If you plan to dyno your car in stock form and then after a round of mods at a later time you're best off running on the exact same dyno (as in at the same location). Weather matters but it's affect is much less important...you want to maintain consistency...at the very least you should be running on the same type of dyno to compare car to car and mod to mod.

 

We race against SVT Mustangs, Firebirds, new M3, old stlye M3 with euro motor, NSX, and Porsche 996.
Every one of them can kill us on accelartion and we are at 2850 lbs while they are at 2950 or above. That is with a CAI, no cats, headers, ECU and exhaust.
The 996 are allowed an exaust and thats about it as far as engine mods. We have made our time all year on handling and braking.....we havent won a drag race yet.

 

SVT Stang (320 or 390 depending on year)...More HP than a Z, Firebird (LS1 car I assume ~350hp underrated) more HP than a Z.
New M3 (333hp)...more HP than a Z....old M3 (euro version 320hp) more hp than a Z. NSX (near same hp as a Z)....but just a hair over 3000lbs in STOCK form...hard to believe they were only able to take ~50lbs off for a race version as you stated. Porsche 996 (320hp new, 297 older) more hp than a Z...

so you were saying??

 

For your information weights are regualted for each car. It is not they they could only get 50 pounds out of the car.......I mean come on! Its called regulations.
Our car is mandated at 2850 lbs no driver.
The Z is down on power.
We have had a 3 stock engines on an engine dyno .........not one of the three engines made 287 horsepower.

 

I don't care if the Z motor made 100hp on an engine dyno...From my experience it preforms up to par with other vehicles of similar hp rating and weight. That speaks much louder than engine dyno numbers.

 

Hey no offense to any of you guys, but if u want horse power gains, buy a f%$#in turbo, procharger, or SC, seriously, they will give u the dynos you always wanted to see, and fyi yea your mustang firebird which are roughly same priced as the Z, have more horses but those cars are only good for 0 to 60's, they are like the old muscle cars, only not even near as good as they used to be, also the porsche, nsx, and m3 are all over 60K, u payed half of that for the Z, so with all of the money u saved, u can easily afford a twin turbo kit, high compressions pistons, camshafts, exhaust, and all other nesscessary parts needed to run 15.8 or whatever the hell u want of boost to absolutely deciamte these other cars out there. U ever race a stang on the highway, cuz while your swirving in and out of traffic, they are hittin the guard rail, they have no control like the Z, and as i said, no crap a NSX ($80,000), Porche Carrera ($70,000), and an M3 ($64,000) can out perform the Z, but the fact that the Z can keep up with these cars is what u guys are forgetting to realize, stop crying about the stock internals of the car, yea Nissan may have fudged the numbers a little, but guess what, every company does, price to performance, the Z meets every standard, so no disrespect to any one but just enjoy your cars.

 

I think you are missing the point, the topic is whether the Z makes the HP stated and downshifts info is very good, the Z doesn't seem to make the 287 advertised and it is not about making more HP.

 

Don't auto manufacturers use brake HP from a bench dyno with absolutely no accessories attached to limit parasitical loss?

 

I think we really have 280hp then the advertized 287. Nissan prob found 1 test car out of a dozen that could make the advertised 287 and so used it. They couldnt let their Z car have the same rated horses as a sports coupe so they stretched the truth.

 

Downshift, are you sure the dyno was calibrated right? Can the dyno you are using be different then what nissan would use? What kind of numbers did you get? How consistent were they? Were the numbers adjusted for altitude/temperature?

 

The engines were dynoed by a very very reputable company that is doing our engine program.
Their dyno's take in consideration for a lot of things as they have a complete engine dyno room.
and if their numbers are for some reason way lower than everyone elses .....then with the one we are getting back we should be REALLY REALLY happy when it gets in the car.


but even some other people I have talked who have worked with this engine have been saying the same thing.
Like I said before.....I am sure one of these Z's somewhere got 287 hp.

 

dwnshift out of curiosity have you presented any of these findings to Nissan? Not that it would make much difference I suppose, just curious.

I'm also curious as to how over-rated the horsepower has to be before the manufacturer has to make moves like Mazda did (if the manufacturer indeed *has* to do anything to the consumer at all).

 

Dwnshift, this needs to be presented to nissan. Nissan had a hard time getting the claimed 287hp. The prototypes that they let the press test only a short time before release, had only about 255hp. They promised there will be more by the time it's out. I would not be surprised if they never did make it to 287. When Sport Compact Car dynoed both the G35 and the Z, the Z only had 2 more hp. 2hp on a dyno, of course is just a rounding error, so as far as i'm concerned the 2 have the same power. But then again we are talking about a chasis dyno and that's opening a whole can of worms. Not even gonna go there. You got 270 on an engine dyno and that means 270. period. Thats what i was expecting. I don't care that one of their engines under specifically designed environment tested at 287. If they want to claim a certain number a consumer expects consistency within certain %. -6% +0% is not an expectable range. I'm no lawyer, but i know a thing or two about business ethics. Nissan needs to deal with this if it wants to retain me as a customer. Dwnshift, Nissan needs to hear from people that have valid evidence.

 

mrZ -- couldn't have said that better myself. Word.

 

Nisshit wouldn't give you the time of day.

To get any action at all on my tyre bizzo, I really had
to make a very audible and protracted fuss at the motorshow.

I said some very deleterious things about RX8 - but seemsthat we have the same prob.

I had a wrx STi rated @ 206kw - and it was underrated - would
bust the Z using only !st 3rd and 5th !

Fridgid didgit.

 

We are really trying to present our case with the sanctiony body Grand Am as we need more power.
Its bad when other competitors come up and tell you how much you are giving away on the straights.

 

BJ - the thing you are not mentioning though is the years of development work on thsoe cars compared to the new Z...we all know that while the sanctioning rules "say" what mods you can do, very ferw if any, adhere to them item by item except on issues of weight. There are also loads of gear options for those cars (who is to say what they are running as far as a rear end ratio), and noone has played with the Z in that regard yet.....gearing being far more important than outright HP IMHO.

Our race car (ITS class BMW) runs lap times in line with several Speed Cup cars at certain tracks becuase we have spent so much time on setup, as well as having a variety of rears to choose from.

 

Yes you have made some good points.
We have worked all year on "setup" and suspension and braking and on drivers and suspension track we have been up front.
My point from a drivers view is this.......... The other cars right now have enough power to walk away on the straights...... we can make up some of this ground in the brake zone but the dangerous part is at Daytona for instance..................
You have Mustangs doing 165+ goiong into turn one and braking at the 250 marker and I could brake at the 100 marker.........
Now at that 100 marker..........believe me the car is on the edge.now I have to "guess" where the other guy is going to be......and if he wants to be a jerk all he has to do is move over a little........... this is a equation for contact and wrecked cars.
There are other things that are important when running a FULL season fo racing with an unknown car. Reliability comes to mind.
Its also hard when you are running against Mustangs who are having Roush build their engines and BMW's with Milner (PTG) motors.
Its also hard when you are a brand new car and have to play "the game".
The last thing GA wanted was for a brand new car to come in the class and start winning.
This is a street stock endurance series and I for one would love to see them do away with engine management. I know the other Z team spent over $40,000 on their system and we were running a Technosuare ECU.
There is power to be gained from the engine management and we are going that way right now but it does drive the overall cost of the series up.
So where does this take us..................I have no idea....I was just giving my 2 cents of what we have seen with the HP of the Z. Sorry for sharing information.........I guess just dont know.

 

Thats just it BJ - I would not be discouraged yet....it remains to be seen what exactly can be coaxed out of this car in its present form, and noone has really begun to "play" with a variety of drivetrain setups, especially gearing, etc.

I think the real engine management solutions might also proive fruitful, though at this point, we are at the infancy stage with it given the complexities of the cars network system. Would be interesting to see what could be gained from a "real" standalone solution, though as you said, the time frames and budget involved in doing that are a bit hard to swallow so far As you well know, its expensive to be the guinea pig!

 

We are putting in our new engine now with PECTEL engine man system.
Our goal is to retain the EOM ABS system. The other team did away with the brake system and from what Stu said it really killed the car in the brake zone. This was also noticeable at Daytona in turn one.