Pritchard

hey chaps.

i spent a bloody age trying to find a bodykit i liked.

finallly decided last xmas that i wanted the Do-Luck, and went ahead with it.

however, i measured my ground clearance all round before and after, and the front bumper cost me an inch of clearance (4" to 3"). this ruled me out of many speed bump locations in my area.

fast forward a few months, and i now scrap everytime i reverse onto my driveway... my driveway is flat. but with a small 'dip' at the drop curb.

at first i thought i was getting fat. but turns out i now have just 2" of ground clearance !!

my front suspension bushes are worn, and are already booked in for replacement. i assume thats where the additional right height has been lost.

but,

i have just bought a new house (wooo yayy cheer) which has an awesome driveway... but not for anyone in a wheelchair, let alone a lowered car. its a bit steep.

so looking ahead its a new driveway, or new bumper... bumper will be cheaper. But i do love my do-luck soooo much.

what to replace it with, i wonder.

What are peoples favorites? outside of the OEM + lip options please, im looking for a 'full' replacement, plus i dont have an OEM bumper anymore lol.

Im no Mystic Meg, but my crystal ball predicts this is either Kwik Fit or Halfords ''mechanics''

I would quite simply refuse to drive it out of their garage until its resolved. its no different (in terms of process) to putting in Diesel in your tank: dont drive anywhere. get it fixed first.

otherwise, your return trip on thursday will be via AA Recovery!!

Make a note of EVERY phone call you have with them. if (when!) your gearbox fails they will no doubt try to deny it was any fault of theirs. it might get messy. (been in similar situations myself).

RESULTS OF RETURN

if anyone cares, i did 70mh on cruise on the return leg. finished at 36.6mpg with 195 miles travelled.

also to note, based on both of my results, the 'average mph' on the trip computer under reads by about 10mph. cruised literally the whole way at 70, with no traffic and only a handful of miles at 50mph. and it read 61mph average. simila result to my first run.

i'll go back to SmilesPerGallon now (well done whomever above coined that).

but a little taste of whats possible - 36mpg without risk of speeding tickets, and while overtaking lorries not bad for a car rated 27mpg extra urban.

looks gooddd!

 

Great forum, answered my questions without me asking any.

 

your welcome - im glad you found the answer to The Best Colour: Orange, of course.

Hold up...you had 3 stops on a 200 mile journey?!

 

i have the bladder of a pregnat woman.

Guilty.

41.1? That must be a typo!!!

correct, i meant 41.4

good spot with the sarcasm

I would say what you could try is to see how low you can get the MPG on the way back but I'd hate for you to get pulled by the rozzers.

why would i get pulled? is it an offence to travel at 70mph in 3rd gear?

Did I came to the right forum? 350z not Leaf?!?!

 

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The Leaf forum expelled me for being too extreme!

i set it at 60 to make sure that i overtook, and was not overtaken, by any lorries i saw.

im tempted to set it to 50mph on the way home, just for shts n giggles.

... althought im sure ill get abuse my motorists pointing and saying to their wives ''look over there Julie, that man cant affoard fuel for his car''

anyway its all for a laugh. i usualy take the diesel on the work trips to make the most f the 45p/litre. thought id see what happens.

lol, no wasnt being towed.

i had a 'test run' to new forest last week, whereby i actually reset the trip every few miles to see what difference the mph made. (all on cruise, and left for a few miles to try and cancel out hill gradients)

but, the difference between 60mph and 70mph is huge, about 8mpg (roughly 40 to roughly 32 is what i saw). and again, stick it on 50mph and i saw 46mpg pop up after a couple of miles!

those average speed cameras are your friends

im sure many others have had small victories.

but after Abbey recently sorted out an issue, my MPG was back to the normal realms of happynes.

well i had to travel to Cardiff today (from Kent) for work. so, as it was in works time i stuck cruise control to 60mph and plodded away.

traffic was good. i had 3 service stops (which brought down the mpg and indicated average speed), and also lost 0.5 points at the Wales bridge tolls thingy. (along with £6.50! jesus. surprised i didnt need a passport too).

then once in wales traffic got bad as it was rush hour, and i lost my peak of 41.4mpg, but not before i got a picture of it at the tolls.

yes its easy to reset the counter on the go, and take a quick picture. but this was actually my run. also check out the odometer and the fuel gauge for further evidence.

happy bunny.

final 'score' when i arrived at the hotel was 39.7, over 201 miles.

Miles to next tank - indicated 390miles !! now that would be some awesome tank range.

compression arms arnt cheap. mine have also recently turned to chocolate.

subscribing to thread.

i like the Orange one.

ive had an old astra befor that its offical vauxhal colour was 'champagne'. to me it looked silver. maybe even wth a tint of green. it was metalic.

log book said grey.

to me grey is grey. grey with metalic paint is silver.

it hadnt had a colour change. but grey and silver (and champagne in this case!) are similar colours. i wouldnt worry. personally.

grey on the log book, and your looking at a red car - i would worry.

No point strapping an expensive saddle to a donkey. Turn your donkey into a stallion...

 

brilliant

As previously asked, whats your dislike of fi, is it from any experience?

sorry, must have missed that.

but you're probably going to ridicule my answer. (and its probably going to spark a war!)

i've always gone NA in previous projects. so its a little of sticking to what i know.

and its a little of a personal dislike to the notion of forced induction - i regard it as cheating. NA tuning is about the pursuit of 100% volumetric efficency, the closer you get the better and the greater the sense of acheivement.

with FI, VE is completely disregarded. you double or triple the VE with ease. You want more power - new pulley and a remap later - POOF like magic, more power

wheres the fun in that?

Only my opinion. im sure it conflicts greatly with other peoples.

Andy,

yea that Denmark build was one of the references i made in the opening post, but i couldnt find dynos for it.

but again, this is a reference of both a cosworth head, and headwork, that hasnt yielded great results.

when ive seen the word 'Cosworth' or the word 'headwork' on a dyno plot, its followed with an owner in tears over his results (with one single exception i have found, out of 5)

I'm due to see Mark @ Abbey soon, once he finds time to squeeze me in for another jobby.

i'll run it past him.

yes labour wise, the majority will be getting done by a garage. As i am in the realms of the unknown and expensive parts, i want someone else to have liability for a bad fitment

Yes the LS conversion would be perfect, but i thought we assertained its well clear of £10k, its not even close to a drop in lump. dashboard, eletronics, wiring looms, gearbox etc etc to name the few points i know of (checkout Wasso's Suzanne thread)

so that rules it out.

with regard to dynos, yes i agree they dont tell the full story,, and also i am narrowly focusing on peak HP gains for a figure.

but the reason why i am focusing on dynos at all, is that it is the only proof that a part actually adds value to the power of a car. ((unless someone regularly drags or circuits. but this has even more variables than a dyno. and you cant sell a lap time on a brochure!)

if i could get it in budget, i would love to simply bore&stroke, and cam it. but dissasembling that bottom end is serious man hours!

is this a serious thread? lol.

if it is, then the most obvious thing thats not been mentioned is to find out where you're going before you leave!

or maybe thats the point? is it really a 5mile drive, but you havent planned it properly so its going to take aroud 7 hours?

yea, yea thats it.

problem solved

Floyd Octet,

ive alrea seen both of those threads. Kev's in particiular is another exmaple of extreme headwork, and a poor result.

i've not seen any proper flow benching comparisions between the OEM head and a ported example, but im wondering if they are being overdone. theres many results of non-ported OEM valve heads that seem to perform just as well, or better.

just an assumption from observation.

*edit,

sorry Floyd! wrong name

cheers chaps.

stroker was the original plan Jet, with either the stroked 3.8, or stroked and bored 4.15, but again costs spiral quickly with this route.

Oh, come on Aaron, you're not serious, are you?

Yes.

you best get quoting

thanks for the earlier PM for that engine, but the low comp isnt to my requirements im afraid.

Also you know PPE Longnose headers are Headers + Cats right?

? not sure what you mean here.

the PPE headers required the OEM cats to be removed and replocated further down the exhaust system. hence why ive listed a new custom exhaust will be required. the PPE doesnt actually come with cats...

ITBS - yes that would be awesome. but price means other areas will be neglected, and also i cant find any solid dynos results for anyone that sused them. its a bit of an unknown on the Z. this puts me off.

LS# V8 - that was my original plan actually. but having spoken to Wasso the price was well into 5 figures. out of budget.

The NA Build.

Morning lads.

So im currently spec'ing out the next stage of the Pumpkin Build.

as im sure a fair few of you are aware of now from the meets, that the missus is actively encouraging me to supercharge the car. (if i supercharge it, she gets a holiday. thats the deal ).

But, as much as i appreciate a charge, i am not and never will be a forced induction kind of guy.

so i've been spending alot of time reading through this forum and the US side to see what dynos exist for NA tuning- very few it seems!

I am working to a budget of around £8k, as thats seems to be the going rate for a drive-in, drive-out SC install at the moment. and from what i have been reading, bottom end on the DE is only advisable to about 400hp before it needs money on it.

in which case, i am assuming thats around 370-380 at the wheels (as a general guide, doesnt need to be argued. )

My requirements:

none really. MPG is going to drop. thats a given. drivability needs to be realistic, but as most of my driving is motoway anyway (3-5k rpm) things like a heavy clutch or rough idle isnt an issue.

Now for NA, things get expensive, and there is very little good solid information (in terms of dyno results) showing what can be acheived. noone wants to gamble £1000 on a part because no dyno results exist, only to find its not added any significant power.

unfortunately, this could be me.

UK side:

With the dynos that do exist, i am seeing some polar opposites: (all the below loosely quoted from dynos im seen from members. but remember these are different dynos, different days, different cars)

The stock DE is putting down figures of around 235whp (UK side. the Yanks are quoting nearler 210!)

With the usual intake, sports cat, catback, plenum spacers, and UpRev, results of 240-255 are seen. Not a great increase, as we know.

I have seen talk of cams being installed, with marginal gain but no dynos. mention of ported heads, big valves and big cams with poor results, but no dyno.

Cant see any results at all for exhaust manifolds, seems no-one runs then at all whom has been anywhere near a dyno. (yes i am aware of the cost implications for fitment).

There is however one nugget that i did find,

there one a dyno i found of someone that went to Abbey MS for cams AND a bottom end compression increase through pistons. Other than the intake & exhaust mods i didnt see anything else unusual listed. that made 307hp at the hubs (Abbey Dyno). My best result at Abbey was 271hp @hubs. theres HP lurking somewhere!

Stateside things get messy. the chat rooms are full of muppets vomiting ''NA is a waste of time'' in every thread, making unearthing useful information difficult. it gets even funnier when they all bitch after every dyno result that the dyno they used was inadequate and invalid because the dyno ''wasnt the right one'' (theres forum-wars out there of dynoplot vs dynojet, vs mustang vs dynodynamics etc)

however, some information can be gleaned:

Ive seen reports of a full head build by cosworth, ported head large valves, inlet manifold etc, that made 'poor power', but couldnt find the dyno.

There are back to back tests of the Cosworth inlet manifold vs Plenum spacer, and the spacer wins! (£100 vs £1000!! lol). actually there are a couple of the above test. appears the cosworth manifold is not superier to the plenum spacer at all.

There was another dyno i saw with ported headwork, again results were negligable.

Once we get into the realms of cams however, there is some better information coming through. most notably, the user SGSash that now runs Onpointdyno. there are some serious back to back tests of their dynos which are invaluable. im sure you have all heard of the 372whp NA zed? well, thats theirs. **(also worth noting now, this is a race space and is STILL less than a basic supercharger.)

but how they got there is whats interesting.

Looking at their progressive results, they cleared 330whp before the internals were even touched (exception of cams). big gains were seen from a custom inlet manifold and throttle body setup, and from a custom longtube exhaust manifold (about 25whp each). And then when testing cams, another 20whp was found over OEM.

There are another couple of dynos using long tube headers, and again clearing 300whp with ease.

Now to begin to price up the sort of route i will be looking at, the essentials are going to be:

Custom inlet manifold - spec'd and quoted at £1200

Ported TB -spec'd and quoted at £120 (not going for another, as it seems there are too many electrical and ecu issues to consider)

Camshafts - still considering journal specs, but £1000 is the ballpark for a set.

Exhaust Manifold - £1400 PPE is the only maker i can find. I got some custom quotes but they were beyond daft!

new custom exhaust - £1000 - due to the longer manifold, new cats need to be purchased and relocated.. etc

another remap: £400

plus general labour to fit the above, thats about £6k gone already. and from result seen, if i clear 310whp i'll be doing very well.

I havent seen any positive results from headwork and larger valves, so i wont be exploring that option. < unless someone else can dig something up?

which means the remaining 2k budget will be likely spent on the bottom end... although it wont go far! high compression pistons alone are about £1200, before fitment.

unless i drop another part and invest in the bottom end instead.

Its clear why the NA route is neglected.Hopefully the above information might help some other guys in deciding FI or NA without them getting the usual ''its a wate of time'' answer. at least theres some substance in the reasoning here.

...in my opinion yes NA is a waste of money, when compared to Fi tuning. But its my preferred tuning route. plus bragging rights of course for NA power.

if anyone knows or can recommend anyone for the following couple of parts that would be awesome:

- im looking for other inlet manifold options, outside of Kinetix and Coswroth. I have a quote from a custom frabicator whos running a VQ35 in a race car, but ive never used the guy.

- exhaust manifold, is there anythign else out there except for the PPE? apert from the tomei and ebay short manifold replacements?

- is anyone aware of a larger plug and play drivebywire throttle body. otherwise boring is going to be my only option.

*suspension and brakes are to be upgraded prior to the work.

current engine mods:

06 airbox with velocity stack

plenum spacer

cobra sport cats,

Y pipe, cobra non-res back

single mass lightweight flywheel

remap

271hp @ hubs.

but most of the above list of mods will need to go to accomodate the required route. but selling these can offset some cost

Pritchard

bump