wstar's Journal
 

http://www.the370z.com/members/wstar...5-lms-6640.jpg

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/3j...=w1179-h603-no

My car's journal thread :) Top post has been re-formatted to just run down the mod list with thread links as appropriate.

Current Mods/Setup:

Base Specs:
2009 Platinum Graphite, 7AT, Sport and Touring Packages
No factory nav unit, no splashguards

Engine Performance Mods:
Engine block + heads replaced (spun crank bearing on original), donor car was a wrecked 2013 w/ 5K miles - June 2014.
Stillen Gen 3 Intake
Motordyne M370 Intake Manifold
Fast Intentions long-tube headers
Fast Intentions catback (18" res + CF muffler options)
UpRev Osiris ECU Flash + Dyno tuning

Handling/Safety Mods
SPL Front Camber Arms
Cage!
Stillen/APRacing BBK
JRZ RS1 Coilovers from Forged Performance - (pics) (review)
Hotchkis Swaybars
CZP Braided Brake Lines
Nismo Extended Wheel Studs (50mm front, 60mm rear)
Seats: Sparco EVO / EVO-II-US, Sparco Harnesses
Steering: Sparco R383 (330mm), NRG Hub + Gen3 QR

Reliability / Cooling / etc Mods
CSF Radiator w/o Condensor.
Setrab 25-row 9-Series Oil Cooler + Mocal 180F thermo plate
Spek-Pro Oil Pressure Gauge w/ Alarm
Setrab 19-row 6-series trans cooler (with smaller lines/fittings)
AM Performance Baffled Oil Pan
Z-speed aluminum front under tray
Stillen Front Brake Ducting
Stillen grounding kit
Intake heat-shielded
CJM Fuel Starve Fix

Deleted Factory Parts:
It's pretty much a completely gutted race-car now. No A/C, no heater core, no radio, no interior, no side windows, doors gutted. I did keep the upper dash cover, but that's about it. The only easy big-ticket weight reductions left are Lexan front/rear windows.

Misc
Evo2 Battery
Z1 Urethane engine/trans mounts
Spohn-style Custom mesh front grill
Speed Bleeders
FilterMag
Red Start Switch!

Fluids, Wear items, etc:
Oil: Motul 300V 5W30
OilFilter: K&N HP-1010
Trans: Motul Multi-ATF
Diff: Royal Purple 75W90
Coolant: 80/20 mix + MoCool or WaterWetter
Brake Fluid: Motul RBF600
Brake Pads: Carbon Lorraine RC6E
Brake Rotors: Stillen's APRacing BBK
Tire/Wheel Setups:
Dry: Forgestar F14 18x10 square, Hankook RS-3 275/35
Dry: Forgestar F14 18x10 square, Continental GT-O 285/645
Wet: Conti 265/645 EC-WETs, need some 18x9s to mount them on, though!

Stuff on the longer-term todo list:
Cool-shirt system is a must!
An aftermarket true 1.5-way LSD (thinking Cusco RS), + pumped cooler (maybe use my old Setrab trans cooler core).
Read end bushings, maybe subframe bushings as well.
More aftermarket suspension bits (various arms/joints/bushings - more adjustability, less random play).
GTM 7AT Valve Body Upgrade?? (or possibly straight to one of their full trans upgrade packages??)

Great detailed start to your Journal.

As for the brake pads:
I got my Hawk HP+ pads today but I probably wont get a chance to install them as I'm going on vacation for a week starting Saturday. I will have them installed before my next auto-x session on the 25th so I'll let you know how they perform.

great start ! i think i'll steal your idea about the crush washers and oil analysis service ! :) also, you may want to get a trickle charger for when you change out your battery... if i didn't already have one, I'd get the new kind that plugs into cigarette lighter socket

Steal anything you like, just don't steal my car :) I'm stealing lots of stuff from your posts (and everyone else's). This car is staying relatively comfy and pretty though (it's not a track car, and I plan to make road trips and go out to dinner in it and such) so it won't get the extreme weight reduction treatment like yours is.

BTW, both of our lighter sockets are disconnected when the key is off, so we can't trickle through them.

This is going to be a nice one to keep track of. Thanks wstar for the detailed updates!

Just got done installing the underdrive pulley from Stillen. Crankshaft bolt was a bitch to get loose, but it seems that's always the case on every car.

Service manual references a tool to hold the starter gear teeth in place while you're loosening and tightening the crankshaft bolt (see Svc Manual, Section EM, top of pg 53), whereas Stillen's instructions go with the standard "remove starter and use a prybar on the teeth there". With two people on a lift, I think the Stillen thing would've worked better, but alone crawling under the car trying to work both ends of things, I really wish I had that stupid little tool. It's basically just a triangular piece of metal with two bolt-holes, I imagine it can be ordered cheap from Nissan, or just fabbed with a grinder and a piece of steel. Just FYI for anyone else doing a self-install on this, it might be worth it to look into that.

Driving impressions:

Regarding the now-slowed accessory pulleys: I didn't notice anything different really with the steering or the AC, at least on a short night drive. The volt gauge moves a bit more, especially idling after startup (flicking the throttle moves it up a bit), so you can kinda tell the change in the alternator, but it's still staying over the 14 mark, I don't think it's going to be an issue.

I wasn't expecting to feel much difference driving, given that pulleys aren't generally a big power gain. However, my butt dyno was pleasantly surprised at the results of this mod. We'll have to see on a real dyno later if there are any actual HP gains, but I'm guessing at least a small bump there. What I really noticed though is that the car is just more responsive to throttle input now. Shifts (7AT in my car, remember) are a bit snappier, as the rpm changes (up and down) for shifts are even faster than they were before. You can really feel the difference when you sit around 4k in a given gear and ride the throttle close to even, alternating between accel and engine braking. The transition between those two states is faster and more responsive. Overall I'm really impressed with the change in the car's character from such a simple mod. I don't know what else to say besides re-iterating "more responsive" again :)

No pics of the car, it's not like a pulley is that exciting looking anyways, but here's a couple of install-related pics.

The pullers I had in my garage were all too long and bulky for the tiny cramped space you're working with on our crank pulley. I went by O'Reilly (generic auto parts place, like AutoZone, etc) and picked up one that worked well enough. It's a tiny cheap "gear puller" that happens to be small enough. I couldn't quite get both legs through the pulley at the same time (it's really cramped), so I took a bit of length off of one of the feet with a dremel cutting wheel (less than 1/4" I think). This is what you're looking for if you want to try to find it at a local place (and you can see my edit to one of the feet too):

http://www.the370z.com/members/wstar...aft-pulley.png

Also, the belt tensioner on our car is rather tense. I was using a cheapo 3/8" socket wrench to hold mine open during the belt re-install. It couldn't take the torque, so the square drive got twisted. Poor little wrench:

http://www.the370z.com/members/wstar...3-8-wrench.png

Bumping for the update above, since apparently edits don't bump the thread as unread.

dang, you have suped up your car in a every short amount of time!!!!

i'll probably check here since you are doing all the things i want to do. thanks for your journal!

Got a good drive in today, 30 miles each way on the highway. Bright sunny day, air temp about 80 outside, but bright hot sun and no clouds. Traffic was light enough on a couple of sections to really open up on the highway a bit too. Even top-gear acceleration seems better than before with the new pulley in place, I'm kinda surprised. No problems with the underdriven AC fighting the heat today, it was blasting very cold air, even in the parking lot.

I didn't cruise at about 125 for a number of those miles, but I imagined it in my head for a while, and oil temps stayed fine. Even dropping down to 5th for a while at those speeds with the AC blasting, it can't quite break 240 on the oil temp gauge. I can get it hotter with extended high rpm driving at low speeds, but on the highway I think it really doesn't *need* an oil cooler. Oh, and damn this car really tracks around long highway curves at speed like a train on tracks :icon17:

Thanks for the write-up on the pulley install! That's actually the next thing I'm doing now that I tackled the headers. +rep.

very cool, we tried installing mine over the weekend but we couldnt get the pulley out because we couldnt get the pulley bolt out. Just kept turning everything with it....

First off, if the engine is turning, then you don't have the starter wheel locked down. Pull the starter off and put a prybar in there against the teeth so that you can hold the engine in place by that while you break the bolt.

I feel your pain, and then some. Imagine me laying under the car on Rhino Ramps taking that bolt off solo, one arm on the prybar at the rear of the engine, one arm on the breaker bar up front. It can be done, just takes a bit of creativity and a lot of grunting. At one point my prybar slipped and the elbow of my other arm went crashing into the pavement when everything let loose, I've got a nice bruise and some torn-off skin from that one.

Even my impact wrench didn't move that bolt, although it might have if there was a straight shot with it. Having to use an extension and a universal to reach it kinda kills the direct impact effect.

The trick that finally broke the bolt (I think anyways, the break wasn't very crisp, but I had success right after with some really hard pulling by hand again) was to use a floor jack. I held the prybar in place on the rear while I jacked up a floor jack with the other hand against the shaft of my breaker bar.

Holy sh-t, that's determination ! saves you from getting one of these anyways :nutswinger:

I deleted my washer fluid just now. I'm going to take a look at the TB coolant thing, but I may need to just button it up and make a parts run for that first.

Anyways, two other incidental things while I have the car in pieces. One, for those who were wondering about the closed-off ducts in the fangs of the front bumper, here's a pic from inside the bumper when the bumper is off the car:

http://www.the370z.com/members/wstar...red-remove.jpg

Also, I had started the car up for a few minutes on the ramps and then shut it back down, and I started inspecting the exhaust. Turns out the big center flange (near the crossmember we had clearance issues with) has a bad gasket. The condensation in the exhaust system was leaking out from the bottom of the flange, that's how I noticed. When I went back and felt it cold, you can tell there's a chunk missing from the bottom of the gasket's edge. Hopefully replacing this gasket will solve some of my rasp issue, but I'll need to find an appropriate replacement first.

It probably got torn up from having that flange loosened and retightened (and the general area beaten and heated) many times over the course of a week or so while I was getting the crossmember clearance thing sorted out. Makes me suspicious of the other gaskets forward of this too, as they were also loosened and re-tightened multiple times.

Hey wstar,

So what do you figure those closed-off duct openings on the bumper are? I don't have my Z yet so I can only guess from pictures.

No idea. Some people have mentioned in other threads that it's probably a poor idea to open them arbitrarily, as you'll likely just gain wind resistance for nothing. RCZ is looking at making some ducting to open them and route the air to cool the front brakes, which might be worth it.

With an otherwise stock config, all it's going to do is open up more airflow into the radiator area, and off to the sides at that, so not very effective. There's no open path from them towards the brakes on the stock car, some things will have to be cut or moved to make room.

nice work man. cant wait for moar dynos!

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.

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

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.

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

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 :)

nah, i wont complain...maybe about the price! anyway, ur car seems to be coming along great. congrats

Sorry if this has been asked before (tried to search), but have you gotten a baseline dyno? Keep up the awesome analysis on your car!

I never did a baseline on this car stock, the only dyno info I have is from after the full exhaust and gen3 intakes were in place.

Hey wstar, you and I have identical setups right now, don't we? All except for 6MT vs. 7AT? It's interesting to see the difference in our whp, given that we both dyno'd on Dyno Dynamics.

Sounds like a little friendly competition ! :)

Wstar, also I recall you hit about 250 oil temp a while back... have you seen anything higher since ? ... I'm still trying to validate my theory that the guys driving AT cars aren't overheating nearly as often as the rest of us

I've been up to 260 peak. I wouldn't think the transmission would make the difference though. It's probably just that nobody in a 7AT has really tracked the car.

There's prob some truth to your point that fewer AT folks are inclined to track their cars... and I agree the transmission itself isn't likely... and I also think this car runs hot regardless of transmission... but I think with the manual folks are spending more time at higher RPMs, which is a contributing factor... oil heats up with friction and I suspect friction increases non-linearly with RPMs... automatic transmissions should reduce time at higher RPMs vs manual b/c when it upshifts it does so with 99% precision... and I think realistically, most of us guys with manual transmissions are keeping on the gas at least a little between upshifts... and so for example even if we shift at 7,400 rpm, the car is running up to 7,800 rpm when the clutch is pressed... I suspect a lot of heat is building up between 7,500 and 8,000 rpm for the 6mts... Drivers can help by lifting the gas sooner, but I don't blame it all on us drivers, I think the engagement points in the clutch are too high in the pedal stroke... Based on my own experience and from watching videos of guys driving this car, I'm convinced it is happening a lot... until I find some AT guys overheating, I'm going to keep asking the question... sorry for the long-winded explanation!

That's a very good point Travis, probably some truth to that. Also, let's keep in mind the ambient temperature of the locations and days people are reporting engine oil temps, as during this time of the year there can be great temp variations between locations in the US.

Even if the driver lets the revs go up when hitting the clutch, shouldn't the rev limiter still stop you around 7.5? With a drive-by-wire throttle, it's not like the rev limiter could ever fail or be confused. Ultimately it's always in control.

If I recall correctly, I have seen some dyno graphs showing up to 7,800 rpms being reached. I'm not exactly sure if that's accurate or not...?

Wstar, I seem to remember getting over 7500 with the clutch in... my car's in the shop otherwise I'd go test my theory - I'm going off memory... even if the rev limiter were keeping the engine in check, there's no question in my mind that a mis-timed clutch is going to result in more time at the upper end of the rev range...

I'm going to stop harping on this point, because I know ppl will get tired of it... but someday I'm sure I'll be vindicated ! :)

Throttle body coolant lines deleted this evening. DIY info and pics here: http://www.the370z.com/diy-section-d...nt-delete.html

You cant rev the car past 5XXXrpm in neutral. You guys ever notice this? Might be a built in limiter to protect the engine.

I went with the factory ester oil for my oil change. I wanted to see if the oil cooler does its job without worrying about whether the oil had something to do with it.

From what my tech said, nothing will happen if you switch to syn, the only problem is that the valvetrain will be a lot louder. You are going to get clicking...

Did you verify that in your car or are you echoing the comment from the other thread ? If you verified, have you tried it when shifting from 1st to 2nd ?... ie I'd understand if you were just sitting there standstill with clutch pushed in it might limit to 5K... I'd guess that nissan did this to avoid having folks pop the clutch at 7k in 1st gear - would take a toll on the drivetrain and drive warranty costs... but something tells me that between upshifts the revs aren't limited in this way... still depending on someone else to verify - car in shop

Yeah I noticed this pretty early on. Clearly the car must be capable of being higher in neutral when driving though, or that would totally screw up some shifting scenarios. I haven't yet tried putting my 7AT in neutral at freeway speeds and seeing if the limit is still there. Those kinds of behaviors might be very different between 7AT and 6MT though.

You must be able to rev it past that once you get moving, otherwise the synchrorev match wouldn't work at high rpm, nor would heal-and-toeing. You would just get locked out at 5k. I think I've almost misshifted trying to go into 6th but hitting the gate of 4th before and i think i remember seeing the revs go up pretty high while being out of gear.

You can if you press the clutch in. I found this out when I was making one of the initial sound clips for my exhaust. And I seem to recall that it limited the revs to 4500, not 5000, if I didn't press the clutch in.

Edit: I just remembered that in addition to pressing the clutch in, I had to slip it into 1st gear in order to rev past 5k (or 4.5k or whatever it was). So technically you are correct, RCZ. You can't rev past 5k in N.