I just received my Kinetix Plenum/Cat package on Friday. I installed the Plenum Friday night and the cats Saturday morning. Everything went well and I had no issues with fitment or cracking. I have driven it a bit since then and there are no idle or leaking problems. Overall I am very satisfied. There is more noise from the engine compartment, but it's not bad at all. Performance wise, it delivers as claimed. It definitely pulls harder from 4k-redline. Since I removed test pipes when I installed the cats, all of the gains I felt were due to the plenum.

I think that some of the plenum fitment issues that people are referring to with "holes not lining up", isn't that at all. On my plenum, there were a couple of holes where I had a bit more difficulty getting the bolts to bite. The actually problem was a slight misalignment (1-2mm) with the cork gasket. Once the bolts pushed through they installed without a problem.

On the cats side, my raspy exhaust note is gone forever. It sounds much better now. There is absolutely no raspiness at all through the entire rpm range. I accidentally got shorted by two nuts (no jokes please!), but I just used some from my test pipe install.

Regretfully, I am going out of town for two weeks so I won't be able to dyno for a while.

I snapped a couple of pics of my engine compartment. We've all seen pics of cats, so I didn't take any of those. I just wanted to show off my new setup, with my trimmed engine cover.

 

did you used to have a crawford?

if not why the trimmed engine cover?

 

My reasons for my trimming are as follows:

1) The G35 cover goes all the way back over the entire plenum, with the rear two mounting points molded into the stock plenum.
The Kinetix plenum doesn't have these two mounting points.

2) The Kinetix plenum sits significantly higher than the stock one (the whole reason behind this mod), so I wasn't sure if there was room to reinstall the cover without it hitting the hood mat.

3) I kinda want to show off my plenum and I liked the trimmed cover look as opposed to no cover at all.

4) I like messing around with my dremel.

I guess I could just buy a 350Z cover. What do you think of the trimmed cover though? The stock cover has a cut out on it where the upper intake tube resonator sits. I cut out the opposite side to match.

While doing this, I found a good trick to use to trim this cover. Instead of making a cardboard template or something like that, I mounted the cover onto the stock plenum and flipped it over. Then I traced in the lines that I wanted to cut. Then I hit it with the dremel. It worked out really well.