Damn Fast & Furious movies reignited my desire to mod

KingJoseph

Alright, so mock me if you must, but I had never seen ANY of the Fast & Furious series until last weekend. As an automotive aficionado, this may seem crazy... but after watching a small amount of the first one as a younger man, I couldn't take the cheesy one liners and the over-the-top/impossible stunts. Now, I can appreciate them for what they are... and more importantly, I have become borderline obsessed with the cars in these movies.

So, anyway, I have a 2012 Nismo with a warranty that's coming up on its end... so I feel a little more free to begin truly modding.

Right now, I have a FI CF CBE and Berk HFCs... and that's it. I had considered doing the K&N + Post-MAF tubes, but never pulled the trigger after the Z1 rep I was working with stopped answering my emails after offering me a discount.

What's the point of this post? I have several questions and I'm hoping some of you can give me some answers and ideas.

1a) Is the K&N + Post-MAF mod definitively an improvement? I have seen some commentary that the accordion tubes are actually BETTER because they cause some kind of perturbations in the airflow that are a net positive. Of course, people refuted this as well, so this mod is clear as mud to me. See link below if you care to wade through it.

Z1 Tubes and breathers installed...

1b) Should I care about this mod anyway? Would I be better off going Stillen G3? Is *that* mod even worth the money and labor?

2) I know LTHs (or test pipes/HFCs, to a lesser extent), CBE, and *maybe* intake are going to get you about all you're going to get from bolt-on mods... so I am, for the first time, seriously considering forced induction. Lots of questions on this and a few slightly related items.

a: I haven't tuned my car w/ the CBE & HFC. I've waited for warranty reasons and also because I wasn't sure if/when I would mod further and didn't want to retune repeatedly for different setups. Is Uprev alone w/ CBE & HFC going to make an appreciable difference that justifies the cost?

b: If I were to go turbo, I'm relatively sure I'd need to replace my current 2.5" FI TDX exhaust with a 3.0" diameter setup. Is this correct? Would the same requirement apply to supercharging?

c: From a reliability standpoint, is there a significant difference between supercharging and turbocharging? An acquaintance of mine had a twin-turbo 350Z and that thing always seemed to be having issues... and he eventually blew up his engine. Could be operator error (and probably was), but it made me wonder.

3) This is purely subjective, but I'm interested in feedback on aerodynamic mods that you all like for the Nismo.

4) I'm also interested in suspension/brake changes, but this is something I know very little about. What I can say is that, where I currently live, I wouldn't want to go much lower than the Nismo's stock ride height. I'm always on the verge of scraping as it is... so I prefer suggestions that would be an objective improvement over the Nismo's stock setup but without lowering the ride height by much.

Appreciate all responses; I'm trying to educate myself and I'm not always knowledgeable enough to make out facts from fiction on these matters on some of the more contentious forum threads.

__________________
King Joseph I

2012 370Z Nismo || Berk HFCs | F.I. 12" CF CBE