running a lot leaner in the upper RPM ranges than I was before at WOT (we're talking high 12's vs mid 13's AFR, nothing excessively dangerous). The tech said he suspected the canned UpRev tune caused that change, so we map-switched back to the stock tune and did another pull. The AFRs got a bit richer again, and some of the lost power was restored, presumably because our ECU is smart enough to use a bit more timing with a richer mix? In any case, it's not all that shocking that a canned tune sucks, I always knew I'd need a dyno tune once I got done with the engine's breathing setup.

Then we looked closer at the overlay of the old and new torque curves (using the stock ecu map pull). Again identical over the lower RPM ranges, but around the 5K mark is where they diverge. The old graph was smooth, the new one took a couple slow nosedives at different points, and was lower all around in the 5K+ range.

Their theory on this was it *might* be an effect of the intake manifold swap, said they had seen similar results from poorly matched aftermarket intake manifolds/spacers/etc in the past, just due to changes in air turbulence patterns and/or the MAP sensor (which with the M370, gets relocated off of the main manifold body and attached to a vacuum hose off the side, which is something that bugged me a little in the back of my head to begin with, but I figured they must know what they're doing. Still, MAP sensor on a flexible hose? That has to change the timing and magnitude of its response right?).

So I'm back to running on my stock ecu map for now, and after I got back from the dyno last night I swapped back to my stock intake manifold (and re-did some hose work on my oil catch can setup to make it work with the stock manifold (basically like I mentioned in that thread: capping off one of the stock PCV vacuum intakes on the manifold and sending the can's output to the other). I'm planning to head back to EngineLogics for another dyno as soon as they can slot me in, maybe today if I'm super lucky, otherwise probably Monday, and I'll see about getting some printouts of the comparative graphs from my car to post up here if we see anything interesting.

At this point I expect we'll see better numbers without the M370, but it's also possible the remaining loss was just that the engine hadn't re-learned fuel trims, etc from switching back to the stock ecu map? Also keep in mind these results are of course specific to my car's setup, I've seen what looked like good graphs from M370s on others' cars posted here. It may be that the effects of the manifold are highly dependent on the rest of the intake/exhaust setup.

Also, it could be some other wear and tear on my car causing the higher-rpm torque loss. I did check for exhaust leaks when I got home (with a soapwater spray bottle at the flanges, idling cold), didn't see any problems there. Once I get it re-dyno'd back on the stock manifold I should be able to put the M370 issue to rest for my setup though.

RCZ: I should've paid more attention to your doubts than all the other data I was trying to aggregate from the M370 thread, it seems We'll find out soon.

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ChrisSlicks

Interesting. I would have expected a slight peak loss for a little more area under the curve in the mid range, but from what you describe you saw only losses. Leaning out at the high rpm's is never a good thing. Will be watching for your follow up results.

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Hotchkis ARB | Stillen CAI | Art Pipes | Berk CBE | Stillen AP Racing Brakes | AE Performance Oil Cooler | BC Racing ER Coilovers | Doran Control Arms

RockStarKick

In for more results, nice review !!

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2013 Mustang GT, 6M, Track Pack & Leather Recaros
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ssqpolo

nice work man. cant wait for moar dynos!

wstar

My plan (tentatively anyways) is to do my next dyno after my next oil change (which is the switch to Motul). Judging by the shipping delays for my filters and the rate I'm putting miles on the car, I would estimate about 1.5 weeks from now. So any differences from the last dyno run will have three factors in play: The underdrive pulley, the switch to synthetic, and more break-in miles.

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ssqpolo

im just about to switch over to synthetic, and i am having the hardest time deciding which oil to put. i've read about those horror stories about engines getting raped because they didnt have ester oil, ive heard many mixed reviews about motul (mostly not so good), and think amsoil is super expensive. i dont know. i might just put that nissan ester oil in again until im really comfortable with an oil. im at 6k now

wstar

Well, honestly any quality oil (API SM) of appropriate weight isn't going to rape your engine, especially not in one change. By 6k, if it were me, I'd want to be on *some* kind of synthetic. Mobil1 wouldn't be a bad choice, or Castrol Syntec. Edit: or Mobil1 Extended Performance supposedly has the ester additives.

I wouldn't put too much stock in the good or bad results various oils got in the thread you're thinking of. There were far too few samples (in many cases, just 1 sample). We don't know what those engines were going through at the time, or how the mileage on them compared, etc.

Also, some of the results people are quoting are really from DE engines, not VHRs, which could change things as well.

If you're worried, buy some mail order oil analysis kits and track the oil in your car and find out how your choices do in your engine, with your habits, etc.

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ssqpolo

nah im not that worried. u and semtex seem to be switching to motul, so i might as well follow the crowd on this one. which motul are u using btw

wstar

I'm going to the expensive stuff, 300V in 5W30, at least for a couple of oil changes, until I've seen how the analysis goes. But don't do it just because we're doing it, because I don't want to hear you complaining to me if we chose poorly

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