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Cams....NA tuning


MattW

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After spending some time going through the performance se tion and using the search function I'm failing to find info on Cams in the 350...ill be looking at an 03 model DE engine?? Now even though a friend has muttered words that he can twin turbo one I noticed some tuned zeds on YouTube whilst watch a shoot out on Best motoring, some where using uprated cams, so the question is are they used much? Do they offer much? Best to use etc? My current mini is running bigger injectors and an aggressive cam and made a huge difference any help will be great

Cheers

Matt

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The reason you won't find it is because the cost isn't worth it, and based on that people haven't gone that route.

 

Its not just the cost. Cams dont work or add any power unless your raising compression and adding head work.

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The reason you won't find it is because the cost isn't worth it, and based on that people haven't gone that route.

 

Its not just the cost. Cams dont work or add any power unless your raising compression and adding head work.

 

 

:blush::blush:

 

I'll let you know -

 

3.5l VQ35DE V6 block bored to 96mm

Tomei pro cams

Brian crower valve springs and valve caps

3 angle valve seats

Ported cylinder heads

Skimmed heads (0.5mm)

OEM full gasket set

Polished and balanced crank

Eagle h-beam rods

Arp rod bolts

Arp Head studs

Cosworth 96mm 11.0:1 forged pistons

ACL race main bearings

ACL race big end bearings

ACL race thrust washers

New oil pump

APS Plenum

APS Sump

Bosch 725cc Injectors

Vortech V2 Supercharger

 

Pulled 399 at the hubs on the first dyno run but was smoking - 1 piston down to 120 psi and bore damage - new block being fitted at the mo.

 

I do get cam overlap we don't know how much can be mapped out yet!

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Ahh ok fair enough, crazy how different engines react with different mods, my cooper s gained some good power after a tune

That's because its supercharged or turbo'd. My mini s jcw was the same.

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Ahh ok fair enough, crazy how different engines react with different mods, my cooper s gained some good power after a tune

 

Your Cooper S is FI, a Z is not. NA tuning is pointless

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Ahh ok fair enough, crazy how different engines react with different mods, my cooper s gained some good power after a tune

 

Your Cooper S is FI, a Z is not. NA tuning is pointlesst

 

I wouldn't say pointless.... its just considerably more expensive to get any decent power gains than going down the FI route.

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Ahh ok fair enough, crazy how different engines react with different mods, my cooper s gained some good power after a tune

 

Your Cooper S is FI, a Z is not. NA tuning is pointlesst

 

I wouldn't say pointless.... its just considerably more expensive to get any decent power gains than going down the FI route.

 

Define a decent gain. 20? 30? 40 hp?

 

For the cost of a decent exhaust, filter, y-pipe & HFC setup - your pretty much near the cost of a basic SC setup

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it'd depend on your target figures - if you're shooting for 300bhp, then NA tuning is the cheaper alternative. if its 400bhp you're aiming for, you're probably looking at a FI setup, although it is just about doable with NA tuning. Anywhere north of there you'd have to go FI.

 

If it was me and money was no object, id go for the full NA tuning route - wilder cams, high compression pistons, overbored block, longer stroke crankshaft and ITRs - just because it would be the nicer engine to drive. Personally i'm not a huge fan of turbo conversions... either big load of midrange torque which tails off if the turbo is too small to keep airflow at high rpm, or a laggy dinnerplate turbo which does nothing at low and mid rpm, but then gives a mahoosive hit when it kicks in.

 

Personally i'd rather have a well sorted NA engine than a turbo'd engine that made the same power... not trying to be awkward, just keen on the merits of both! Just look at the difference between the BMW M54B30 engine which is a 3litre NA engine making 228bhp, and the S54B32, which is a 3.2litre NA engine making 338bhp!

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For the cost of a decent exhaust, filter, y-pipe & HFC setup - your pretty much near the cost of a basic SC setup

 

That's either one damn expensive exhaust or a damn cheap SC setup. It must be an Amuse. :lol:

 

Have you seen the price of a basic Vortech setup ;)

 

You can pick up a basic Vortech kit for around £3K new from Assaultech ;)

 

Decent exhaust (Not cheap ebay tat/japscrap/scorpion etc.) £6-700

Decent Y-pipe £150

Set of Berks £400

Poopcharger £120

 

Your pretty much at £1500 straight away, add in a plenum spacer & your really not far away.

 

£2800 for an additional 100 hp, or £1500 for an additional 15hp ;)

 

But then, what would I know about it

 

it'd depend on your target figures - if you're shooting for 300bhp, then NA tuning is the cheaper alternative. if its 400bhp you're aiming for, you're probably looking at a FI setup, although it is just about doable with NA tuning. Anywhere north of there you'd have to go FI.

 

If it was me and money was no object, id go for the full NA tuning route - wilder cams, high compression pistons, overbored block, longer stroke crankshaft and ITRs - just because it would be the nicer engine to drive. Personally i'm not a huge fan of turbo conversions... either big load of midrange torque which tails off if the turbo is too small to keep airflow at high rpm, or a laggy dinnerplate turbo which does nothing at low and mid rpm, but then gives a mahoosive hit when it kicks in.

 

Personally i'd rather have a well sorted NA engine than a turbo'd engine that made the same power... not trying to be awkward, just keen on the merits of both! Just look at the difference between the BMW M54B30 engine which is a 3litre NA engine making 228bhp, and the S54B32, which is a 3.2litre NA engine making 338bhp!

 

400hp is just about doable NA? Really? :lol:

 

If I ever built another Z, I would love a high revving NA motor. But the cost of doing that far outways the cost of going FI.

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I tuned a built 350Z Rev Up a few weeks a go , chap drove over from Denmark for Abbey to tune his car, rods/pistons/Cosworth cylinder heads/cams, headers , Cosworth Plenum, basically had the Cosworth kit fitted, after extensive tuning it had gain around 30bhp over a stock Rev Up car, all the torque/power over 4500 rpm.

 

I think for the same money but using a S/C you would of gain around 100bhp over a stock car and not had to work the car so hard.

 

NA tuning for big bhp is expensive

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For the cost of a decent exhaust, filter, y-pipe & HFC setup - your pretty much near the cost of a basic SC setup

 

That's either one damn expensive exhaust or a damn cheap SC setup. It must be an Amuse. :lol:

 

Have you seen the price of a basic Vortech setup ;)

 

You can pick up a basic Vortech kit for around £3K new from Assaultech ;)

 

Decent exhaust (Not cheap ebay tat/japscrap/scorpion etc.) £6-700

Decent Y-pipe £150

Set of Berks £400

Poopcharger £120

 

Your pretty much at £1500 straight away, add in a plenum spacer & your really not far away.

 

£2800 for an additional 100 hp, or £1500 for an additional 15hp ;)

 

But then, what would I know about it

 

it'd depend on your target figures - if you're shooting for 300bhp, then NA tuning is the cheaper alternative. if its 400bhp you're aiming for, you're probably looking at a FI setup, although it is just about doable with NA tuning. Anywhere north of there you'd have to go FI.

 

If it was me and money was no object, id go for the full NA tuning route - wilder cams, high compression pistons, overbored block, longer stroke crankshaft and ITRs - just because it would be the nicer engine to drive. Personally i'm not a huge fan of turbo conversions... either big load of midrange torque which tails off if the turbo is too small to keep airflow at high rpm, or a laggy dinnerplate turbo which does nothing at low and mid rpm, but then gives a mahoosive hit when it kicks in.

 

Personally i'd rather have a well sorted NA engine than a turbo'd engine that made the same power... not trying to be awkward, just keen on the merits of both! Just look at the difference between the BMW M54B30 engine which is a 3litre NA engine making 228bhp, and the S54B32, which is a 3.2litre NA engine making 338bhp!

 

400hp is just about doable NA? Really? :lol:

 

If I ever built another Z, I would love a high revving NA motor. But the cost of doing that far outways the cost of going FI.

 

 

But you can add bits of the NA upgrades as you go along, spent near on a year pulling mine together. Yes could save for a SC but then I am lumbered with stock exhaust, intake and cats which make a crap noise. I would say £3k isnt touching it really on SC costs, what about install and remap with it? Not that I know but would have thought some parts of your Zed would need some upgrades to deal with an extra 100bhp? When I asked abbey about total cost of SC it was more than £3k...

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Its not difficult to DIY install it ;)

 

If your clever with your purchases, you can do things a lot cheaper than what people think.

 

It would be more than £3k from Abbey though wouldn't it? Considering the cost of the kit is around £3K, they are hardly going to install FOC for you are they?

 

To put it into a bit of perspective, My supercharger setup was around £8-9K. This also included Larger radiator, Injectors, RFS, Cosworth Plenum, a HKS SC kit, Walbro fuel Pump, 5 Defi Gauges, A HKS wideband & loads of other bits & pieces. The HKS kit was the biggest part of the cost at near enough 50% of the total.

 

Like I said above, with £3K you can do a lot more than what people will lead you to believe

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Back to the original question, my mate got aggressive cams fitted to his civic and it totally transformed the car. Maybe only an extra 15 or 20 hp but it felt alot quicker. Im not sure how it would feel on the v6 tho. If i had the money i would love to build a high revving N/A monster

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  • 3 months later...

If im not mistaken, there is someone in the US that has made 375bhp on N/A but i think his car is mainly for racing

 

If it's the one I'm thinking of It's 374 (/pedant), and its wheel horsepower, not brake horsepower, so well over 400bhp. However the car in question has Jenvey ITBs, longtubes and a straight through exhaust, rediculous cams and revs to like 8,500rpm. I'm more than certain that spending the same money on a twin turbo kit would get you more power for less money, but it is also about what sort of character you want from the car as well as just the numbers.

 

DB

Edited by DannyBoy
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I always prefer a tuned NA engine over FI, purely as I love high revving engines.

I think it would be good to get the engine revving up to around 7500rpm but we'd still need some torque towards that end.

Apart from cams for peaky power, what is the main factor for still retaining torque towards the high end of the rev's ?

 

Alas, it's a pricey way to do things and I'm sure the S/C is very linear in delivery anyway, I'd just want a tiny bit more revs :D

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One of the biggest obstructions to high rev power on the DE engine is the intake system. Other restrictions like headers and cams are pretty easy to fix, but the intake system is a tricky one. There are only two intakes that I know of which allow significant power to be made at high revs. the cheaper option is the cosworth intake plenum, but while this seems to allow more power to be made up top it also has a reputation for no gains or even small losses on N/A engines within the low to mid range. Jenvey ITBs are the ultimate solution, but they aint cheap, and there's the small matter of converting the car to run on cable-controlled throttle amongst other things, so basically you'd be needing a standalone ECU for it to run properly. I'm not sure how high it's safe to rev the stock bottom end on a DE either, but given that the rods are the weak point I'm going with not very high.

 

DB

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TBH if you was going for an all out build a HR would be a small cost towards getting a lot more power. HR with cams, HC pistons, valves, springs head work etc would be awesome.

 

I know the twin intake would be ditched but the engine is stronger.

 

Pretty sure you could have ITBs in a air box and that way you wouldn't need standalone. Il need to check that though.

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TBH if you was going for an all out build a HR would be a small cost towards getting a lot more power. HR with cams, HC pistons, valves, springs head work etc would be awesome.

 

I know the twin intake would be ditched but the engine is stronger.

 

Pretty sure you could have ITBs in a air box and that way you wouldn't need standalone. Il need to check that though.

 

The point with the standalone is that ITBs require a good old-fashioned cable controlled throttle, but the stock ECU relies on fly-by-wire throttle and gets massivley confused if you change that. Even if you added an airbox to use the stock MAF (makes the ITBs sort of pointless surely?) the cable control issue remains. It may be possible to somehow piggy-back the stock ECU but every Jenvey build I've seen (admittedly only three) has used a standalone for simplicity and enhanced tunability.

 

Totally with you on the HR though. You wouldn't need to do anything to the intake or internals on an HR, just cams and you'd have a pretty sweet N/A motor. It would cost soooo much more to make a DE produce the same power N/A as an HR with cams. For some reason that doesn't stop me wanting to do it though :wacko:

 

DB

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I did some messing about with various air intakes on my DE engine. On full throttle at high rpm you get about a -0.04 bar pressure drop (0.96 bar absolute) with the standard pipe work and early air box. With no pipe on the throttle at all (so no air filter or AFM) this goes up to about 0.99 bar abs.

 

Heres a graph (I like a graph) - blue is standard, pink and green is with a bigger trumpet in the box and red is with no box or pipe work.

 

trumpets.jpg

 

The only reason to do NA tuning is if you prefer it or if you're regulated by race rules. FI or engine swap just makes more sense if you're after more power.

Edited by Jez
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