Well I've had it on for a while but had to wait to tune it because I sent back my blower to Vortech to get it reconditioned and it took a few weeks to get her back in shape. I was told I was getting 370WHP and 313lbs T with the oem plenumn and Vortech but my previous tuner made on more tune adjustment and I was actually only getting 338WHP. That kind of bummed me out. I even have the graph that showed 370WHP.
So i wanted to see what I was getting now with the Kinetix SSV and make sure I had a good tune on the car so I took it to SPEED DREAMS and told my boy Ryan over there to have at it. He got me up to 397WHP and 315.4lbs t. We were shooting for at least 400WHP but it was over 100 degrees in the dyno room and I think my car had it for the day. I'm totally happy with the results and way happy with my SPEED DREAMS boys (thanks fella's) and want to say the Kinetix does make power. Worthy mod plus it looks *****en but its not a bolt on mod. It needs to be tuned to get the power you want and make sure your a/f is correct.

 

Why did it drop from 370 to 338, that may be a bigger question than the 397hp you made.
338 seems low for just the vortech plus you have headers.

 

The tune I was givin the graph for was 370WHP. The guy who tuned my car before said he wanted to make one more adjustment before he was done but I never saw the graph for that one. Believe me I wasn't happy when I found out either.

 

Wow that air/fuel looks great!

 

Nice numbers dude!

 

BTW J, I totally spaced that SES thing. I'll stop by your place and take care of that for you.

 

I didn't know if that was Tripp or Ryan. Thanks for calling and checking up on me. Dude, I slept till 10:30! Missed the friggen game. took her out to look for some road meat and didn't find anything. Car feels good I just need to get a good race out of my system. I've got streetrace bluballs! Thanks for everything fellas and hope to see you at the BBQ! Jason

 

Nice numbers Jason. The lunch break between pulls was GREAT. See you at the RSW BBQ and car meet at Elliott's at 5:00 on Sunday.

 

Well, the mystery continues.. Just how good is the IM.? Without clear and convincing data like before dyno (w/good tune) and post dyno (with good tune) no one can really say!

 

you look like you've got a pretty decent tune... why don't you get one and let us know?

 

That sounds familiar... I was told my car was tuned to 415rwhp and shown dyno graphs to back that up (including my all time high run of 425rwhp which I even witnessed firsthand).

When we started tuning my car the other day, it was only pulling 340rwhp! At first, I thought it might be the same situation you had, Barzten... but I don't recall the tuning shop having a chance to change the program after the 400+hp runs. In fact, I think they unhooked all the equipment following those runs. I could be wrong, maybe I drove out of there with only a 350rwhp tune.

There is another explanation tho... the loss in power could be a result of mileage on the car (I drove 20K miles on the old tune) and it weakening to wear and ECU adjustments over time AND also you could see a big power loss, initially, because of the SSV! It is a radical departure from the stock intake. It may be that the airflow dynamics are different enough that, without any retuning, it radically alters output. This seems more plausible now that both Barzten and I had the same experience. An initial untuned run with the SSV showing poor output numbers even though we were shown higher numbers during previous tuning sessions without the SSV. It makes some sense.

In any case, if

A) Barzten1 had his car tuned to 370rwhp at one point
B) the only modification between then and now has been the SSV
and
C) he is now retuned 397rwhp

then, I think it is fair to say the SSV does make power. Certainly not the huge gains Kinetix advertises, but somewhere in the 20-25rwhp neighborhood on an FI car.

Question I have for Barzten1...
Were you running a stock plenum or upper plenum replacement before the SSV? If the former, then the SSV has around the same gains as other intake upgrades. If the latter, then it is a nice gain of other intake upgrades.

No matter what, it does still look hella sweet and allows many of us to get our strut bars back on!

 

could it be that 340 was underload and 425 was converted to the dynojet #? even then though the number are still off if that was the case I would expect 360-370 underload if you 425 was converted to a dynojet #

 

I'm not into "bling" and so far all the available data to date points in that direction. If it can be shown that it helps me get even as much as a 5% increase in tq accross the band I'll be the next to buy one!

 

If this is true and there is a loss of power as the miles are put on the car then who's to say that with the SSV install we may again see a loss after 1 year with the system on....never new a car could lose that much power from just daily driving

 

I think the point barzten is making is that when you put the SSV on, you need to tune the car to get the gains...

He had a 370rwhp tune with stock manifold and vortech
Swapped the SSV on, waited for a bit for the blower to come back from vortech
New run netted 338 (i.e. needed to be tuned for the new manifold)
after tuning has 397rwhp.

 

why did the vortech need to be rebuilt so soon? Could that have been a reason for the low numbers or the newfound gains?

 

I had thought about that but ironically, the car made the EXACT same power with the new rebuilt blower. I don't know much about the tune loosing so much power other than it took me a few hours to be able to consistantly replicate that 370 area. The first time I took a stab at tuning the car, it made something like 338 w/ the stock plenum. We swapped the plenum on our dyno, did 0 tuning and made a pull. I wanna say it went to 357 on the same tune, but I can't recall off the top of my head. Either way, it flat made more power on the same tune, same day etc... which makes it two for us that have without a shadow of a doubt add power.

As far as the fueling phenomenon we're seeing here, my take is it is flowing more air and getting rich. As I noted earlier, if you take the MAF off, their so sensitive that pulling it, and even looking at it is going to require a retune. This is probably not uncommon and I think you'd find similar findings with different intakes. It seems that Nissan or whoever made the MAF flowed enough to develope an accurate xfer function for 99% of the cars out there. And this is probably fine for the N/A cars, but when you F/I one your adding tons of variables. I think anytime you change the airflow be it intake, temps, boost etc... the cars fueling curve will change. At least for the most part, the OEM computer was designed to basically fuel a constant, and with intake manifolds and we're trying to get it to fuel a variable which is a huge problem.

What i've been finding thus far, and i'll let someone question the accuracy of the equipment, is that with the R4 stuff, if you datalog the pressure vs. RPM columns, you'll find that with the stock plenum and the SSV, the car is actually fueling in different cells. So if you have a really good tune for your 8PSI car, but the cells are increased in 'higher' areas, and you add pressure, the car doesn't use the cells you tuned in anymore, and by default adds fuel requiring a retune. That's just a theory and what i've found thus far when i've gone from the stock plenum to the SSV.

I wish we had better software but we don't. I think R4 is poor software for such a nice technologically refined car. I've engineered some good formulas though to make tuning them quite a bit easier. All you really need is a few good baseline datalogs on R4 and one or two logging timing vs. MAF vs. RPM and you should be able to tune one of these cars in a couple of hours and get a dead flat A/F line.

My .02

 

Thanks McDuck. No other airflow mods have been put on since or anything that I would expect to make power. Those old #'s were with an oem plenumn. I'm getting a JWT clutch/flywheel put on Wed. Will I get a few ponies from those?

 

I've probably only got 5k on the car with the Vortech.

 

I thought there was something wrong with the blower. Sent it to Vortech and said it was perfectly fine. Repacked the bearings and sent it back to me. Great service by Vortech!