Well, I now have about 8000 miles on my Z, and I'm ready to start work on her, Finally...

I Will be putting the Nismo Body kit on, and painting the Engine cover/Battery cover/Brake Fluid cover, and 20% tint, and as far as looks go, thats it for now.

My Question is this, Whats the cheapest/best mods I can do for power? I'm Currently thinking Intake, Plenum, Grounding Kit, and......What else? Basically, I want to start off with the Best "bang for the buck" mods, and work my way down from there...

Also, As far as Intake goes, I'm thinking Injen, however, is there a better/more power producing intake?

I'm ready to spend about 5 Grand in mods, but I don't want to compromise the daily driver use of the Z, in otherwords, no FI... : (

Comments/Input appreciated

 

Try this one: https://my350z.com/forum/showthread....threadid=39693

 

Well, for that amount of money you could easily go FI and be real conservative with the boost you use. But if you don't want to do that, then I would have to say the first thing would be the Crawford plenum.

 

Just in case, if you have to take your car to the dealer for any warranty work on the engine, they'll possibly void your warranty if they see a grounding kit and/or intake in the engine bay. I'm temporarily restoring back to stock so they can diagnose my car's erratic idle problem.

 

plenum $700
borla exhuast $700
pullies $300

should net you about 25 rwhp. Test pipes should get you about 5 more.

Cams, flywheel, etc will get you a few more but will cost about $2-3k installed.

Tho I have to say, I haven't seen anyone get more than 30rwhp to the wheels with bolt ons yet (270hp+)

 

mjedens dynoed 263 off bottle with Nismo headers, Stillen exhaust, test pipes, pullies, plenum, and ECU (rev and speed limiter disabled only). No baseline run, but I dynoed 240 stock on that same dyno which was the 2nd highest of any other stock Z. Stock range has been 227-242 on that dyno.

He then put 380 down with his Zex shot. :-0

 

if you have 5G's to spend just put a procharger in it. all those other mods will come nowhere near what you will get from a procharger

 

Ive heard that CAI can actually hurt or Z. Id recommend a drop in K&N untill you feel sure your CAI is worth it. As far as Borla I have a friend that actually lost HP but overall Ive heard that it gives great bang for your buck. Just my .02.

 

Ive heard that CAI can actually hurt our Z. As far as Borla I have a friend that lost 2HP on a Dyno but overall it has gotten good reviews and seems to have great bang for your buck. Just my .02.

 

CAI bad ?

 

Oh please let us know how you know that!! It must be nice to have talked to every other Z owner in the world. What GTG did I miss?

 

A Cold Air Intake will not hurt the car. If you're looking for your first step do the basics, intake, headers, exhausts. After that, boost it! Just be careful which exhaust you pick. They are not all good.

 

From what I unserstand the dyno is not effective in simulating true driving conditions when your talking about a CAI. The stock air box is presurized. Im not sure exactly how it makes sense but the guy I was talking to is Mr. Verdone who has countless awards from SEMA and owns an aftermarket shop. I went in there looking for a CAI and he said in our Z your better off with a drop in air filter. Maybe someone more versed in what a CAI does and Presurized Vs. Non-Presurized air can help clear this up for me.

 

Hey Potato, I think Vandy was saying that his Z posted the second highest stock numbers on his local dyno... not all dyno's across the world.

As far as the CAI's being bad for the Z... I disagree. It is very well known that it is hard to simulate real world driving conditions on a dyno, hence the difficulty in dynoing things like aftermarket intakes. However, plenty of people have installed CAI's and then taken their Z's to the track and have had measurable gains in trap speed in the 1/4. So, they're definitely making power in real driving conditions.

 

I agree that there must be some up sides to CAI. Just curious what you guys thought and if anyone could explain the presurization dilemna the CAI poses.

 

Im thinking K&N Filter Drop and Jim Wolf Heat Sheild...

 

What would the heat shield do? (I know it shields heat) but more specificaly. Also what part of Chicago are you from? I grew up there.

 

well, what i really mean is a k&n filter. the heat sheild will prevent heat from going into the engine and take in colder air.

 

they really cant say anything about that.

i had both cai, grouding kit. the dealer didnt say a thing. all i was told was that as long as the problem isnt coming "directly" from that part.

 

It seems like for the money the best mods are Test Pipes (~$220) and Intake Plenum (~$500). I'm going Injen Intake, Grounding Kit, Test Pipes and then a Plenum. Hopefully by then more aftermarket parts will hit the market.