first, the good news:

my car is running much better. I had some flat/hesitant acceleration spots that were annoying - they've been eliminated. 1st gear feels like it's really alive now and probably worth the cost for osiris by itself. After I left the shop and got on to the first road I decided to test it, and not shortly after ripping through first and 2nd gear did I go flying by a cop .. luckily he did not come after me. : )

I was excited to get some before and after dyno's as well to post up.. but that brings the bad news:

my tuner was adamant about checking my spark plugs prior to throwing the car up on the dyno. I've been running my mods for about 7k miles now, running lean, and he's used to Z's having some messed up spark plugs if they were ran lean. sure enough, after pulling them, the driver's side spark plugs were all pitted, melted a bit, deformed, discolored. the passenger side plugs were OK, but I figured if I am going to change half of them, just do the other half, and not worry about them for a long long time. they had greddy iridium plugs in stock so I went with em.

on top of that though, I have a valve seal that is leaking. I need to get this fixed and I am putting the dyno-tuning portion off until then. my tuner just threw some cars' maps modded similarly to mine, on to my car, until then. we retained the stock map so hopefully it will still give an accurate before and after dyno when I am ready for it, a couple of weeks? I'll report back then, hopefully with dyno charts.

I talked to a local shop that is Z specific a couple months after having my mods, and they told me not to worry about a tune, it wasn't worth it, or needed.. bastards. : P

positive experience so far. looking forward to getting my repair squared away and getting this sucker dialed in.

my mods are pretty basic, MD 5/16th spacer, JWT pop charger, bassani dual exhaust.

 

Can you pm how much u paid for the reflash and tune?

 

Would be more interesting with dyno charts.

 

Said he aborted due to leaky valve seal and bad plugs.......I gotta ask why wouldn't you fix these things prior to even going? Op, you said you got a baseline...........what was it (with dyno posted please)?

 

dyno charts will be up when I can afford to get it fixed.

I got the plugs swapped. didn't get the valve seal fixed. I didn't get a baseline dyno because of the valve seal.. I still got the reflash, cause in the mean time, I wanted a proper a/f mix. I wasn't aware of the issues prior to going to the shop, or I would have just gone and gotten them fixed. they weren't apparent in any shape or form, the car was driving good enough.

I have a stock map saved to revert back to when we are ready to do the before and after dynos (after the fix..), I am hoping that will be close enough for a proper before+after dyno.

 

reflash is 400$. dyno tuning is an hourly rate that varies shop to shop. most tuners can do it in an hour.

 

You suck! j/k

Hmm just those mods, you were running lean? eek. I'm on a stock rev up box mod, modded dual Borla and the Crawford V5 plenum. But 90% of the power felt was from the Crawford imho.

 

damn dude, not sure if the G' is prone to the same problem, but check your plugs soon if you've been running those mods for a while now. mine were garbage ;(

 

Thanks bud!

 

HA! really? I would assume if you were running lean you woulda benefited from a tune, no? And it seems like you did not know about it then, so coulda maybe prevented some damage later.

 

Seems like it's all good news to me.

Give Lawrence @ Intec some props for diagnosing the problems before they lead to a breakdown.

 

spending money is still bad news, but you're absolutely right.

 

should have changed the plugs yourself for one, and clean ur air filter and clean ur maf sensor and the hesitaion would have been gone on its own....i recently had a hesitation at 6k and cleaned my air filter on my vortech and cleaned my maf sensor with non residue maf cleaner at advanced and its good to go now, i was about to go have it re-tuned to fix the hesitaion, which i still am gonna get re-tuned cause its a little rich with the summer heat which is not ur problem being n/a but i guess that was the hesitation problem for me, and i also pulled plugs but mine were fine since they only have 4k miles on them..

 

I cleaned my pop charger about a month ago. cleaned the maf at the same time. hesitation was still there.

as far as changing my own plugs.. I didn't know I needed to until visiting the shop. he offered to do it at the cost of 1 hr of labor so I went that route. probably would have taken my *** a few hours lol. I remember in my 68 camaro you could access a spark plug within a couple of seconds I miss the simplicity.

 

interested to see the results... keep us updated

 

nothing super exciting to update. I ordered a valve cover and gasket this morning, should be here early next week. dyno tuning end of next week for a better update possibly?

it doesn't look too hard to replace myself. I've changed a set on a 68 camaro but those engines were way more simplistic, didn't have to pull anything off.. looks like I would have to remove the plenum amongst other things.. how long would the job take for an amateur, and a shop that know's their VQs? weighing out the DIY/pay a pro options right now.

 

wait so its a valve cover gasket leaking? I thought you mean a valve seal as in a valve stem seal Was wondering how this fellow diagnosed a valve stem seal leaking so accurately!

Alldata time is 2.2 hours per side for the valve cover gasket.

 

something about the valve cover is cracked ever so slightly, which allows oil to get all over the thread side of a couple of spark plugs on the drivers side.

it is a pretty common issue for Z's. sucks that you have to replace the entire valve cover to resolve it.. :/

yeah, sorry, I didn't fully understand the issue (still don't), so I can see how I confused you. I think I made another mechanics head explode when I tried to explain it to him.

 

I have similar mods on a DE and made about 18 hp. Was worth it with Osiris and NA.

Thread.
https://my350z.com/forum/east-canada...wer-house.html

 

right on. thanks for sharing - I was curious how a similarly modded DE would respond. I will find out for my set up soon!.

thanks for adding in the estimated time jining. I saw someone else say in a old thread that they could remove a valve cover in 20 minutes.. I was thinking damn, if it would be an hour of labor or so, I'd rather just pay someone that knows what they are doing .. :P