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Hi bud. I'm looking into getting my next mod. I have K&N drop ins with a cbe and test pipes. In your opinion, which mod were you most impressed with.

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Old 04-17-2011, 08:24 PM   #331 (permalink)
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Hi bud. I'm looking into getting my next mod. I have K&N drop ins with a cbe and test pipes.

In your opinion, which mod were you most impressed with. I'm looking at either getting the G3 or the manifold next.
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Old 04-17-2011, 09:31 PM   #332 (permalink)
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Originally Posted by 370Z JT View Post
Hi bud. I'm looking into getting my next mod. I have K&N drop ins with a cbe and test pipes.

In your opinion, which mod were you most impressed with. I'm looking at either getting the G3 or the manifold next.
IMHO the G3 intakes are probably the better bet for your "next step", but I'm liking the change in the torque curve the M370 seems to give, too. Soon as my new headers come in (and get installed) I'm going to have the whole thing dyno tuned and then we'll see where things stand (I expect to need to smooth out some rich spots in the mid range, as FI themselves noted, and really who knows what else given the combo of bolt-ons I've got running now).
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Old 04-17-2011, 10:33 PM   #333 (permalink)
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More small parts ordered:

NST 10% overdrive alternator pully - help offset some of the alternator RPM loss from my stillen underdrive crank pulley. Easy, light, cheap, might save me some headaches some days.

Elite Engineering C6 Catch Can - This is made for 'vettes, but really the only reason it's considered a vette part is because they ship a mounting bracket that mounts onto LSx engines easily. I had this can on my LS1 Trans Am for a long time, was really impressed with the quality of it (the mesh/outlet design, ease of dumping the fluid, etc).

With the way the PCV hoses are set up on the M370 Manifold, you now have a single, combined PCV hose (T-adapter from both valve covers, single run to rear of intake manifold), making it easy to use a single oil catch can for our car. Since I relocated my battery, and since oil catch cans work better when they're a little cooler than the rest of the engine bay anyways, I'm going to figure out how to mount this thing in my empty battery compartment.
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Old 04-18-2011, 09:18 PM   #334 (permalink)
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Good to have you back and posting man Looks good, but somehow I'm still not convinced about the gains form that manifold.
I consider myself "convinced enough" that I didn't think it was worth it to do another before/after dyno on this part (my last dyno being so old and all). The other charts and results people have already posted in that ungodly-long manifold thread seem pretty consistent with the reasonable explanation that longer intake runners = shift the torque peak down a bit.

Whether the small change is worth the cost, that's a pretty good question IMHO. But for my personal case, seeing as I'm not going to do forced induction and there's very few effective breathing mods left (basically the M370 that just went on, and the FI headers that I'm waiting in line for), I may as well go all the way and then get this final breathing config dyno tuned using my soon-to-arrive UpRev.
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Old 04-19-2011, 12:53 AM   #335 (permalink)
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Really? Is there room under there (I assume you mean under the center)? Or did you just mean going under that little manifold tab and the intake baffle, but still taking the same basic route? ....
Yes. All you need is to put it under the tab next to the throttle body.
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Old 04-19-2011, 02:45 AM   #336 (permalink)
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Yes. All you need is to put it under the tab next to the throttle body.
Yeah, I did do that earlier today to clean up the routing in the front (went under the tab + that little curved intake baffle box. Sorry I'm still confused on your "Yes" though: do you mean you guys are intending that the hose run directly under the manifold itself (i.e. just above and parallel with the passenger side fuel rail, inside from the valve covers?).

In any case, like I said I'm already off the beaten path now, as I'm going to run that line way off on the passenger side to mount an oil catch can in the unused battery compartment. Just curious for mine and others' future reference.
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Old 04-19-2011, 02:57 PM   #337 (permalink)
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Just under the manifold next to the throttle body.
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Old 04-21-2011, 04:24 PM   #338 (permalink)
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Got my UpRev cable in the mail today. The software worked fine on my little netbook (Dell Inspiron Mini 1018, nice for a tiny car/travel laptop), running Windows 7 Starter (just for UpRev, I dual-boot over to Ubuntu for anything else).

Cipher: The UI on Cipher is a bit clunky, but it does do some neat stuff (like talk to the BCM and test wipers and windows, etc). Clearly they've got a lot more inside scoop on Nissan's CAN and custom PIDs, etc than generic OBDII software does. The data logging supports a lot of Nissan-specific parameters too, but I haven't had time to play with it a ton. Several interesting buttons were greyed out, related to adjustments that could possibly be made by Cipher, and maintenance operations for ABS and the fuel system. Maybe not supported on this car, or maybe those only come with an upgraded license?

Osiris: Flash process went pretty uneventfully. One oddity I noticed during the flash process (aside from all sorts of unusual dash light combos) was that the engine fans spun up and kept blowing the whole time. I was sitting there thinking "gee I hope this flash goes relatively quickly before those things drain my battery, which started as 12.08V". Most likely this is just something the ECU does on its own, not Osiris-specific. Luckily the flash is pretty quick compared to some older cars I've done this on.

I don't even have an "e-Tune" at this point obviously, since I haven't sent them any data logs from my car. They created some default "tuned" map for my Map 1 based on a mods list, I'm sure it must be fairly conservative without data to go off of. I also had them up the idle speed to 700rpm, up the rev limiter to 7750, and remove the speed limit for that map. Initial short drive on it went fine. Car seemed a little perkier, but (a) it probably hasn't even finished re-learning fuel trims from the ECU reset yet and (b) it's probably all in my head

The map switching functionality is just awesome, it'd almost be worth it without any performance tuning capabilities. I had them set up my Map 2 as a Valet mode limited to 3000rpm and 30mph, and Map 3 as a Security mode limited to 2000rpm and 5mph.

I tested out the Valet Mode and tried to defeat it. WOT seems to sometimes bypass the low rev limiter for a very brief moment, but the speed limiter can never be evaded, all in all it works great. If I were a Valet trying to hotrod this car around before parking it, as soon as I realized the car was refusing to go over those limits I'd give up quickly, maybe even be worried that I might have broken something and might get blamed for it (given that the rev limit responds in a bouncy fashion, much like our true higher rev limit).

The security mode lets the car run, but it can only crawl at 5mph. Aside from setting that before shutting down the car, I might switch to it when I want to run into a store quickly and leave the car running. Then I don't have to turn it off, but if someone managed to jump in the car, I can catch them on foot

I'll probably go for a dyno run sometime in the next week or so, probably down at EngineLogics since they have that well-maintained DynoDynamics unit there, which is what my last graph came from ages ago. Mostly just to get a new baseline, and make sure I'm not running too lean. Then I'll see about having them (or someone?) dyno-tune the AFR targets and timing advance once I get the FI Long-tube headers installed.
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Old 04-21-2011, 04:46 PM   #339 (permalink)
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The security mode lets the car run, but it can only crawl at 5mph. Aside from setting that before shutting down the car, I might switch to it when I want to run into a store quickly and leave the car running. Then I don't have to turn it off, but if someone managed to jump in the car, I can catch them on foot
LOL. If that ever happens make sure you have a bystander whip out their phone and record the ensuing chase.

Sounds like it worked out pretty well.
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Old 04-23-2011, 01:34 AM   #340 (permalink)
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Installed NST's overdriven alternator pulley this afternoon/evening. There were a few gotchas to getting the alternator out of the car, but it was a learning experience. I could probably do it in 1/3 the time if I did it again now.

Random notes in case someone googles this later: You really should have an impact wrench on hand for the pulley nut itself, and it's a 24mm nut. Definitely remove radiator overflow tank and cooling fans first like the Service Manual says. Then remove the belt, and then remove the belt tensioner (completely) for easy access to the top front alternator mounting bolt (it's a totally unnecessary pain in the *** if you don't, no idea why the SM doesn't mention that).

Also, if you have an oil cooler installed, odds are very high your oil cooler lines will block the normal path for pulling the removed alternator out of the engine bay from below. You can either drop the front swaybar to let it out, or what I did: spin it around so the pulley is facing the ground and just prop it up on the swaybar + radiator housing and do the nut removal/install while it's hanging there.

Half hour test drive went fine, nothing seems to be coming loose. Volts look like they're a touch better, but the real test will be whether it helps in the long term during those periods where I'm harder on my charging cycle for my tiny battery and underdriven crank pulley.
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Old 04-23-2011, 06:20 PM   #341 (permalink)
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Oil Catch Can installed. DIY thread here.
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Old 04-23-2011, 11:48 PM   #342 (permalink)
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You have definitely been productive this weekend, congrats on the successful installs! Have you any improvements with the pulleys?
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Old 04-24-2011, 12:14 AM   #343 (permalink)
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You have definitely been productive this weekend, congrats on the successful installs! Have you any improvements with the pulleys?
Yeah voltage is actually more stable so far with the alternator pulley overdriven. My underdrive crank pulley has been on forever, this was just the alternator pulley upgrade. No expected power gains from the pulley, just a little more peace of mind on battery charging.
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Old 04-30-2011, 09:49 AM   #344 (permalink)
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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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Last edited by wstar; 04-30-2011 at 01:11 PM. Reason: oops, forgot to mention the catback change between runs, too
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Old 04-30-2011, 10:36 AM   #345 (permalink)
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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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