First of all I'd like to thank Mike at superchargers4less.com for his great price and service on the kit.

A HUGE thanks to Momin, Shane and Tyler at Elite Autosport here in Minneapolis. Especially Shane who hung in there through some software glitches!!! These guys are top notch. Check them out if you're local.

Anyway, This won't be the final dyno but here is a sample of what can be attained with this kit and a few extras. I won't have many answers to your techniucal questions. Maybe the Elite guys can chime in.

This is on a Dynojet 248c.

 

sorry had to resize the image

 

Very nice numbers!

When you say "software glitch" what do you mean? Did you modify the programming of the splitsecond box?

--Steve

 

Yes, Elite is using the R4 software for the SS box.

They were having an issue with the car having a cardiac arrest at 4k on the dyno runs. Maybe I can convince Shane to help out with the answer. He mentioned that it had something to do with the software and the second fuel pump.

Stuart

 

Thats the same problem I ran into. Car would stall after 4k rpm. You also have the hestitation problem at 5400 rpm and 6000 rpm. When you actually take your car out for a spin, it feels really weird at first but you will get used to it.

 

I am the one tuning the car, we are going to work on it somemore tomorrow. The setup is a bit finicky. I don't think the stock ECU is especially happy with all the airflow it is seeing. So we are pretty much fighting the FMUs over fueling, the ECUs confusion of way more airflow than it would ever expect and the R4 software. The R4 does no interpolation at all, unlike most other systems, so when you have it make a change in the next 500RPM area it does it all at one instead of making a nice transition across the RPMS, the power curve would be much smoother if it wasn't so abrupt about the timing changes.

The overall power should stay about the same, but we are going to try to get it a bit smoother in the 5500 and 6000 areas. We had some runs where it was a bit nicer but it was too close the edge and the ECU would sometimes do drastically different fueling depending on how hot the car was and it's mood that run, so we decided to go back a few tunes where it was running richer and didn't have any random fueling changes popping up, but then we had a power drop show up around 5500. Which is probably caused by the ECU switching into a different timing map based on the modified airflow numbers we are sending it from the R4 software. On a lot of cars that run a MAF or MAS when you adjust fueling using a piggyback system like the R4 or an S-AFC there can be side-effects that cause it to run a different timing map as you lean or richen the mixture. For example a stock ECU might have 10+ timing maps to pick from and will choose which timing map it will pick its currect timing from based on RPM and airflow. So say with your AFC or whatever at 0% at 5000RPMs at WOT the ECU wants to run 20 degrees of advance or whatever based on the airflow it's seeing, but also say your running way to ruch there. Then you go into the AFC and take out 10% or whatever and the way that it changes the fueling is just by subtracting 10% of the value from signal coming from the MAS and then sending that modified signal to the ECU. Well, if that change in airflow signal is big enough, then you can sometimes cause the ECU to jump to a different timing map for that same RPM and you might all of a sudden get 25 degrees of timing instead of the 20 you were before, which can be bad news on a boosted car.

This car does seem to be a bit pickier than most and can have much different A/F ratios happen without making any changes just depending on if the car is warm, hot or heatsoaked from a multiple dyno runs in a row. Most cars will run a tad bit leaner when the car is moderately warm, like if you let it sit 15 mins between dyno runs or cool the intake manifold with fans, which normally isn't a huge deal because even though the A/F might be a little leaner than you want the car is less likely to have detonation problems anyways because it not burning hot in the first place. But this car exhibits some larger than normal sweeps in A/F ratio when going from quite warm to hot hot, so I could see how some people might have lost an engine on a boosted 350Z.

Sorry about the long rant. Anyways, as far as about the tune in his car right now we have added some fuel downlow and pulled some fuel out on the mid-topend. We are also running less timign retard than the stock Vortec program, we start at 0.5 degrees and work our way up to 6 degrees. The Vortec program is tuned to be very safe on even crappy California 91 octane(Which some people say isn't nearly as good as 91 found elsewhere), he is running 93 octane. We put in 1 range colder plugs. The stock Vortec program puts down about 315whp on his car and has very large power drops at each point where it pulls more and more timing. Pretty much the stock program reaches 310 around 5500 and the power keeps getting yanked back every 500 rpms as it pulls out too much timing at each interval. The power band is so bizarre that it had us thinking we screwed something up on the install until we matched all the power drops to changes in the timing map. Currently his ground wire kit is disconnected because we were having some other problems with idle and then a 4000rpm cut out problem and we wanted to eliminate any possible problems. I don't personally believe much in the kits and they could do more worse than good if you wire them up wrong and cause a ground loop. Maybe when we hook it back up it will make 1whp more! We did have 2 leaks in the upper intake manifold plenum gasket that we fixed, but I have a feeling that we might have blow them back out again today on the dyno. I will have to run a pressure test tomorrow.

The big problem at 4000 was one of the parameters controlling the secondary fuel pump somehow got changed on accident or something.

The kit is a bit noisy at idle. I talked to Vortec and they said the "gear meshing" noise was normal on this kit at low RPMs. Is anyone else's excessively noisy below 1000RPMs from the pulley/gear box that transfers from the main sepentine belt to the charger belt?

 

I have little "clink" "clink" noises coming from the blower @ below 800 rpms. The noises go away once you give it some gas. The first unit that was in my car made the "clinking" noises throughout the whole rev band and it wouldn't stop so my tuner changed out the blower to a new unit. My new one makes noises once in a while, but not too bad.

Also, the problem on my car with the stalling at about 4k rpm was not due to the tuning. It was due to one of the rubber vacuum hoses not being connected properly or being pinched.

It is somewhat annoying that the Splitsecond box only lets you tune at 500rpm intervals. If you look at the a/f graph you will see a wavy line that goes up and down kind of like a cosine function. I installed a super acf-II to fine tune the "humps" at every 200 rpm's. However I have yet to tune it.

My tuner said as well that the Vortech "stock" tuning of the splitsecond box was less then satifactory so mine had to be custom tuned as well. I also have 6 degrees pulled out at 6k rpm's. So word of advice for anyone consdering the vortech kit, GET IT CUSTOM TUNED!

 

Lean that thing out and get another 20WHP We use the Split Second box as well, it's a very nice unit for conservation and easy plug and play compatibility good luck with everything.

 

The dyno graph shows 383 rwhp, are you saying that your tuning was the cause for the huge increase in power??? Did you custom tune this to get 68rwhp?? I assume all of this was done at the Vortech's 8psi boost rating, correct?? Man, that 383 rwhp is a lot larger of an increase than is advertised by Vortech, they only say it gives 125 HP of increase, and that is at the crank. Guess this could quiet the talk of the ATI making a lot more power.

 

Realize that ATI kits are at 7psi, and the Vortech is 1 psi more at 8. Good numbers!

 

Also note that he is sporting the Crawford Plenum, Random Tech Cats, and Borla True Dual exhaust. These mods were probably good for 20-25hp already. So, the Vortech is likely adding the 125 advertised given an average baseline of 235rwhp for a stock Z.

Very nice numbers, enthuzd... keep us posted if they get better. I'm particularly interested since I have a similar set up to yours + headers + Nismo cams + UR pulleys. Maybe I can hit close to 400 with my set up!

 

Not necessarily.. Vortech's running on 8psi of boost. I was able to achieve 386.7 rwhp at 7psi on the ATI with just a Borla Exhaust.

 

Ecoli-

that is a great write up- alot of the piggy-backs, when you mess with the A/F ratio on stock ecus, timing will inadvertantly change with it.

those are some crazy numbers off the vortec!


that 4k lag, is that when throttle down all the way, the entire time, or is that on-the-gas, then off, then back on again? my Vortec SC kit on the maxima used to bog/cut-off when i did that due to the way the hobbs switch was setup for the aux fuel pump.. i'm not too well educated on the current setup of the new 350Z vortec kit, can you explain how they set up their fuel? are they still using the FMU blue disc?

 

Yes, we custom tuned it. When we reload the stock Vortec program we get around 315whp. It runs 8psi with the stock revlimiter.

We did try leaning out the topend past 5500 for while but we ran into some lean spikes that would randomly happen from one run to another without any fueling changes depending on how hot the car was, so we decided to back it off a little for safety sake. It didn't really make much of a power difference with it leaner anyways. I am sure people could get even more out of this setup, but we don't want to push the absolute limits of the tune on a customer's car that sees street and road race use on pump gas. It's also hard to keep it off the revlimiter, that revlimiter likes to come right after redline starts unlike a lot of cars where it's 400-500 RPMs after redline starts. To get the full 8psi out of the kit you need to run it up to as close to revlimiter as possible, but if you accidentallu hit it, you sometimes get a fake blip that shows up on the end of the dyno run giving an extra 10whp on the graph. Now if he didn't have cats in this thing we could put in some of the leaded 117 octane that we run in turbo cars and lean it out and not pull any timing out at all and go for 400whp.

 

The 4k problem was at WOT. A parameter in the R4 box got accidentally changed I assume and the aux pump wasn't coming on early enough. I just lowered it down to come on at 1 psi and it works great now. The kit uses stock injectors, a secondary fuel pump hooked up not directly inline, the Vortec FMU, and a Split Second fuel/timing box made for the 350Z.

 

Yeah in the umpteen dyno runs I've done since having my Vortech installed, I've never pushed close enough up to the rev limiter to see a full 8lbs. I'm tempted to mod the ECU to relax the rev limit so I can get all the way to 6500 w/o fearing a bouce off the limiter--but then I would probably be tempted to run it up to 7000 and I wouldn't want to do that w/o a full retuning.

--Steve

 

Another run

 

Nice numbers! Very promising kit.

 

I have a question for members with Vortech Z's. I am seriously thinking about going with this kit on my Z in about 2 months. Here is my question: Estimate, how much $ am I looking at for the kit plus install and any extra tuning or additional electronics that aren't included. I know the kit goes for about $5k or so.

 

Kit cost: Less than $5000
Installation: $750
Tuning: $500

The tuning number is the estimated cost to have someone reprogram your SS box using the R4 software. It sounds expensive but it takes a long time and you won't get numbers anywhere near as high as 393 rwhp w/o it.

--Steve