The time is nearly upon me to get the engine tuned correctly. But it has to be by someone who is not going to blow up the engine again on the rollers. I seem to have limited choices if I want someone with access to a rolling road and dyno capable of over 400bhp. And also someone with a really good knowledge of modified 300zxTT's.

 

It seems to be SE Nissan or no one but they don't have their own rolling road and refer you to the guy who they use in Colchester ... no I normally like referrals but I had that problem recently, hence a blown engine. Called Abbey Motorsport but although they are very nice they don't have a lot of experience on 300s and no rolling road. So who else is there that can do a proper job of tuning it from experience rather than guesswork?

 

------------------

"Before it blew up"

"Dirty at 156mph!"

---------------

Z first and anything else is secondary and live life a quarter mile at a time!

John Newcomb (NukeEm)

www.geocities.com/jn300zxtt

Why don't you try that Belguim place Leigh was going on about.

http://www.power-plus.be/

 

They seem to know their shit

Depends how far you want to travel

 

Near Oxford there is a guy called Mark at a company called Owen developments on 01865 821062. Not cheap but the only guy I would completly trust. Every time I go there there is at least one Z being worked upon. He does a lot of work for Williams so can't be bad

Go belgium to tune a car? Seems a little far me thinks. Even though they do sound pukka

 

They said to me that it would cost about £450 and would increase the power safely by 2000g :S?

 

Stuart

try options motorsport just outside of silverstone......he's a god

john,

try Falcon Engineering (Middlesbrough). These guys are seriously good and have plenty of zed experience, i wouldnt trust anyone else. 01642 469732 and ask for steve crawford and say steve compton put you onto him.

These guys currently have an 80,000 quid AC cobra (original) sent to them to do work from dorset....speaks for itself really.

 

cheers

 

STEVE

Tooley as your suggestion is closest to me, who do you deal with there and have you got a contact number?

Thanks

JN

Hi John,

In the absence of Tooley-burnout-king these should be the details below mate:

 

Option Motorsport

Unit 3, West End Farm

Silverstone, Towcester

Norththants. NN12 8UY

Tel: 01327 858555

Fax: 01327 858533

 

Kiki is the guy to speak to if I remember right.

Cheers,

 

------------------

Trev

1990 300ZX TT 2+2(import)

http://www.300zx.co.uk/rides/trey/

Thanks guys. Have spoken to each of them and all seem very competent. Wish some of them were in the Midlands, I am a little concerned about a 3 hour drive that may end up with my car limping home like last time it was on a roling road to be tuned. Looking forward to illing to hear what level of modifications people have had done and their expereinces with tuners before I make a decision on who to go to.

 

------------------

"Before it blew up"

"Dirty at 156mph!"

---------------

Z first and anything else is secondary and live life a quarter mile at a time!

John Newcomb (NukeEm)

www.geocities.com/jn300zxtt

FALCON IN MIDDLESBROUGH ARE TOP NOTCH M8.

but i dont no if they can do the rolling road,not sure but worth a try.01642 469732

hi fella,

try john nobles at chesterfield,

does a cracking job and doesn't upset you with the bill

---hth---

--neil--

p.s tel 01246 272749

"options motorsport" is probably okay, they were almost my first choice for "non-private work" upgrades. Although they don't specialise in the 300... ie. they say it's mandatory to replace the fuel pump in a 300 for upgrades, which is rubbish.

 

 

Jes I got similar comments from them too. I was concerned that they wanted to build a 600bhp monster and not just tune it to make what I've done so far work in harmony. Comments like the std fuel pump isnt good enough, you have to lower the compression with metal head gaskets to 8.2, the engine is able to handle more the 0.9bar boost without these doing. Must be scared of it or something.

Maybe they just like to do a thorough job, and make sure nothing goes wrong? just a thought, not being antagonistic.

regards

Point taken but having just spent on a new engine, turbos, etc, I don't really want to be told the only thing to do is to do all this extra stuff or not bother as the engine isn't upto it. I expect them to be able to tune what I have already so that it all works at its best and in addition to advise me on other work either necessary or possible to improve on it some more. On an import 300 once you start working on the engine internals it becomes almost uninsurable for day to day driving.

 

------------------

"Before it blew up"

"Dirty at 156mph!"

---------------

Z first and anything else is secondary and live life a quarter mile at a time!

John Newcomb (NukeEm)

www.geocities.com/jn300zxtt

John,

I guess this runs into what you actually want to achieve by 'tuning'. You have a standard engine with a pile of bolt-on bits and you want to know whether they are going to work in combination. In my view there are two key areas to be addressed; Firstly, have all the parts been assembled correctly and secondly, do they all work together as intended? The first one should be reasonably straight forward and any competent engine builder who can follow instructions and understand tolerances etc should be able to achieve this. Take it to a real expect, pay a load more and get it blueprinted at the same time and you should end up with a very reliable engine (mechanically).

 

The more difficult part is getting everything to work together and to an extent this is limited by the ECU mappings you have. Sure it's one of the best (JWT I think?) and the maps are fairly broad, but if any of the mods you have push to the edge of the maps then compromises are made, performance and possibly safety/reliability will be affected. This may be where you ran into problems before - knock sensors only work with certain ranges etc. So what you really need is engineers who can not only understand the interactions of different components of the engine, but potentially modify the ECU maps to ensure that it is working within it's own boundaries. Some of this can be achieved by external systems, like gadgets that alter air/fuel ratios, sophisticated boost controllers etc, but there are usually still dependencies on the base ECU function. Having a dyno is a massive advantage in doing some of this stuff as it enables the engineer to accurately and repeatedly measure the differences between changes, but it still takes a few followup drives on the road to ensure that it 'feels' right as well as looks right on the dyno screen.

 

As you are discovering, there are probably not many of these specialists around in the UK and even fewer who specialise in the 300 market. My recomendation would be get to talk to the engineer who does the work, rather than the person who answers the phone.

 

Thanks AndyP that was what I was thinking. I am down to a couple of choices and will be speaking at Billing with the people who suggested them to me. I think that if I could go back in time 18 months I would not have imported all that I have but would have gone to one UK company and had all the work done there from scratch. Hindsight is a wonderful thing though! I just want peace of mind now rather than chasing massive bhp.

 

 

------------------

"Before it blew up"

"Dirty at 156mph!"

---------------

Z first and anything else is secondary and live life a quarter mile at a time!

John Newcomb (NukeEm)

www.geocities.com/jn300zxtt