Kinetix Racing Plenum Install
 

Well,

Since I finally got my new (second) Z I decided I would install my Kinetix parts yesterday: plenum and cats. My friend Mike (a certified Nissan tech) graciously allowed me to use his garage and tools to work on my car, so I was pretty confident about the results.

First we installed the resonated cats -- that went without a hitch, although the fitment of the pipes was a bit poor and we had to do a lot of pushing and prying in order to get them lined up.

On to the plenum. We remove the stocker, clean everything off, and install the Kinetix piece. First thing we noticed was another fitment issue -- the center supports were too tall, and as a result the plenum would not have screwed into the sides without cracking in the middle.

After a solid 45 minutes of carefully sanding these things down to an acceptable height, we reassemble the air intake and fire up the car -- it wouldn't even run for 5 seconds. Massive air pressure leak.

We mess around with it for a little while, make sure all the screws are very tight...it sounds like the pressure leak is coming from almost every side of the plenum, so we take it off and use industrial grade silicone gasket seal. We applied a liberal amount to everything with corking on it just to make SURE there weren't any problems -- but guess what! This had absolutely no effect.

I was so depressed. I wanted this thing to work so badly! We sat there messing with it for another 3 hours before finally giving up...we checked every part along the seal to make sure it wasn't leaking, did leak tests...nothing. F*CK.

We had the stock plenum back on and the engine bay reassembled within 15 minutes, and of course the car works perfectly fine. :( :( :( :(

I guess I have to return this thing next week...

I think I'm going to pass the Kinetix and wait for SSR Engineering's plenum after hearing these air leak stories. By the way, what trim Z do you have now?

I am not trying to say that all Kinetix plenums do this...could just be mine. I'm sure when they iron out the bugs the product will be a lot nicer overall!

I think it should be clear that I am not trying to do any sort of harm to the business that Kinetix drums up, I am merely posting about my experience with this thing.

My new Z is an Enthusiast model, but it has a stereo and I ordered wheels/seats...so shortly it won't matter :)

That's reaaly odd about the plenum. Was it a version 2? I got
mine 2 weeks ago and it went in with no modification and no leaks. (also, no gasket maker either.)

How do you like the cat's?? Mine are still somewhere in shipping.

Did you check whether the middle support area was leaking?
No whistle? Usually with a leak there's a whistle.
Maybe Crawford's the way to go for you if you don't want to try another and don't care about the StB.

I think I'm going to pass the Kinetix and wait for SSR Engineering's plenum after hearing these air leak stories. By the way, what trim Z do you have now?

There is rumor of a JWT plenum on the way. I am waiting to see what that is all about.

My Kinetix plenum went on without a hitch. I spent 1.5 hours including time spent smoothing out the bumps inside. No leaks, no cracks, runs good.

Negatory. My plenum was one of the first shipped; I was on "the list" created by all_bark so I got my plenum about a week or so ahead of most people.

I am assuming that this issue was caused by the fact that my plenum was probably one of the first 5-10 to be made.

We'll see what happens, hopefully I'll get my money back or maybe get a new one.

syf0n, sorry to hear that your plenum didn't work. just curious, when you say you took off the stock plenum and "cleaned everything off," what does that mean? I, too, had one of the first 5 or so plenums and, except for my overzealous installation, it worked perfectly. I have since installed the V2, provided free to me by LSDUnique under the lifetime warranty, and nothing could be more perfect with the installation/performance.

I wiped down the plenum as it had some sort of oily film on it and generally made sure it was clean before I attempted to install it.

did you install the four other little hex screws (1/2" long) that go inside the plenum but attach to nothing? without them the car wont run!

the little black ones with round tops and hex things, I'm pretty sure we did. They had washers as well, right?

Maybe I'm thinking of the wrong thing...where do the ones you are talking about go?

Oh yeah! I did the same thing! They are the 4 little screws you may have "left over and you don't know why." ;) They go in the remaining holes left over from the stock plenum's center supports (that are not reused) inside the aftermarket plenum.

Yes of course...for some reaosn I thought you might have been talking about the hex screws for the throttle body mount.

I am going to give it another try next weekend I guess, I will video document the whole thing so when i run into the problem you guys can tell me what it is for sure.

WTF, I did not make this post... :icon8:

Odd...

Wait..so has there been any problems with V2 yet?

There is a thread around here, the guy said ( with pics ) that his V2 has cracked. It was not from one of the out bolts, but form one of the ones more on the top of the plemum.

Did it crack over time from wear? Or did he crack it from trying to tighten the bolt down too tightly. I know that version 2 was supposed to eliminate this problem, but I suppose you could still crack the plenum if you cranked on it hard enough...

There were some problems with mine but their production should be fixed for these issues now.

I have just ordered mine.
I will also be installing it on a totally stock car.
Anyone know a good place to get a dyno run in ATL so there will be docs showing what this thing does without other mods?