just wondering if anyone has this and if you feel a difference with it installed

 

Yeah, definitely. The Z's engine and tranny have ridiculously soft motor and tranny mounts, so there is tons of movement, resulting in tons of driveline lash. If you get a lightweight flywheel, I found that the lash gets exaggerated even more. I have the Stillen engine torque damper, and it made a very noticeable reduction in that lash. I'd highly recommend it. Install is a bit of a pain in the butt (since one of the brackets wasn't *quite* perfect, we had to drill it out a little), but the results are worth it. It really makes me want to try some stiffer engine and tranny mounts to see if the effect is even greater.

 

when you start stiffening things up like motor mounts and tranny mounts that energy has to be transferred somewhere....where do you suppose that would be...driveline maybe????

 

well with the damper, it's transfered to it instead of the driveline so much

 

hopefully to the wheels?

 

Soft motor mounts are used to reduce chassis vibration and thereby increase passenger comfort. Installing an engine damper will have the opposite affect. When an engine damper is attached between the engine and chassis some of the engine's vibrations will be absorbed by the damper and some will be transferred to the chassis.

 

thats the idea

btw....how do you consider ziano a mod....its just a wax

 

i thought the main reason for getting it though was to reduce how much the engine moves around - like when taking a turn.

Some people I think have reported or theorized about it reducing the noise/vibration in a shorter shifter - and actually that's something I can say seems to be true also.

 

I had an engine damper on my car before, and i noticed that it really tends to help with the shuddering that you may feel when getting the car moving from a dead stop. Sometimes the car may shudder a little, but this damper sure helped to reduce that feeling. Also, it can help create a little smoother shift, since the engine won't move as much with a damper installed. You're not going to gain power or anything with this, just a nicer and smoother feeling car. So IMO it's worth it. I'll be putting the Stillen one on my car shortly.

http://performancenissanparts.com/ca...oducts_id=1596

 

you have these instock yet?

 

we just got them back in! All backorders will be going out, and there are only a few left. if you want one, they are all going fast again.

 

Thanks,

What's the word ont he '05 high rev lower plenums? Instock? Eta? Dyno with crawford plenum?

 

Hah. Zaino is so much more than a wax could ever hope to be. Not even in the same league

 

i guess my tire gel, rainx, etc...is also a mod...and your ziano stickers too

 

Ezee and Tony@Performance both hit the nail on the head up above. The Z can have a very bad lurch when you're cruising slowly in first gear because of the amount of engine movement allowed by the super-soft mounts. This is mainly apparently when trying to hold your speed constant in a low gear, especially first. If you (accidentally) get it just right, the car can start lurching very badly and you have to completely take your foot off the gas or push in the clutch to make it stop. That's one of the effects of driveline lash, and is due to the super-soft engine mounts. To make matters worse, this lurch gets magnified when you get a lighter flywheel, which I have.

So, the way to prevent all this is to reduce all that sloppy engine movement. You can either get harder engine mounts of some sort, or get a torque damper. I'd love to have harder engine mounts, but no one makes anything reasonable that I'm aware of. (350evo makes solid metal engine mounts, but those aren't reasonable for a street car.) So, all we can do for now is use an engine torque damper to limit (or slow down) that engine movement. It just acts like a little shock absorber preventing the engine from rotating back and forth so much or so quickly.

However, there is one drawback to all this. The reason the Z has such goofy super-soft engine mounts is because the VQ35 is such an incredibly rough engine. Just hold your hand on the shifter while driving to get an idea of the incredible amount of vibration the engine has. Put on a lightweight flywheel and increases even more (a little). Those soft engine mounts suck up most of that vibration so you don't feel it in the car. When you use stiffer mounts (or a torque damper) some of that vibration now gets transmitted into the chassis, and thus into the cabin. The Stillen torque damper is mild enough that, although you can feel a slightly increased amount of vibration in the steering wheel, there are really no extra vibrations noticeable. I have no extra rattles or anything annoying in the cabin. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that most people wouldn't even be able to notice extra the vibration if you secretly installed one of these in their car when they weren't looking. They'd immediately be able to feel that something is better and the car seems to respond better, and even that it seems easier to start from a stop. But they probably wouldn't notice the vibration.

After all my mods like this I like to give them the Girlfriend Test (TM). I let my girlfriend drive my car around and tell her I modded something but not what it was. She then tells me if there is any good or bad effect. She actually couldn't tell anything different after this mod. I then mentioned that there should be increased vibration in the steering wheel, and she still couldn't tell. Nice.

 

would it actually reduce less stress on the tranny if you have an auto and may run boost later?

 

this is so true - even more so with a 3.9 final drive. I can't stand it, but live with it. I mostly encounter it in the parking garage at work going around corners slowly in 2nd gear because 1st gear is monsterously loud with the concrete walls/ceiling.

I have the damper, and I'm sure it helps a little, but not enough

 

I just put the stillen engine damper on my car, and it makes a huge difference to me with my tilton. It won't help the lurching problem when you are in gear just driving, that's just the way the drivetrain is, but it sure helps if you hop the clutch from a dead stop...

 

Any pictures of the stillen engine damper installed?

 

Well, yeah, but the thing is very small and very tucked away under a bunch of stuff so there's not much to see. Here are pics of mine:
http://www.spintronic.com/gallery/vi...0ztorquedamper