Great write up Peter!

Its a relief to see a few people documenting (incrementally) the gains made by their mods. Good work.

The vid of the sideways action is cool too.

BTW am I reading this correctly? You modified your silencer with a restrictor plate with a 1/2" diameter orifice? All your exhaust flow is going through a 1/2" orifice?

EDIT: You gotta dyno that too!

 

it's $595
http://www.alteredatmosphere.com/mm5...y_Code=350Z_EM

 

lol...I know it's small! I incrementally decreased the hole until the exhaust was quite enough for my neighbors. for me, it's the perfect balance - max power for AutoX, and quite enough for the street.

 

Reflash FTW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

just a quick update: The engine is still running great and is doing fairly well in my AutoX series (I'm in first place by a less then 2 pts)! I've had a handful of courses and other times where the extra few 100 rpms have come in very helpful...still very happy w/ AAM's flash!

 

Say I got one question, if you are wanting to use the UTEC on top of this reflash it can be done with no problems, but when the UTEC gives the control to the ecu in those regions, does the ECU use the reflash tune that is already there or not? If so, is there any way to flash out the old AAM flash in order to start fresh? My apologies if this has been brought up, but I been searching and not found an answer.

 

AAM can reflash the ECU back to OE...does that answer your Q?

 

be it UTEC or FCON or reflash.. the end result are all the same given then they are targetting at the same a/f and timing.

main disadvantage of reflash is that the tune is done by 'guessing' what you have. with enough number of data with different combo, this will be pretty close to the 'fine tuned' mapping but that all comes down to how accurate you want to be.

i personally prefer tune-able ecu's because i can play with it, and i can try stuff that i have in my mind instead of thinking 'what if it was this.. what if it was that' and etc. regarding fuel/timing

 

Thanks for the reply.

So the only way is to have it shipped back to the company that reflashed it so they can in turn put it back to stock and take out the FLASH.

 

YES - when they reflash the ECU, it's re-writing some of data on the ECU that is not going to change. You need their Hardware and Software to be able to re-program the ECU...this equipment and time to learn how to do tuning is where a lot of the cost comes from a re-flash.

There are other parts of the ECU that change and 'learn/adapt' to your driving style and car conditions...these variables can be wiped clean through doing an ECU reset (check TS website for instructions on how to do this....or just disconnect your battery for about 24 hrs.)

 

yeah - before I got married, I might have gone this route too...I like tinkering with stuff and changing things here and there... but I just don't have the time to tune everything myself, and there's a higher intial cost to get all the equipment to tune properly. (Utec, O2 reader, laptop[most ppl already have one], dyno time [reccurring cost],...)

AAM's flash got my AF ratio perfectly, raised my redline, and removed the top speed limiter...it's everything that I wanted and didn't take very long

 

One way to help this is to have your car dyno'd with A/F ratio and send that information to the place you have your flash done by. Being that the OP is on the West coast and AAM is on the East coast....it's kind of hard to have a custom dyno tune.

 

that is very true, reflash is a very quick way of doing it

 

Does anyone think that the ECU reflash with the AAM dynotune is worth the extra $385?

 

you dont have to do the reflash if ur gonna dyno tune, the end result will be the same.

 

there was thread awhile ago that talked about this...it's somewhat of a gamble weather the dynotune will yeild more power - IIRC, Mike at AAM said they usually get an extra 5 HP from a dyno tune flash compared to their normal flash.

*AAM's normal flash is done by looking at all your mods, and looking into their database of other Zs w/ similar mods. Since every car is slightly different even in OE trim, a custom tune always has room to improve power.

hope that clarifies and answers your Q.

 

the video of the dyno the car sounded bad ***. what exhaust are you running, on the cardoman site it says a single aam, but in the all the pics I see a double. Just want to create you setup because is sounds so good, thanks

 

thnx - it's AAM's single TI exhaust...I just haven't posted that many recent pics b/c the AutoX seaosn started and I've been busy. here's one of the more recent pics from AutoXing:

 

it does, thanks.