So this Polish guy walks into an autoparts store, and asks for a vette throttle body for his Nissan 350Z.................................

Or,

How many Pollocks does it take to install a GM throttle body on a 350Z.............

Make your own jokes here.

 

I just got the last bit of my welding material and tools yesterday. TIG torch, adapter to connect to welder, tungsten, aluminum stick, amptrol pedal, collets, back caps and a tank of Argon. Tomorrow I am going to start practicing on some scrap I have laying around. I've always wanted to learn how to TIG and I am finally getting the chance. Really looking forward to it. Hopefully after hours of practice I can start cutting up the plenum and piping and get things going. Who knows. All depends on how well I pick this up or not.

 

Practice rolling a rod down all day today, it is seriously the hardest part. Actuating the pedal and aiming the torch are t so bad but also telling you hard to roll the rod down instead of just pushing it in sucks

 

So I spent almost all day yesterday practicing TIG welding different thicknesses of aluminum. This is really the first time I've welded ever. It was very intimidating at first, but I was able to get a decent handle on it after a few hours. Once we got the amperage figured out it started to become a bit easier. It is a lot of multitasking at once. Kind of like driving a stick shift car. I'm sure the more I do it, the more comfortable I'll be become much like driving a stick shift. I'll be honest, I thought it was going to be easier. I am confident enough at where I am at with it though, that I can start on my intake the next time around. I will probably pick a day within the next couple weeks and try to get it done. Really looking forward to it. It is going to be challenging, but worth it. And I learned something I've always wanted to learn.

Ordered some solid motor mounts from Z1 too yesterday.

 

Did you get the height adjustable or non-adjustable?

 

I got the solid ones.

https://www.z1motorsports.com/350_g3...oducts_id=7185

 

Cool. Please report back with your review on the NVH.

 

Will do. It will be awhile before those go on. Probably spring time. I am interested to see how much NVH there will be as well. I have a stiffer mount on the trans now. It's like the middle grade stiffness out of the ones you can get. It added a decent amount of NVH, but its tolerable. Not that I really care. It's a race car. I did allow the transmission to stop flexing so much on corner exit which sometimes resulted in me missing shifts. Haven't missed one since I putt he stiffer mount in.

 

^ Yep, I have a poly trans mount as well and completely agree with you. I've gotten used to the extra NVH but I actually prefer it this way given the benefits. The poly engine mounts (only Megan makes them, I think) are too expensive and I was worried I might not like the solid mounts which is why I stayed with the OEM.

 

Well, I had my first stab at it. Its not done, but made some progress. It looks terrible, but it will do what its supposed to when done. When I was practicing TIG welding it was a lot easier I felt. You can see in the second pic, the welds on the left were the last ones I did before I started on intake and they are not too terribly bad.

I had a lot of issues welding on the intake itself. I don't know if its because its cast aluminum or what...The pitted spots you see on the pipe is when I ran out of gas...LOL I didn't know what was happening. First time newb problems.

Anyway, I ran out of gas and there isn't a place to get more on the weekend.

I'll grab another tank tomorrow and get cracking at it again.

 

Sorry forgot to attach pics.

 

Yeah cast aluminum is much harder to weld than extruded or billet. It tends to pop and splatter for no reason, it requires a decent welder and lots of actual experience to get consistent pretty welding on cast. I've welded some elbows to turbo outlets and it wasn't pretty the first couple times.

Although, no tig comes out nice if you are running out of gas

 

the nice thing about working with metal, you can always add metal and take metal away. sand the welds down and polish it up it will look awesome

 

Yea I def plan on cleaning this thing up when its all done.

 

Glad I came across this thread - Just read through the entire thing, and now I really want to take a stab at it. A good friend of mine owns an engineering shop with his brother. They do mostly JZ-swaps into anything and everything. But they both do incredibly amazing fab work and their welds are spectacular. I have a spare upper plenum in my parents basement, and I'm tempted to go take it over there to see what he can do.

Then I would just need the 87mm TB and have him fab up some custom intake piping. Hmmmm....

Fixxer, everything you've done and been through so far is awesome. Can't wait to see where this goes.

By the way I'm no n00bie to the IM world on these cars. I took about a year to port and polish/flash the inside of a non-revup lower plenum, along with upper plenum and lower runners, mated with CZP 1/2" spacer on my 06 revup. Basically, the entire inside of the plenum looks just as shiny as the outside, and all runners are port matched, all casting marks removed. Would be cool to match a custom upper plenum with bigger TB and intake piping to the whole lower intake set-up...

 

Fixx & MW - thanks for a great thread - officially subscribed!

Have you looked at your coolant temp correction and/or your post-start enrichment? I'm a haltech puke so I'm not sure how uprev handles these? I would imagine if you studied how the car was acting at those lower temperature and/or how long your long youre artificially enriching your intake you may be able to work those kinks out.

congrats on the welding too - somewhat similar story in picking up welder simply wanting to learn...I'm getting better every time! Havent attempted aluminum yet but my buddy that does my aluminum says the OEM castings are poor quality compared to various AN fittings he's welded for me.

Have you read maximum boost? He covers a few good concepts on intake manifold design.

 

I have not read that before.

As far as my coolant temps....I have been thinking about this recently actually. I believe there is a table that controls what idle is set to based on a given range of coolant temp. Perhaps the throttle blade is not opening enough at ambient temp coolant for whatever reason.

I will get to play with it more soon once the plenum is done.

 

awesome job

 

Im far from an expert and someone please correct me if (when) I'm wrong but the haltech will increase fuel by a user-defined percentage based on load and the coolant temp sensor.

the post-enrichment is very similar the haltech will add more fuel for a given amount of time and a coolant temp range which will stabilize the idle in the first minute or so after starting the car.

I have these tables both in my fuel and my ignition tables...not sure how yours is setup but if you can monitor your AFRs and they are in check you may want to explore (or have someone review) your ignition tables - whatever you do, don't blow your engine up!!

 

Great work!
Hope to see new updates soon!