The title says it all.

 

I agree....mine's not in yet and I'm getting impatient

 

I read it , the shootout piece was very short and text was really small/ hard to read. The pics were good. Basically I got no new info out of it that couldn't get from this site already. The cars were all in different states of tune which make it very hard to compare apple to orange performance aspects.

But basically:

JWT is most OEM-like
APS is most complete out of box
Greddy is a tuner kit, it was the raw bad boy of the bunch.
PE was quality but the tested rig was running low boost , so hard to compare.
TN single ,is low cost leader with high RPM kick.
SFR has massive snails , good for built race apps.

It went something like that , I am recalling from memory.

BTW I have APS and a built LB.

 

yeah G3po pretty much summed it all up! they didn't really say anything which one is better or not. just standard on what post on all the websites and made it all up to u as the reader.
ikon350

 

So they didnt pick any favorites out of the bunch or post any numbers?

 

Nope they remained pretty politically neutral, which should be expected.

 

It's scientifically impossible to perform a subjective, accurate test like that unless you have identically prepared cars minus the product being evalutate (in this case the Turbo kit). While they did a good job of giving information about the kits from a cost/install/driving standpoint, it was not a great "comparo" because of other differences in the cars. If they had the budget to either buy 5 cars and turbo kits, or just 5 turbo kits and find 5 completely stock donor cars, then they could have produced a good comparison that rooted out the differences in the kits, not the cars AND the kits. All in all, not a bad article given what they had to work with.

I did note one innacurate piece of information regarding the Turbonetics kit. In the "feature grid", they indicate that the T-netics kit uses the stock fuel pump, which it doesn't. It gets the same Walbro 255 LPH pump that some of the other kits use.

 

here's my gripe with the article with stuff they COULD have done better

they could have scaled their graphs the same. Some graphs start at 1500rpms, others started dynoing at 3000rpms etc and because they started their graphs at different places, the dynos looked really different at first glance. I had to keep going "ok so at 4000 rpms so and so's getting x hp, whereas over here, so and so at 4000rpm is getting x hp" etc They made it impossible to just glance at the chart and visually see how the shapes of the curves really compared to each other.

What turbo was on the G35? I guess the JWT car? that should have been plainly said outright. G35's have 298hp to start with instead of 287, of course that has an effect on dynos

One dyno in particular they should have trashed and not used because it double backed onto itself meaning it was making 2 hp numbers at the same rpm or maybe the car traveled back in time and made a different number? I've never seen a dyno that did that. It was explained that it was an auto, but so what? WTF? pick a gear in manualmatic mode and dyno.

Also what gears were used to dyno?

were all these cars dynoed the same day? It didn't sound like they were.

All the cars all had different setups. Some had different exhausts, test pipes, HF cats, intake manifolds, pullies, whatever. Who knows how their ECU was acting that day.

One dyno was included that was run at like 3 or 4 PSI - it was the PE TT kit. The guy normally ran it 2-3 psi higher, but his car was acting weird that day. But it was deamed scientific and normal enough to include. The ECU's and driving style in each car are going to vary the numbers

It wouldn't be easy to scientifically dyno all the TT kits in a perfect way. About the only thing we can do is try to gauge the different setups.

They all did ok. Some kits like the SSR kit I kinda laughed when I saw it did 402hp with their intake manifold and test pipes. They made their kit out to be the greatest thing ever even though other kits with out those mods were making about the same amount of power.

I wish there was more of a review of the kits. It seemed to me like each review was kinda like "yeah it goes fast" then talked about the quality of the kit.

I would have wished there was more people's opinion comparing each kit. They summed it up fairly nice at the end. It would have been nice to know the issues of each kit. Possibilities of upgrades. Just some more pros and cons

It kinda went around saying that all the kits are high quality kits and they go fast. There was a nice spreadsheet comparing the facts of each kit that was interesting.



BTW, on another note about sport Z magazine, They're always having articles on modded Z's. Where the article basically is just a bunch of paragraphs explaining what parts are on that car and then saying how fast it is.

Why don't people review the cars and benchmark them? Let's see some numbers. I wanna see 0-60 times, quarter mile times, lateral G times, slalom times. Braking 60-0 times, comments on how the car's balance is, how it sounds, etc. I know it's harder to do and more involved. And the owner would have to be willing to do it. But it's kinda boring reading articles about modded cars where basically all you need a couple pictures and a mod list and really that basically sums up the feature article....

 

Hi all,
i'm the owner of that G35.i haven't receive my copy yet so without knowing what in there,i just try to answer what i know and ask questions base on been told here.
not quite sure what you saying here.is that mean a slow a$$ car?is that what they said in the magazine?
from what i've been told.basiclly this is just getting all those kits and lay them out there side by side for peoples to see (ahem..newbies) it not like who making the most HP or they have to choose a winner over others.they should label this as a turbo comparisons or something rather than 'shoot out'.
it has SFR (speed force racing)
it's 2003 so it has 280 to begin with,not 298.btw it's 5AT
mine was dyno on 4th.and i believe the same on all other cars
yes,all 6 of them
what numbers are you expecting?
who said that?i really like to know
everybody want to see this including me.but the dyno and street test for all 6 cars very much took all day from early morning until 4-5pm.so we need another day to do other tests which never planed for.
steve.

 

Agreed. Although I do have my difference on the setup of each car I agree it should have been a turbo comparison not shootout.

 

for what it was, the kit that impressed me the most was the JWT kit

it's not super upgradeable and it's very tame as far as sound, but the curves were much stronger/better - and I don't think that car had many mods at all

all the others had some pretty major FI power adders like test pipes or dual exhausts



I don't get the SSR manifold. Why use it if the car will peak out at 400 or whatever hp anyway? Even they say it loses a lot of torque.

 

Actually the JWT kit I believe was running 8PSI or 8.5 PSI that day. I think it comes at 6.9 PSI out of the box...but impressive none the less though...

 

I got mine today and was somewhat disappointed with the content. I think most of us were expecting to see them actually test the cars out and get some statistics to compare to stock. The mag basically contained everything we've talked about in FI part of this site. I guess it was aimed more for those that aren't present on the boards as often....oh well

 

I was kind of ticked off that Sport Z messed up on one pretty major thing. They list the specifications wrong.

Turbonetics is shown as using the stock fuel pump, and GReddy is shown as using a Walbro 255lph fuel pump. Which is backwards. I just can't believe they couldn't get that right since they didn't get specific on the parts.

 

I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to find 10 350Z's that dyno within 5rwhp avg. of each other on the same dyno and put each turbo kit on each one and make sure they are all running the same setups other than engine management (such as: GReddy TT + AAM fuel system, Walbro fuel pump, etc.)

Oh well, maybe they'll take note from this so this doesn't happen again.

 

Turbo kits seem to be based more on personal preference, features, effeciency, reliability, and what you get for the money. Point out the good/bad points, performance expectations, and what other parts you may or may not need. A turbo kit "shootout" is impossible and a waste of time IMO.

A guide would be a much better idea, and that's what SportZ did.

 

referring to the snail comment:

"snails" refer to the turbo (a turbo looks like a snail)...not implying it was slow

 

The 1:1 gear in a 5at is 4th. In a 6mt it is 5th. So I hope the 6mt cars were done in 5th.

 

the article was a big disappointment to me, just a bunch of ads for each company's turbo. they made no attempt whatsoever to compare apples to apples. whata huge letdown, imo.

 

i knew that