As with most projects and rebuilds, they all start in the same place, mine was no different. However, this isn’t truely the start of my forever ongoing Z project. I’ve owned this car (my second Z) since 2008 when I purchased it from a former member. For the first 5 or 6 years I did the usual mods with suspension parts and basic bolt ons. For reasons unknown, whilst running stock boost, piston 5 cracked a ring land during a track day at Castle Coombe. A forged build and a remap later all was well until a sunny October’s day 2013 at Bruntingthorpe killed that engine with what at the time was a suspected head gasket failure at 181mph..... And this is where I shall start my journal.

 

The Z was stored off the road from Oct 2013 until March 2015. I’d had a major knee operation at the beginning of 2015 which meant I was going to be off work for 6 months. I’d saved up enough to start thinking about a parts list to rebuild her and frankly, after a couple of months of staring at the same 4 walls, I was going stir crazy! I employed the help of a good friend and decided to pull the engine and see what was what.... just a head gasket my arse!

 

March 2015

Problem 1: It turns out stainless steel, exhaust wraps and condensation don’t mix well

 

Before I’d even got the engine out, a new set of downpipes was added to this list. These AMS items were only 2 years old, so I was far from impressed! I contacted the retailer and after a bit of tooing and froing I secured myself a set of replacements for free... how long they will last, only time will tell!

The engine was in a bit of a sorry state when she came out

 

The strip down began, and the true damage started to become apparent

 

One very warped Cometic head gasket didn’t bode well as the strip down continued...

 

Bore scoring and det damage to both cylinders 5 and 6 started to show the true story of the engine failure. Causes? Running lean and a tune that didn’t leave enough margin on the duty cycle of the injectors (calculations put Injector duty at WOT at 94%, way above the recommended 80% that is considered the limit of “safe”)

 

Further investigation found that 12 out of 24 valve guides were heavily scored, 16 valve stems had heat damage causing the hardened surface to flake off, an unexpected amount of wear on both main and big end bearings considering the engines milage. It became very apparent that this was not going to be a 10 minute job!

 

So more time spent saving and a real think about what I wanted from my Z, how I wanted it to perform both in the engine department and as a vehicle as a whole and how could I prevent this from happening again........ my wallet would never be the same again

First port of call was to see if the block was saveable. After a fair bit of research around machine shops I decided to pay Roland Alsop engineering in Chobham a visit. This is where lesson 1 became apparent, the are machine shops and then there are MACHINE shops.

 

These guys are seriously skilled, extremely knowledgeable and do work for a vast array of Time Attack, BTCC, classic racers. If you are on FB, look up their page (Roland Alsop SMG).

 

After inspecting all the relevant parts, a plan was formulated. The block would be deep cleaned, decked for straightness, rebored out to 88mm and plateau honed. The crank would be inspected for wear as would the journals in the block, and the whole rotating assembly (crank, rods, pistons, crank pulley, flywheel and clutch pressure plate) would be dynamically balanced using their Hines Dominator balancing machine. They would also set the ring gap on the pistons to best suit the demands I was going to place on the engine. As for the heads, again a deep clean and thorough inspection (this is where the valve damage was discovered) and the journals inspected.... I’ll get onto the heads a bit later.

 

Parts were dropped off a few days later so work could begin.

 

Knowing I had a few months to wait, I decided to pass the remainder of my time off giving the body of the car some TLC. I’d noticed some surface rust appearing where the old underseal had come away as well as some small bubbling at the back of both sills. In true Z fashion, hidden suprises made themselves known

 

 

So, some new sills were in order and suitably fitted by a fabricator friend of mine

 

After both sides were rebuilt, I takled the underside

Before

 

After stripped back to bare metal, zinc primed and resealed with Upol Gravitex underseal

Not long after, the parts fairy dropped some bits off

 

I’d bought a full rebuild gasket set, and went back to OEM head gaskets, a Stillen oil cooler, DBA5000 370Z spec front brake discs, Stillen lip, NISMO 740cc injectors, Weisco 88mm forged pistons, heavy duty Clutch fork, the latest version of the RPS Street MAX clutch, subframe locking collars, a Koyo rad to replace my blown AMS one and some TwinZ fog light ducts.

 

Why 370Z spec brake discs? Because I’d manage to source myself a set of Evo X brembos (front and rear) for £200. I’d decided that I wanted to use a brake disc that had the same offset as the Z32 so that the disc sat in the same place on the hub as it was designed to. I know i’d need custom brackets rather than some of the ones that are currently on the market for Evo x discs and Evo calipers.... more on those later

July 2015

 

Block was all finished and ready for me to assemble the bottom end

 

Bores shower now signs of any of the damage caused by the failure with a fantastic plateau honed finish. The advantages of plateau honing are improved bedding in for the rings enabling reduced blow-by for cleaner emissions, reduced oil consumption in a new engine and less ring and bore wear for improved engine longevity

 

 

The block was given a final preassembly clean down, getting into every single nook and granny to make sure there was no potential engine wrecking debris hiding away where the deep clean machine couldn’t reach (contents of the tray was the result of said clean) and wrapped up while I waited for the work on the rotating assembly to be finished

 

So, while I was waiting for the rotating assembly I decided to tackle some more bodywork related bits. As the sills had been stripped back of the stone guard during the repairs, I decided now was a good time to go for the smoother look and flatten back the stone guard effect on the back bumper. Out came the sander......

 

Also decided to fit up my Stillen front lip and TwinZ ducts

August 2015

 

Finally got my rotating assembly back and it was time to start building the bottom end up. It was evident how much metal had been taken out of the crank during the balancing process

 

As I had done with the block, I gave everything a thorough clean before assembly. That included a something i’d never have thought I’d have ended up doing.... drilling the crank!

Now obviously the crank has oil passage ways that feed the main and big end bearings. These passageways cross through the inside of the crank and each passage services a couple of big end journals and a main crank journal. However, one end of these is blocked off with a soft metal bung (a bit like a ball bearing) after the passageways are drilled during the manufacture process.

 

These dead ends are called sludge traps. They use the centrifugal forces of the crank spinning to trap any small oil debris or sludge and hold them away from the passageways and the oil important bearings. Over time they accumulate sludge and crap and all sorts of nasties that you don’t want fresh oil to loosen and work their way onto your shiney new bearings!

 

How do you get to them to properly clean out the crank. Well, there’s only one way. Drill out the soft metal seals. Nervous doesn’t cover it!

 

So I set to it and used a jig my step dad had to keep the drill straight whilst drilling and made a cradle to keep the crank in place while drilling. A couple of chugs on the vape machine to steady the hands and away I went

 

 

Was it worth it.... in my eyes yes. This was the debris out of one sludge trap. The best bit of advice I got from Mitch @ EP Racing was cleanliness is EVERYTHING. This sludge would have destroyed a set of bearings if it had worked itself loose.

 

So, onto sealing the hole back up. After speaking to Roland Alsops and Mitch @ EP Racing, I decided to cut a thread into the hole, clean the passageways again and the use a Allen head grub screw as a blanking plate to seal the hole. This would enable me, should the worst happen in the future, to easily access the sludge traps again and simply resell them with the same grub screw.

 

End result looked like this (disclaimer, this isn’t my pic, it’s a reference pic I used during the research and I can’t find my pic). This was a

Proud moment for me. I’m an amatuer at the end of the day, but I know if I was patient and methodical I could get the result I wanted.

 

After all traps were drilled, cleaned, threaded and plugged, the crank was ready to be installed with all new bearings.

The rest of the bottom end went together smoothly. Bearing tolerances were all at the loose end of the scale, but I was happy with that in order for the bearings to have a nice thick cushion of oil for when things get hot and heavy on track.

 

With putting all this work into my rebuild I started to think about how best to protect it from going pop again. Again, I sought advice from a couple of well regarded tuners and looked at the options available to me. I knew the stock ECU wasn’t capable of providing the engine protection that I wanted, after all, under its “watch” I’d detonated two engines.

 

Nistune was initially attractive but at the time of looking it used the same Knock detection range as the stock ECU (which is only capable of sensing knock up to circa 5500rpm) and being a daughter board, not capable of making use of additional sensors.

 

That left me looking at stand alone ECU’s. The three most common available as a “plug and play” option that I desired were AEM, Link and Haltech. I discounted the AEM as it was fairly old tech comparitve to the Link and Haltech And didn’t have the datalogging capacity of either of the others. I discounted the Link as to have full Knock monitoring capability you had to purchase the knock block kit, which to me seemed stupid that an expensive stand alone required extra kit to have full Knock control capability (I believe it’s now included in their g4+ ecu’s). This left me with the Haltech Platinum pro plug in ECU.

 

I decided that I wanted widebands to constantly monitor the fuelling, so I bought the wideband controller Unit add on which used digital wideband sensors via a CANBUS connection. I wanted to go to a MAP setup as my previous setup was close to the limit of the MAF, which meant an additional air temp sensor. Further more, I wanted to be able to monitor fuel pressure to ensure all bases were covered when it came to the fuelling system (as the Haltech is able to read the existing fuel temp sensor, it enables effectively a 3D map for fuelling that covers fuel pressure, temperature and demand). Throw in a 3 Bar boost solenoid and the management side of things was complete.

Edited December 20, 20177 yr by nickz32

September 2015

 

After discovering the damage to the valves and guides the rest of the valvetrain was inspected. This is where we discovered the valve springs themselves were out of spec. Another unexpected expense.

 

So after some great advice from Greg Dupree I decided on a set of SuperTech 0.5mm oversized valves to best match the 88mm piston bore. These would be matched to SuperTech dual coil valve springs and Titanium retainers for a full SuperTech valvetrain.

 

I bought a set of Ferrea phosphor bronze guides to replace the damaged guides (which oddly were only on the intake side). I was advised that it would be best for longevity to keep the cast factory guides on the exhaust side of the head as they are much more resistant to heat than the phosphor bronze items. So the exhaust side guides were rehoned to spec and the new guides fitted on the intake side.

 

The valve seats weren’t in bad condition, but I was starting to find myself aiming towards an “optimised” ethos for the engine. I didn’t want to push more power out of the engine, but I wanted to optimise what hardware I already had. This lead to me to looking at head work. Jimmer had already done some head work on my 48p heads during the previous build, but thought now was a good time to look at valve seat cuts and valve throat work. Roland Alsop introduced me to their Newen Contour CNC valve seat machine. Best way I can describe it is that it’s a step above a 5 angle seat cut. With some clever maths from the guys at Roland Alsop based on their experience the valve throat and valve seat with contoured to maximise flow without hindering air velocity. These throat and valve cuts generally give a 12HP increase on 1200cc Harley V-Twins, so I’m sure it would have a positive influence on my engine.

 

The heads were skimmed and re assembled with the correct valve spring heights set and they were ready to rock

 

Bish bash bosh and the long block was assembled

A bit of a photo dump from the rest of the rebuild. Nothing particular of note Bar how much I enjoyed doing it

 

 

(Please excuse the photo rotation, for some reason when I attach them thy rotate, not overly sure how to solve it)

Edited December 27, 20177 yr by nickz32

October 2015

 

She fired up on the button on Haltech base map and everything appeared hunky dory. Off to Rabbid Tuning in Basingstoke (my local Haltech distributor and tuner)

 

Basic health checks were completed to make sure everything was all good and problem number one appeared. The base ignition timing was wandering by up to 5 degrees, which in turn was causing a fuelling imbalance between the two banks. After checking the cas, timing markings and verified what the Haltech was seeing with a timing light my attention was drawn to the timing belt, which appeared a little slack. The timing belt was a brand new OE item and the tensioner only had 3000 miles or so on it. Having looked at the tensioner

 

I reset the belt tension as per the manual and span her over and noticed that the tensioner was struggling to maintain belt tension.

 

After a loooong conversation with Mitch at EPR, we concluded that the most likely cause was down to the new valve spring setup was putting extra strain on the tensioner when the cam was compressing the valve springs. This was pulling the tensioner piston into the tensioner. When the cam released the compression on the spring, the tensioner couldn’t react quick enough to take the tension back up on the timing belt, which in turn was causing the timing to drift on the CAS.

 

An EPR Racing manual tensioner and a Power Enterprises Kevlar timing belt later, rock solid base timing

 

And there I was hoping that this would be the end of the issues..... I was in for a rude awakening and a reminder of my amatuer status

Edited December 27, 20177 yr by nickz32

January 2016

 

Before putting her on the dyno for its tuning session I decided to look at removing another bottle neck in the system, being my Z1 SMIC’s.

 

I was aware that some 2.5in inlet/outlet intercoolers had come onto the market, but I’d decided that I wanted the new ducts in the front bumper to be used to cool the brakes, so having taller intercoolers wasn’t possible. Instead I decided to convert my current SMIC’s to 2.5 inlet/outlet and use front and rear ducting on the intercoolers to help guide the air in, through and out of the intercoolers as efficiently as possible.

 

So off to the fabricators again

 

OE ducts were refitted to the front of the intercoolers (with a bit of trimming required) and ponderings around how to help the air out of the back of them. Obviously the washer bottle/Carbon Canister/Screen was bottle make like very difficult. The current thinking is guiding the air into the undertrays so that the passing air under the car draws the air coming through the coolers out and under the car. As it currently stands, I’m still at the pondering stage of this development

Feb 2016

 

Finally, she was all set for the dyno and set to make some power. A couple of preliminary runs showed everything to be in fine fettle, Bar the annoyance of a VTC rattle appearing when cold..... or so I thought.

 

One bright winters morning I turn up to the dyno keen and ready to learn more about the processes of mapping a car. I did a few pre fire up checks on the fluids and tyre pressures and fired her up to start getting a bit of temperature in the engine. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary, including an annoying cold start VTC rattle, so I wandered to the kettle to make a brew. Within a minute or two there was a very audible rattle, a loud clunk and the car running like a bag of turd. I ran back into the dyno cell to turn off the engine and then sat down in complete disbelief. As far as I was concerned something had gone wrong and the engine had disintegrated. The sound I heard was incredibly similar to the sound one of my old 205 GTI’s made when it launched a piston through the bonnet many year ago.

 

I had a look around the engine, temps were normal on my Defi gauges, no fluid coming from under the car. What the hell was it. So I sat and sparked up a cig for the first time since my knee op 13 months back.... and another..... and another. The company boss/mate of mine James turned up and said I was white as a sheet. Utterly utterly gutted.

 

So after more nicotine and caffeine, we rolled her off the dyno and into a spare space in the workshop and I was convinced to investigate what had happened rather than my suggestion of burning the bloody thing.

 

So, I popped out the spark plugs expecting to find mangled metal..... nope

 

Off came the timing covers....... ah ha. The intake cam on the 1/3/5 bank had skipped over 90 degrees out of position. Bugger.

 

So, out came the engine AGAIN to see what the damage was.

 

 

Onto and engine stand and I start stripping back the front of the engine. Off with the offending intake cam pulley and I find

 

The back of the intake pulley was gouged to hell, but where the hell had they come from???? Well, the backing plate that sits behind the cam pulleys. It transpires that the only two bolts I hadn’t loctited (and more than likely double checked tightness after loctiting) were these two bolts. They had vibrated loose and jammed the pulley soild. I had a look at the belt, not a single tooth missing (bloody strong those things) but the tensioner has been pulled out position on its mounting tabs. At this point I was completely convinced I’d find at the very least a mangled set of new valves and a head.

 

I stripped off the remaining parts I needed to check the valvetrain. Every single valve was as straight as a arrow on initial inspection. But I wasn’t willing to take any risks. So off came the head. Piston crown was damage free and there was nothing visible on the valves. Popped out the valves and checked them for straightness, all good, as were the valve seats.

 

Utterly gobsmacked. Somehow I’ve got away with it. The only theory we came up with was the cam stuck itself at a point where valves opened at a different stage of the stroke where the piston wasn’t at TDC and the exhaust valves were clear from interference. The odds were astronomically high for this to happen, but there simply wasn’t any damage to be seen. One lucky Mo Fo! Head went back to the machine shop to check for straightness as surface quality and a new head gasket and another Kevlar belt was ordered.

 

However, it was obvious I needed to replace the intake pulley, so I purchased a set of BDE adjustable intake pulleys, which have stronger internal springs designed to cope with heavy duty valve springs.

 

Put her back together triple checking EVERYTHING, fired her up and she ran like a dream. Phew! Lucky boy!!

Edited December 27, 20177 yr by nickz32

March 2016

 

 

The mapping process had finally properly got under way. Fuelling cells were being written through the load and rev range and an actuator boost map of 9psi was showing promising signs of 430hp and just over 400 lbs ft of torque. However there was the merest hint of a fuel pressure problem. It appeared that the fuel pressure reg wasn’t matching the fuel pressure to the manifold pressure. The data logs confirmed this.

 

Investigations started at the pump, a new AEM 320LPH item. I removed the feed line from the tank lid, gave the pump 12v bolts and measured the amount of fuel it pumped over 1 minute. Multiplied this by 60 to give me how many Liters per Hour, bang on the money of 320LPH. So it wasn’t a supply issue.

 

Air Fuel Ratios were bang on, so the injectors weren’t dumping fuel, but I checked their resistance just in case. Well within spec.

 

Next port of call was the fuel filter. It was only 3000 miles old and I knew that the tank wasn’t full of debris as I had filtered what came out of it during its removal when I had completed the underbody work. But, it’s a cheap enough part, so a new one went in. The problem remained.

 

Next on the list was the fuel pump controller as these have a reputation for failing. Having read Nick Letsom’s blog on the CZP site around the current draw issues he was having with his Walbro, I decided to go along the same route. A more suitable gauge wire was selected (I can’t remember what gauge, sorry) and an independant loom and relay fed the pump directly. I’d noticed the electrical contact points on the tank lid were a little one the crusty side, so I decide to bypass them completely with an ATL CLUBMAN electrical bulkhead connector, which was designed for that exact purpose

 

A bit more dyno time with the boost turned up some more and the problem became more apparent, to the point that after a couple of back to back runs, fuel temp had noticeably risen and pressure had dropped down to 2bar. Thank goodness for the engine protection systems on the Haltech keeping constant overwatch and triggering “safe mode”!

 

Here’s a screengrab of the data log that showed what was happening. The red line is Manifold pressure, blue line is Fuel pressure and the peachy colour line is the Injector differential (this is meant to stay steady at 3bar pressure at all times). So as manifold pressure goes up (boost) fuel pressure should match it exactly, while on this run fuel pressure was up to 8psi down from where it should be.

 

So the next port of call was the pressure regulator itself. The car had been running a Tomei Type S fuel pressure regulator. A reputable brand and a genuine part, hence why it ended up being one of the last thing we checked. I swapped it for a SARD RJ that the tuner had floating around. Once fitted all appeared to be ok.

 

Back onto the rollers and good progress was being made. At around the 1.3 Bar of boost level the mapper told me that he’d hit a bit of a wall and it felt like something was holding the car back. The car had developed what can only be described as a goose honk type rattle noise towards the rear of the car. Off the dyno AGAIN and on to a ramp to investigate. A bit of prodding and poking later and the source of the noise was found to be one of the silencers in my Kakimoto H pipe, a part that has been on the car since it was imported. It was swiftly removed and TWO issues were discovered.

 

1) the baffle had collapsed in one of the two silencers, the source of the rattle

2) while the pipes going in and out of the silencers were 3in bore (as per the rest of my system) the internal diameter of the pipe going through the resonator was only 2inches. No wonder the bloody thing couldn’t breathe!

 

Out they came and were replaced with 3in ID silencers and back on the dyno she went.

 

More progress. Now up to 1.6 bar of Boost (pretty much the max you can get out of GT525 .55A/R turbos) and 556hp at 6800rpm and 589lbs ft at 3850rpm (and never dropping below 500 lbs ft all the way to the red line) while still on the Haltech base ignition map and no VTC activated. Things were starting to look seriously promising. And yet, annoyingly, fuel pressure issues kept reappearing especially at fuel levels of less than a third of a tank of fuel.

 

Which lead to this thread I posted https://www.300zx.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?184804-Stock-fuel-system-limitations-at-high-HP

 

After a lot of time in the dyno, it was time take the car to my newly acquired workshop to tackle the fuelling system.

Edited December 22, 20177 yr by nickz32
Data logging added

This is where my “optimised” ethos progressed into more of a “optimised to 80%”.

 

I no longer wanted to push every component to what it was capable of, I wanted components to be able to be capable of much more than I planned on throwing it them, which in turn left plenty of margin should something unexpected happen.

 

At the same time I also wanted to see and show what a small turbod VG30 (GT525 .54A/R are only a smidge bigger than Sport 500’s afaik) could potentially do. I wasn’t dead set on a peak power number (although I’m hoping for close to the 550rwhp mark) but I knew I wanted it to deliver power in the same way it did when bone stock, quick spool with loads of low and mid range grunt with a nice rush towards the redline at the top end....... just with more! I’m going to have to think of a new ethos name as “optimised to 80%” sounds a bit gash!

 

Suggestions are welcomed!

 

Even thought there were still issues to be solved, I was pleased with how it had performed so far. The previous setup made 570hp and 480lbs ft (6850rpm power and 5800 for torque), so my eyes in terms of how I wanted it to deliver its power it smashed the old setup. To gain OVER 100ftlbs (with more to come) at such low RPM and for it to consistently out torque the old setup through the Rev range with just 0.5mm bigger pistons, 0.5mm bigger valves and some clever machining of the heads and block I have taken as a significant personal accomplishment knowing that I built it.

 

Oh, and I know this is a journal and all. But everyone, please feel free to comment or ask questions or critique anything I write.

Oh, and I know this is a journal and all. But everyone, please feel free to comment or ask questions or critique anything I write.

 

About bloody time too :lol:

 

Great write up Nick, with plenty of highs and lows on your journey thus far. Looking forward to seeing the next chapter unfold. :thumbup1:

About bloody time too :lol:

 

Great write up Nick, with plenty of highs and lows on your journey thus far. Looking forward to seeing the next chapter unfold. :thumbup1:

 

Agreed and having been in your monster BHP of a car I am looking forward to having a ride in Nick's (assuming I'm offered the opportunity!).

Agreed and having been in your monster BHP of a car I am looking forward to having a ride in Nick's (assuming I'm offered the opportunity!).

 

having never been in any monster bhp zed other than Waz's ~450, i am worried about what it might do to my wallet if i did... :lol:

but am hoping to get offered the chance at one of our 2018 meets :)

 

am loving this thread though, clearly explaining the reasoning and thought process behind some of the decisions, and also sharing the outcome of expert advice.

 

fortified performance tuning

April 2016

 

I finally get settled in the new workshop/man cave/place of much cursing. To finally have somewhere I could work on my car in the dry all year round was sooooooooo nice!

 

 

An all too familiar sight now. But needs must! I’d decided on how I was going to modify the fuel delivery system to A) be capable of delivering more fuel than I was capable of requiring and B) to minimise pressure drop from tank to regulator. One crude drawing later...

 

I’d decided that I wanted to run the stock rails in parallel to reduce pressure drop across the rail. I’d adapt the rails to accept AN fittings, aswell as adapting the tank lid to facilitate both feed and return in the size I had chosen. I bought some weld on stainless steel bosses and set to removing the old fuel lines

 

The bosses were welded to the tank lid and rails, with the rails pressure tested up to 6 Bar for leaks

 

All my fittings and hoses turned up a short time after. I decided to route the feed and return hoses along the same path as the OE lines took using P clips and rivnuts to secure it to the floor of the car.

 

I’d placed an inline 30micron fuel filter in line and under the car, which freed up space for the pressure regulator to live. The basics layout looked something like this

 

I wanted to keep the engine relatively stock looking and didn’t want pipes all over the place. So with a bit more work it ended up looking like this

 

After a few teething issues that just required a couple of fittings reseating onto the fuel lines, the new fuel setup was complete. The lines themselves would be able to flow enough fuel for 1000hp with the right supporting bits like pumps, swirl pots etc and injectors.

 

But as can happen, funds had been spent and I needed to save back up. So in the mean time I set about sourcing a CNC machinist to fabricate the brackets for my brake conversion.

 

Oh, and for those wondering, the cam covers are remaining off for the time being. When it comes to the final tune I want to explore what gains can be had adjusting the valve overlap while retaining the stock cams. When the final tune is completed, I’ll look at putting some back on

Agreed and having been in your monster BHP of a car I am looking forward to having a ride in Nick's (assuming I'm offered the opportunity!).

 

having never been in any monster bhp zed other than Waz's ~450, i am worried about what it might do to my wallet if i did... :lol:

but am hoping to get offered the chance at one of our 2018 meets :)

 

am loving this thread though, clearly explaining the reasoning and thought process behind some of the decisions, and also sharing the outcome of expert advice.

 

fortified performance tuning

 

As and when our paths cross again, more than happy for you to come for a ride

 

And thanks all for the kind remarks

I wanted to keep the engine relatively stock looking and didn’t want pipes all over the place. So with a bit more work it ended up looking like this

[ATTACH=CONFIG]109964[/ATTACH]

 

Very neatly done Nick - great attention to detail. Are you going to do anything about the single MAF setup?

The MAF is actually redundant now (I sold it not long after I took these pics) as I’m using the MAP and Air temp sensors for air metering. I managed to find a chap in the Czech Republic who makes Z32 MAF adapter brackets, so I could bolt my air filter to the bracket and then clamp the T pipe around the collar of the bracket (you can kind of see in this pic)

 

I’m planning on doing a bit of testing when it comes to the final tune to see what exact gains are had by going from my T setup (sans MAF) And a dual intake. I know everyone says it’s a restriction, but I’m yet to see any back to back comparisons without additional mods being included in the testing. Whichever comes out as best performing I’ll stick with

Although the link below and discussion is for a Selin setup it does cover removing the T piece and why it makes a big difference.

 

"The reason dual pops work is that stock, the 2 sides are fighting for air in the tee, both sides are pulling from the same center

section causing the turbos to work much harder to suck air." Greg@SZ.

 

This seems to be the key and you can see the sort of gains that are being reported on dynos with the Selin setup.

 

http://www.twinturbo.net/net/viewmsg.aspx?forum=general&msg_id=2416119