ceaser

any spare - i could do with one too!

hello all this 'debate' stemmed from a conversation in the chatroom last night. Now i dont normally get angry with people but after having qualified with a degree in materials science, worked in the oil business for years testing developing and researching oil, to be told i dont know what im talking about by someone who plays around with their 350z as a hobby before returning to their day job as an accountant/van driver/whatever, is somewhat annoying! So, ive decided to share a few 'oily' facts with you all about what i picked up when working in the research dept for Exxon (aka esso), the worlds largest petroleum manufacturer. Now im certainly not a mechanic, or tuner but i do know probably more then is healthy about what happens to oil inside an engine, in fact for any insomniacs out there, ive still got some old tribology textbooks laying about which could help you I will divide it into two parts, oil facts (not opinion) and a favorite which always brought a smile to the staff tea room - aftermarket oils. This could be a long post - you might want to go get a cup of tea !! oily facts oil isnt a magical thing, its designed to prevent metal on metal contact in your engine thus preventing wear, seizure and all the other horrible things which could happne in the engine environment. Now most damage to engines happens on start up, so oils over the years have been formulated to circulate very rapidly even when cold to provide complete protection. The main advance in this is PAO based oils aka full synthetics. now most oils are mineral based, ie pump crude out of the ground, refine it, blend it and sell it. PAO is 'made' it isnt refined crude but is chemically manufactured. It is a completely different beast to the stuff you grew up with and im afraid all that knowlege you may have picked up, be it from your dad or by being in the 'motor trade' for xxx years is a bit out of date. Im going to focus on what is in our cars ie fully synthetic oil. A modern full synthetic provides complete circulation to and protection of critical wear parts in less then a second of cold start up. How do i know this? well there were a fleet of cars at esso driven in cold start cycles, for months then stripped to constituent parts, checked, measured for wear etc etc. So yes, from an OIL point of view, within 1 second of use, you can rev your car to 7000 rpm. you have complete protection, there will be no wear on critical parts, proven tested fact - end of. A PAO oil doesnt need 'time to warm up' A film of sufficient strength and thickness is fully coating your cars internal workings in under a second. How does it do this? well older oils go a bit solid when cold and can break up when hot, PAO just doesnt do that. now i could go into lots of depth about branched chain hydrocarbons etc but basically the chemical make up of PAO allows it tailored to perform exactly as needed. Now car manufacturers have been told this, R. Lobo, one of the heads of esso research wrote to tell a major manufacturer all about the results of the esso ultra (pao oil) products, and was told thanks but no thanks, we are still going to limit cars when cold 'just in case' . Well its no skin off Nissan to hedge its bets, after all, if they make the wrong call, replacing a million engines isnt cheap! Now, im not a mechanic, it could be that the plasma drive of your flux capacitor needs time to develop thermal bridging etc etc which is why most car manufacturers limit their cars rpm when cold. But it is certainly not a requirement from an oil point of view. Now the ability to 'tailor' PAO to what you need allows you to use less additives. oil in your car is made of two things, basestock (the oil or blend of oils itself) and the additives put in it (addpack) The additives enable oil to operate over a wider temp range by modifying the viscosity(multigrade sound familiar?) they alter the pour point, oxidation rate, act as detergents and water inhibitors, increase the anti shear properties, and a whole host of other 'wonderful' things. With PAO being such a good basestock, it has these properties inherently 'built in' to it. It has much better heat transfer properties and because PAO requires less additives (typically this can be up to 20% of a mineral oil but less additives mean less to break down = less to go wrong) they deteriorate less. Now to head off the 'yes buts' i have deliberately kept this at a high level, i will include some links at the end for those who wish to 'immerse themselves in oil' chemisty at a greater depth. so what does this mean for us 350z drivers? Well lets see... I change my oil every 3000/5000 miles to prevent wear! arnt i good!!! Er no sorry, your equating what your dad taught you/xxx years of being in the trade and always doing it like that as how you should behave. What you have to remember is that you are using a premium grade product which has been tested to death both in labs and in actual thousands of hour engine tests and found to be safe and provide complete protection for 9000 miles. the 5000/whatever mile limityou are used to and consider 'safe' might be fine for an old cortina using mineral based oil but things have moved on since then. How do i know this, well from testing actual cars, pulling engine oil samples, checking for wear etc in tests which could last 25000+ miles!! Remember, Nissan dont want any engine recalls or liabilities on their hands they wouldnt put these reccomendations on without SOILD FACT AND TEST RESULTS behind it. But at the end of the day its your money, if you want to throw away perfectly good oil to make yourself feel better then go for it. (and for the person who stated he changes his every 1000 miles Please put it in a can and send it to me, i could do with a supply of perfectly good free oil!) Yes but Nissan reccommendations dont apply to me because its MY CAR and im SPECIAL, in fact im such a baddass driver that im THE STIG er right ok, so Nissan lauch a completely impractical 300BHP (well, mine is ) 2 seat sports coupe and expect it to pootle around the shops whilst being driven by my great aunt doris?? Really?? they hadnt considered for one minute that people who buy these cars might like to give them some stick??? hmm lets see, does 155mph, rather large brakes, big tyres etc etc, it must all be for show right!! Sorry to disappoint but even your stig like driving style has been anticipated, simulated, tested etc etc. in fact a safety factor has been built in as well, PAO is perfectly capable of surviving all types of driving styles alot longer then 9000 miles. lets say a mondeo has a service point of 12000 miles on the same oil, reducing the service point to 9000 gives you a 25% safety factor purely to anticipate your hooligan driving style!!! Yes but my car is modified and i need a special oil/cooler etc etc two questions you have to consider, 1, are you running FI? if not then 2, what exactly do you think your mods have done to the oil and the way it performs?? is your engine revving harder, ie 9000 rpm?? if not then the oil (not the internals which sufer mechanical stress etc, remember im no mechanic) doesnt really care what mods you have on your car! how can it, its primary purpose is to act as a very thin buffer between moving parts. if you havent added any more moving parts, ie turbo or supercharger, or increased the frictional forces on the oil, ie increased the rpm, then what do you think your mods are going to do to the oil, well i can tell you - nothing! Shearing forces or excess heat (deal with that in a minute) damage oil. Bhp or torque doesnt damage oil, it doesnt care. its only concerned with being constantly rubbed between the mechanicals!! Now FI is a different beast, oil doesnt like FI, it scares it, it makes its little black heart tremble!! This is due to the massive shearing forces put on oil by a high RPM spinning turbo. This leads to the oil being under intense frictional forces and subject to much higher heat transfer rates then normal, especially combined with a much smaller engine which makes it harder to shed heat from. but yet, PAO has been specifically designed to operate in that environment and survive, albeit not as long, though i do beleive EVOs are now up to 8000 miles service? So, you have an oil designed to survive 8000 miles in an evo where it is put under massive pressure , basically it gets its nads thrashed for 8000 miles and you then put the same oil in the nice friendly environment of the big engined non turbo low revving 350z. Still worried about your oil??? Oil coolers. EVOs have them, GTRs have them so we need one right? er no, not really. in fact you can do more harm then good. for all those thinking about an oil cooler, what exactly do you hope to gain? A PAO oil is perfectly stable up to 200 deg C (for all the yes buts, go look it up if you have doubts) Without the high heat transfer rates small FI engines impose on an oil your oil just wont get hot enough to chemically break down to warrant one, in fact, cooling your oil too much can be harmful for daily driving. For the person who said "oh, it cant harm to have a cooler, better to be safe - my oil is now 70 deg c temp!" er how are you get rid of the water in your super cool oil?? Fact: Water is absorbed into oil. they dont mix and what you get is an emulsion. additives are used to limit the damage this causes but a good way to get rid of water is to boil it off. a nice hot oil (100+ deg) will drive that bad water out! the last thing u want in your engine is emulsion, it damages film formation and leads to excessive wear. mayoneise on the underside of the oil filler cap a good sign? i think not! yet thats what you will get if your oil isnt hot enough to shed the water. And i havent even began to mention all the biological nasties which like to live in oil, nasties you wont kill off unless you heat the oil hot enough, which breed and breed to clog up all your filters ...... (Luckily PAO isnt mineral based) Ah but i do a few track days a year so my car gets really reeeealllly hot, in fact if i dont spend hundreds on cooling, oil drains etc etc my car will EXPLODE and the WORLD WILL END and we will be INVADED BY WOMBLES !!! Ok i cant help with the wombles part but do you really think on the track the pressures on oil are that extreme? Oil starvation through accelleration aside, which is a different issue (we have firmly established by now, i hope, that im not a mechanic) what extremes do you think you are subjecting the oil to? remember this is the same product that you wll use quite happily when cruising down the motorway at 4000+ rpm, perhaps for a couple of hours (untill you run out of fuel), maybe on the way a small tangle with a porsche at 3am on a non public road as well, oo er, 6000 rpm !! sound familiar??? Yet who panics over their oil after such a trip??? surely that oil must be super hot by now but do we rush out to buy a cooler and change the oil after such a trip? No, we dont, in fact you probably jump in the car and do the same thing all over again, loads of times before each oil change. And what happens with such 'abuse' ? any sign of the wombles??? i think not!! lets look at some fag packet calcs - my favorite kind! You use your Z for an hour a day and at the end of the hour, car very warm by now, you give it some stick, you manage to find an open road and really open it up, maybe for 5 whole minutes!!! So for 5 minutes per day, lets say 6 days a week to make the calcs easy your car is subjected to track like forces temps etc etc as you cain it cause for those 5 minutes YOU ARE THE STIG!!! Now changing your oil once per year (9000 miles) gives us 1/2 hour per week x 48 (to allow for holidays ) = 24 hours of track equivelant driving abuse you subject your car to in the course of a year. hmm lets be generous and half that, I will allow you 2.5 mins whole minutes of stig like driving a day so what do we have, well we have 12 hours of looney driving (12 track days? ) plus the rest of your 9000 allowance of high rpm motorway driving, cold stop starts etc etc and yet, the cars dont explode!! As long as you follow the servicing intervals the cars are fine!!Wow, could this be the reason that a cooler of any significant size was never included in the first place ??? Now im not saying this applies for those who have their cars towed to a track, spend hours testing , racing etc etc etc, but a little quote i found might shed some light.. "At Bathurst in 2002 when the winning HRT Commodore was running with a blocked radiator inlet the oil temperature rose to above 200°C yet the engine not only survived in perfect condition, it won the race." hmm blocked rad inlet? oil cooler not working perhaps??? PAO is good stuff eh! Now with my limited mechnical skills i wouldnt dream of telling a tuner how to set up a car and if a tuner says you need a cooler, all well and good - tuners, whilst being very wise in things which make cars go fast, are not experts in oil degredation. they can only gain this knowledge by monitoring the oil, checking after each race the physical properties to assess wear and oxidation rates - there is no other way of doing it- i certainly couldnt tell you how 'far gone' an oil was without lab testing! They are protecting themselves and advising you what is best on a race car - all well and good. But a pampered trailored maximum rpm on every use race car is NOT A ROAD CAR!!!! If you do a few trackdays then drive home and pootle to work etc then you have a ROAD CAR not a race car!!! So for all you serious trackheads out there, is your oil over the maximum operating temp of the oil? if not then you have nothing to worry about. There are no yes buts only fact or not fact; the oil has been tested at continued use, max operating temp and has been proven to be ok - thats how the max operating temps are defined in the first place!!!If it exceeds this then you may need to bring it down, or change to a different oil, im sure i remember seeing some designed with max operating temps of 250+ deg c right, off to the shops, will post part 2 some other time. for those who disagree with the above comments, good for you! im not going to spend the rest of the weekend arguing or or answering 'opinions' If you have a different opinion or , like the two last night, think the post is complete rubbish, i dont really care at the end of the day its your car, your money - do what you like with it! for those who would like to know more, here are a couiple of links (no doubt there are loads out there) i have just found which explain in more depth and elequance (and less spelling mistakes) then i have happy reading! http://www.mobil.com/Australia-English/ ... ineral.asp http://www.synthetic-motor-oil-change-a ... synthetic/

you have pm

oh no this is exactly what i am looking for - even the right colour but ive been away with work for a while and missed it just my luck!

Power not sound? have you seen my recent shopping list! From chatting to Mark at Abbey it seems that the back box with my setup flows plenty of air up until around 400bhp so i dont think that any exhaust system would make a significant difference, hence why i am concerned it sounds right. Though the morotdyne stuff has shown on loads of independant dynos to give power so i wont complain if it adds a couple of horses

Folks I can confirm the effectiveness of this package on a DE non revup car the package listed by Abbey and including the resonated decats option has given me 263 WHP and 242 torques

you and me both i just know i cant live with a droney car with all the motorway cruising i have to do. i will chat things over with Mark at Abbey and let you know how i get on. Would be very interested to hear how Mr Lizards zorst sounds on/in a standard car. Im quite keen to do something with the rest of the zorst as with the new decat pipes and xyz at certain rpm you can hear the exhaust flow through the pipes; its not a rasp exactly but it just sounds 'odd' as the standard back box is so quiet that there is no other exhaust noise to cover it up. I know its not just me being over sensitive as taking a friend out in it he said exactly the same thing. rev it when stationary and it sounds good, better then stock, but quiet - confirmed by non car mad friends. ive listened to loads of clips of all sorts of zorsts on utube, imho the shockwave sounds the best of the bunch but it looks like the version 2 hasnt made it to the UK yet. Maybe the forum can have a whip round so i can try it out and let everyone know what it is like??

standard one tho it now has a HKS replacement filter

I was thinking about getting one of these, well half of one as i already have an xyz pipe plus deresonated decat pipes http://my350z.com/forum/intake-exhaust/ ... x-tdx.html anyone got any experience of them? Ive read a fair few reports on the version 1 shockwave being very 'droney' whilst cruising but the Mk 2 with resonance chambers is supposed to overcome this. if anyone has one on their car how does it sound? cheers

bump car all tuned now but im still looking for a revup airbox anyone?

Folks, I can reccommend this, i have on my otherwise standard 2005 DE: Motordyne resonated decats Motordyne XYZ pipe with race cat Motordyne 5/16th spacer Uprev reflash car now has 263 WHP. Since then ive added a HKS filter which, acording to Max Power, should add another 20bhp But when you think a 'perfect' DE is 276 and mine is now 300 at the fly ive gained at least 24bhp over standard, probably more as im sure mine was not perfect, with torque up too. its hard to describe the car, i think Mark from Abbey summed it up when he said the car now just feels 'better' , which is absolutely true. it pulls really well in 6th now and 2nd gear has finally come to life and feels alot more lively on the throttle. Dont expect a performance step change; this performance increase isnt a difference like going from driving a corsa to an evo but it does make the car more enjoyable as coming from an FTO ive always thought the Z was a little slow on the initial pick up. With the new bits added that has now changed. so in a nutshell, if you want to liven up your car go for this. And a word of caution, i stuck a spacer on the car a week before the uprev/exhaust work then drove about 15 miles. the car felt great for about 7-8 miles, really responsive, pulled well then suddenly went completely flat like someone had stuck a sponge under the throttle- i guess the rather smart ECU tuned out my little mod, which suggests any mods are a bit of a waste of time without a reflash!

afer working for a rather well known oil company developing new car oils i will second that - mobil oil bar none, with mobil 1 being the flagship product. shame its so damn expensive, mainly due to the enormous mark up costs applied to 'premium' oils

er nope, sorry cant make any sense of that - but i take it your not offering me an airbox for sale i didnt know this forum was so full of airbox teases - lots of people seem to have them as spares! i have a set of bose speakers 'spare' including the sub, well, the loosest definition of sub, anyone want to swap?

well if you feel like freeing up an airbox sized space in your garage im willing to help go on you know you want to!!!!

is this because you have a Mk2 Z sitting in your garage as well? Ive tried Alex but he has also said they are getting quite hard to come by; sarah, i will look out for your pm too and yes, i am chasing the holy grail of the 50bhp - dont think i will quite get there though but i will have a go!

Anyone got one in original condition, ie no extra holes drilled into it etc Ive started down the Z tuning road and would like to get hold of one before my Z goes to Abbey for some work in a couple of weeks ta

Waving like mad at me - v nice to see a friendly Z

typical -sort myself out with some then notice this post! oh well, im sure someone will have them

Well it will be interesting to see what happens wrt speed limits. With more and more gantries with cameras/average speed monitors appearing (M1, M42, M25 to name just a few) plus the potential revival of the compulsary pay as you drive black box scheme with an automatic vehicle speed limiter built in to it, the days of choosing to go faster then the posted limit -whatever it is - could be coming to an end.....

is it a ball ache? viewtopic.php?f=27&t=37007 it can be but worth doing though as the standard wiring isnt suitable for an aftermarket amp setup in terms of power rating or quality. There is a good guide on here though and if you take your time, print the guide out so you dont have to keep running upstairs every 5 minutes to check things (like i did cause i had no printer paper) then its doable. Just be careful with both the hole drilling and clip reassembly. And if you have hands bigger then that of an elf, prepare to lose a bit of skin also, my speakers, JL C650s were tight on space, i had to make some 18mm MDF spacers then space the spacers with 12mm of hardboard. I know the link to speaker spacers claims 1" spacers are enough but for the JLs i needed a bit more

Just reading this post with some interest as i travel on motorways and A roads daily in my Z. iirc the 70mph limit was introduced as a backlash to an AC Cobra (or was it a jag) claiming in their marketing that the car did 150mph down one of the motorways. As many people have said, imposing a 70mph limit back then definately didnt trouble too many of the cars on the road at the time, moggy minors etc. I definately think the limit should be set to 80, especially as its possible to be fined whilst on a clear motorway in good conditions in a car built for going twice as fast just cause some sneaky bugger is hiding somewhere with a speed camera...... On ages of offenders, I agre with the comments on some younger drivers but the worst driving i see on a day to day basis whilst im chugging up and down the M4 has got to be tailgating and apart from (some) white van drivers , the majority of the time its guys in their 30s 40 in big audis. A stereotype i know but i see it sooooo often its untrue. All too often the roads where i live have been rezoned to 50 mph; there was a case a couple of years ago when some idiot decided to overtake a lorry in thick fog. The lorry driver said the car flew past him like he was standing still, indicating how fast the guy was travelling - straight into the path of another lorry. lucky the only person the guy killed was himself but the official, and quite gobsmacking, reaction was to rezone the road to make it 'safer'. Needless to say, anyone with the mentality to speed and overtake in fog wont give a rats @ss what the maximum speed of the road is but the rest of us have to now live with it. Not that it makes a deal of difference anyway as lorries are limited to 40 on an A road, and with supermarket lorries religiously upholding the limits,your normally stuck in a 1/2 mile long queue behind one anyway.

Ive just installed my JL Audio tweeters there and apart from removing a bit of the JL plastic tweeter housing (it had a plastic lip all around it , which looked pretty but wasnt needed,, they fitted fine. I used the Bose tweeter bracket which bolts to the car and bolted my tweeter to that. All in all it was alot easier then making the sub box

the silly thing is ive only done this about 20 times before - i wasnt expecting any difficulty- thought i would just wire and install the drivers side door then pop out for lunch. so much for best laid plans! And yes after the way the weekend has gone, i have a bit of making upto do on the gf front! And i might just keep stum with her about the other mod plans i have for the Z as well........

heh heh, nothing quite describes that sinking feeling when an apparently straightforward job turns into a complete disaster anyway, i have now discovered that the Z gives a loud piercing warning noise from the rear view mirror ( yep, i have the blue tooth kit) when you bugger up the circuits on the electric mirrors, boot release, passenger door lock and passenger window. the problem turned out to be 5 bent , and i mean flattened, pins in the connector block which mounts into the car shell. after 3 hours of pin straightening, block locating, more pin straightening, more locating, etc etc everything finally went in place, i put the key in and NO WARNING NOISE i reckon that when i originally mated the multiplug, if your not careful, when you reconnect the plastic surround to the door mounted plug it can look ok ( clips round) but you have to slightly push on the white block until you hear it click. i didnt first time and had problems mating the two up. thats when i reckon i bent the pins. also, the grey retainig clip can be a right pain in the a@se, and will lock hard in place so you cant 'unlock' it.I suggest that anyone doing this job again use lots of WD on the grey clip so to make it easy to move up into position - as Icarus says in his guide, you can only locate it back into the socket with the clip down. The upshot of all this is my gf has now banned me from any more 'car work' and wants me to call in a professional to install my new Kenwood 7240BT stereo. After spending all this time oer the bank hol weekend buggering around - she might be right!!