road&track speed magazine has an comparison test on four 350z tuners: axis sport, greddy, stillen and vortech engineering. Please note that the magazine is called "speed magazine" by road&track.

if you're a performace geek who only care about stats and charts, you must read this article. to be honest, after reading the article, i was disapointed that after all those superchargers and twin turbos, the 0-60 times was about 5.0 sec.!

 

yeah I know I also read the magazine, I was even more surprised by those numbers on the Rx-8 with FI...

 

I like the Vortechs number, the black 350z was bone stock, all they did was add the vortech supercharger, which i think is pretty good

 

i agree, the rx-8 FI numbers are even worse than the 350z stock!

hey did you notice that acording to the torque chart on pg. 56, the stillen had more torque early on than greddy and yet greddy still had a better 0-60 and quarter mile time.
I thought since stillen was supercharge it would be faster off the line vs the tt. wonder if it has anything to do with the wheels and tires since greddy was using volks and stillen using 5 zigen pro racers.

after looking at all the charts (braking, salom, skid pad, etc.) looks like the vortech's car is the way to go. thats weird cause it has better numbers than the axis but they ranked it behind the Axis car.

still, i was disapointed that the numbers for all four turners weren't lower, like that of the XS Evo, 0-60 in 3.4sec! Ouch, i feel sorry for any prancing horse Enzos out there who wants to race this thing.

For those who didn't or can't read the article, the final ranks are as follows:

4th: Greddy "...unfortuantely the car proved itself to be primarily a show car, which talks the talk but needs to spend more time practicing the walk."

3rd: Stillen

2nd: Vortech

1st: Axis

 

i read some but just like u guys kinda dissapointed after reading,,you know what Road & track mag has something bias/unfair with 350z most of the time with their report, seems like R&T mag hates z,,,just my observation.....

 

Sometimes having too much power or torque down low can hinder initial starting because you might have traction issues leading to slower times

 

true that, thats why i question if the wheels and tires has anything to do with it.

 

The article mentioned that few of the cars were able to hook up due to lack of traction.

 

Did you mean unable? hehe

 

It's actually hard for me to choose now. I like two cars the 350z and the Evo. I freget what site it is that my friend showed me. There is a shop in cali. for Evos who will install upgrades to your car. To achieve 390 hp at the wheels , it cost 4k. That gets you a 0-60 in 3.8 and 1/4 time of 12.3 i think. They also have another package which gets you 600hp at the wheels giving you 0-60 in 3.1 sec. and 1/4 time of 11.2 sec. Pretty good if you ask me, not sure how much that package cost, it's not listed in their site. I like both cars, not a real good stick driver. Just curious on how much an Evo would cost OTD compared to an enthusiast OTD price for an 05?

 

Is the magazine issue still on the stands or is there a link to it on the web?

 

Did any one read the side article. Mike Cronin drove his n/a car with suspension prep, gears and race tires. And bested the best time on the road course of any of the FI Z's.
Granted the tires help a great deal, but I suggest if he was on similar tires that the faster Z were on he would have still been a major contender.

 

Yes

 

cmon now...just b/c a car has 600hp and 4wd does not mean its 0-60 magically drops to 3 sec.

 

yes unfortunately for us, in same cases given the proper gearing like the evo's, it does

 

another thing that surprised me where the brake stats, it seems like the stock got one of the best brake stopping distance

 

the issue is still on stands. there is a site on it but it doesn't have any links to the articles inside.

 

the evo in this mag was by xs-engineering.com they are base out in southern cali. may or may not be the same one your friend showed you.

 

Another thread reminded me of this thread....here's the link to the Mag.

(My sister threw away my July issue!) http://www.spdmag.com/default.asp?section_id=4

 

I think every 350Z owner who mods their car needs to read that article


the things that the Z has going against it in terms of not getting good traction or 0-60 times:

53/47 weight distribution. Add in FI and that now shifts to about 54/46. By doing that you've made it harder to shift the weight to the rear when launching or accellerating. Not only that, but once you do shift the weight, it isn't pushing the rear tires down as hard because you have 100 lbs of FI weight pulling the front end down. That 100 lbs extra also effects handling in a bad way.

The Z's rear tires can only go so wide. You'll never be able to fit 345mm or 325mm tires in the rear without some sort of wide body kit.

The Z's gearing is too aggressive. Nissan made it really aggressive in order to kick you back in your seat as much as possible when the car is in stock form. Ever notice big supercars with 500+hp can do 0-60 in 1 gear? Yeah 1 gear. 800hp Pro drag cars have 2 gears and can do like 0-90 all in one gear. The Z has 6 close ratio gears which is great for around 350hp or less, but after that it's too much for the car to get traction. You can get traction if you run race tires - but that's about your only hope. Even then, you're still doing LOTS of shifting when you go down a straight or doing the 1/4 mile. Other high hp cars will do 1/4 mile in 2 shifts or so. The Z is like 3 or 4 shifts - that'll cost you maybe .2-.4 sec in the 1/4 mile with just that alone.

The Z isn't AWD so again being RWD only, you need big grip in the rear or gearing that isn't so aggressive so you don't spin out the tires. You want to be able to just floor it and get maximum traction while having the most aggressive gearing you can to balance the power you're running.



The vortech IMO was the most impressive of ALL those cars. Seriously, if you took the Axis car's suspension setup, LSD, 350EVO control arms with a crew adjusting them for each different test, the nismo clutch/flywheel, and with those wider yokohama AO48 tires (which are awesome BTW - way way better than the toyo tires) the vortech will kill the axis car in well I'm just going to say ALL catagories


I'm looking over Mike's personal car mods on his NA Z.

3.9 FD
tilton clutch
stoptech BBK
nismo suspension
nismo wheels
hoosier tires in 245 and 275
nismo LSD


He did 1 sec faster around the road course than all the FI Z's. Sure he had racing tires, but he was running 287 hp cause it doesn't say he has ANY power mods that actually increase the engine's power. Now who knows if he has anything else in his car or if his car weighs less than normal or what, but imagine how much faster he'd be if he ran

intake
pulley
plenum/intake manifold
cams
headers
HF cats or test pipes
exhaust
EMS/piggyback/ECU flash

he'd probably get 40-50 or so hp with all that stuff added on and lose maybe 25-40 lbs. The nismo suspension is nice, but what if he had a Zeal suspension and some additional chasis braces like the GT spec braces? What if he had those 350EVO control arms adjusted for the track? What if he had nismo sway bars like the other cars? He'd have a VERY capable car for being a lowly 340-350 crank hp car


the hoosier tires are a bit of a cheat cause cars can put down like 1.11 G on the skid pad with them and properly set up suspension. The Yokohama AO48 tires are pretty damn good though

Actually he was out there that day testing another companies suspension and with it he gained something like .5-.8 sec faster even than with his nismo suspension.

I'm sure he drives his own car harder cause he knows it, but the guy is a pro and pushed the FI cars as hard as he felt it was safe to. If he didn't feel safe pushing those cars (more power than grip) I'm sure none of us would either and we'd be in the same boat not wanting to push our luck and possibly crash our FI Z. I'd guess his NA car felt really good on the road course



The vortech car does well because it doesn't have mountains of torque at low rpm's and the boost comes on in a more linear way. The harder you push the car, the more boost you get in a predictable way. I know the turbos have pretty linear curves too, but they have so much torque at low rpm's. I'm sure it's a big thrill to push the gas and get a huge kick back in your seat, but what if it's too much torque for what you're doing? It's harder to predict just how hard to push the pedal to modulate the torque. The vortech can be pushed hard and it eases you into the power so you always know when you're starting to get into a little bit too much power or not instead of not having a moment's notice other than hearing the turbo BOV go off like what Mike commented on

Most people won't really analyze the article though. They'll just blow most stuff off, say the numbers are messed up cause the greddy car didn't do 11's or something and still say cars with the most hp are always the fastest...

I wish the article had curb weight or individual corner weights like they usually do. I also wish they just went ahead and tested Mike's car anyway. People want to know how it'd perform even if it has race tires. More info is better than no info. And yeah, the RX8 just sucks with mods. That engine is worthless with FI