well some of you know I'm having my vortech setup installed over the next two weeks and thought I'd start a thread about how I'm going about doing it. I know it's not as exotic as some of the major turbo build ups but maybe someone finds it interesting

I'm going with the vortech tuner kit with 3.12 pulley, 440 injectors, CJ Motorsports fuel return system, ATS twin carbon clutch among other stuff.

anyway I dropped the car off at Dynocomp who is one of the best local shops in the Phoenix area (APS dealer, dyno dynamics dyno, great mechanic and great tuner, etc) after taking out the transmission they noticed my crawford cats each had small cracks in them and they welded them up. Since the transmission was already out they called me and said it wouldn't be that much more trouble to remove my crawford headers and jethot coat them (actually they prefer another company, but forgot the name) I said sure go for it. I also brought along a crapload of thermowrap and thermotape etc to cover hoses, wires, etc. He said because the headers will be coated, wrapping them shouldn't be too much of an issue with burning the headers up with the headerwrap. So I'm going to have him do that too. I also have a vented hood on order. I'll be doing an oil cooler too, but not at this time. I want to see what sort of sizes I can work with when the kit gets installed. AZ gets hot and I want to do everything possible to manage heat since I'll probably track the car here and there

Stopped by yesterday to drop some stuff off and take pics etc. They ended up just taking the engine out cause it was only an extra hour and would make everything else easier to get to. My car has about 19k miles on it and the engine bay around the engine isn't as clean as it used to be so they're going to pressure wash it. I'm also going to go with solid motor mounts when the engine goes back in.

My intake tube rubbed a pinhole leak in my AC line about a month ago. Nissan wanted to charge me $500 (wtf!!) to fix it. Other shops said it'd probably be like $250 to fix it. Well we found the leak and it looks easy enough to just weld. Then he'll thermowrap the line.

He had to make a custom bracket for part of the CJM fuel system because my SSV manifold is so close to the rear wall of the engine bay. So the gauge will sit kinda next to the fuel rail.

Other parts I'm having installed are the KJR pulley, koyo V-core radiator, gauges, TS vortech reflash for a better starting point, then tune with the emanage ultimate

I also am going to use a 50/50 mix of 91 and 101 octane. It won't be really a daily driver car anymore and I don't want to screw around with detonation in the hot summer, even if it's a good tune


some key parts I already have installed are JWT cams, 3.91 final drive, nismo LSD, nismo exhaust, and APS oil pan. I plan on going to yokohama AO48 tires with 265's up front and 315's in the rear. There's a few people really curious how my setup will drive with the 3.9 FD and tire choice etc so this will be where I post my observations about everything when the car is done. I'm not worried about understeer because of other things I have planned out that would cause some oversteer

***let's not get into how I should have gone turbo or bought X brand kit. I spent a LONG time reading up on everything. Like a year and a half of debating with people one side or another before finally settling on the vortech since I kept coming back to it and the price was right. This is the kit that I want If I had a completely stock car, I might have considered the APS TT kit instead, but my car wasn't anything near stock and I didn't want to have to sell all my old parts at a huge loss etc***

Sorry for how blurry some of the pictures are. I tried to pick the best ones. The camera has a mind of it's own.

 

Good luck with the installs.. Why the TS reflash?

 

Thanks for starting up the thread, as I have been researching sc's and the such. Good luck with the mod's, and keep us updated!

 

just because the emanage ultimate doesn't allow you to set the timing to what you want it to quite yet. It can only adjust the timing by +/-

It's just a precaution. I want the base ECU map to have the timing pulled and the emanage ultimate to tweak it. I don't want to be driving in the winter and have the ECU decide to add more timing to give me what it thinks is an aggressive stock NA map and hurt my engine

 

Assume you looked at UTEC which would eleminate the ECU for timing and provide it as well as several maps to account for seasonal changes..Eleminating secondary/piggy back controls enhances safety and reliability.. My .02...

 

yeah, and AAM actually has a vortech map very similar to what my car is. But I dunno, it's just more money to spend and deal with selling the EU that I just installed a few months ago thinking greddy would come thru with the target timing. They say this summer though now which means 2 years from now.

My shop has tuned my car with the EU before and are currently working on a turbo elise that uses the EU too. They don't know the UTEC which is much more complicated (and capable) than the EU. I'm going with my gut on this one with sticking with the EU

I'm not going to be going crazy with the tune. I'm hoping to be running somewhere between 400-440 whp and 330-350wtq. I know superchargers have parasitic losses and that it's more similar to 480whp on a turbo, but the torque is so much milder and I've taken just about every precaution I can think of (that I'm comfortable with) short of building the engine. The 96 octane mix will help out anyway just as a safety caution

 

Good luck Sentry....have fun watching them work on it and take a bunch of pics for us

 

thanks booger,
and thanks for answering my PM's etc. I've been following all your threads and the other big vortech guys forever now

 

If I could this Blower figured out as why it keeps making the gears in it whine really loud . We got a foot of snow the other day and Im not wanting to go out in the garage to go thru it . Starting to wonder if the shop forgot to put on the spacer for the oil pick up [ oil pan spacer ] and the motor and blower are getting shorted on oil when I get on it .

 

Good luck with the build.....brings back memories

 

Can't wait to see how it comes out!!!

 

good luck bro i'm finishing up my procharger now i hope its worth it in the end!! as for the KJR pulley ive heard mostly good things but i remember somebody saying it felt like it took longer to get into boost or something so i put the stock on first to compare for myself ..



ps. i like that oil cap!

 

thanks guys

just a quick not so eventful update, nothing really has been done the last 2 days since the shop is finishing up a turbo install on an elise - so I wasn't really expecting much work happening this week since it was booked ahead of me. It's also using the emanage ultimate for tuning Soon as it's done and I get the parts I'm waiting on, I'm their top priority again

i guess they already sent my ECU to technosquare to be reflashed. I'm not sure what to think of that. I don't know what info they told technosquare about my car, but I'm pretty sure if I did it I could have told them more info about my setup and I wanted to make double sure my idle was still high - actually I've been thinking of lowering it by about 150 rpms down to around 1150 or so. They said the ECU has already been shipped back to them in the mail. We'll see. I can always ship it back to them i guess.

John the mechanic, was saying he really likes working on the Z's and knows them really well from the APS installs he's done. He's not enjoying the turbo elise project he's trying to finish up because everything is even more cramped than the Z and you gotta take half the car apart to get to anything

 

nice to read about the install sentry,

That is pretty much where I want to go as well. (definitely utec though)

 

Congrats on the kit. Thanks for doing the writeup. I have a friend that is thinkign about this set up. Ill forward th elink to him.

 

*edit*

What did you pay for the tuner kit?

 

they have a tuner kit yeah, no fuel parts and no computer

it's about $1500-1800 less than the full kit

 

Projected output #'s upon completion?

 

I too am curious about this, also are you building this for Drag, Auto-X, Street Fun, or somthing more?

 

I'll be tuning on the dyno dynamics dyno though which outputs lower numbers than a dynojet. So I'm hoping to hit 380-400whp and 300-330 wtq on dynocomp's dyno which will end up being in the ballpark of 400-440 whp and 330-350wtq on a dynojet. We'll see though. The people with similar setups seem to be putting out similar numbers

I'm not going for one particular type of driving. I'm going for a well rounded car. If I was going for drag racing or highway/top speed runs, I'd have gone turbo without a doubt.

I'm going this route cause I think it'll be able to do well at all types of driving though probably not the BEST at any.