My Motorsports adventure....

[GrindCustoms]

Good morning y'all!

Some of you guys seemed to have a bit of interest in what i'm working on in the engine/performance departement...

I'm a petrol head since... ...forever! So it felt natural to me to use my creativity/pseudo-engineering abilities for stuff in that domain.

What i'm currently working on is a new Intake Manifold setup for the Nissan VQ35HR & VQ37VHR engines, those engines can be found in Nissan 350Z - 370Z and Infiniti G35 - G37. These engines due to the way that their cylinder head are designed with variable intake camshaft lift and duration are very receptive to "breather mods" when in a Normally Aspirated (non turbo or supercharged) and LOTS of power gains can be found... ...they are there, just hiding... 
The gains are not like what you'd find on let say.... a Honda Civic after installing a Cold Air Intake... and it just becomes a raspy annoying thing...

Allright, meat and potatoes now! My first project is a conversion to use 75mm Throttle Bodies instead of the stock 60mm TBs. To acheive that, an adapter plate was required to accomodate the different "bolt pattern" of the larger TBs and also try to limit the "bottle neck" effect in air flow because of the limitations/tolerances that have to be dealt with the stock intake manifold...

The stock opening on the intake manifold is 61mm, i was able to bore that up to 67mm without compromising the structural integrity of the manifold. With that in mind, to minimize the bottle neck effect mentionned earlier, when having a reducer you don't want it to be a "generic taper" as the more you "vaccum" air in the manifold it becomes counter productive. You instead want a "volute" shape, also known as a Velocity Stack in the petrol head slang.

Here's the final version of the adapter plate that i designed, it took me 3 prototype to end with this one and couple Dyno runs to test the setup, this was made with a buddy that lives in Montreal and have a tuning shop, so i did'nt have to take an 8 hour trip to test out everytime.







In order to get these properly installed and optimise the setup, some work had to be done to the manifold so it accept the adapter, machining, porting and polishing is made in the first stage, as you can see here (stock on the left, modded on the right):



As i'm typing this, i'm now at the second stage of porting, the idea is to have a "seemless" joint between the adapter plate and manifold, as you can see in the picture, there's around 1mm of material remaining in the inner diameter, this have to be sanded and polished.



After this step, the adapter will be "molded in" the manifold and will be ready to receive it's new Throttle Bodies, here's a picture to show you the physical difference in size, there's 2 of these per manifold. (left stock, right 75mm)



The gains we produced using this setup have blown are mind, it's very rare that a "bolt on" solution will yeld that much increase in "wheel horse power"... the vehicule we used for our testing is a 2012 Infiniti G37Xs (AWD) Sedan with an automatic transmission, our baseline Dyno results, with stock intake manifold, throttle bodies and air intake was 256whp (keep in mind that AT transmission makes lots of parasitic loss and that the car is AWD and the fuse was pulled so it be RWD for the Dyno, hence even more power loss in the drivetrain as the transfer case robs some). Our end result with the new setup and 3" Cold Air Intake Setup (pictured below) was 307whp, that's a 51whp increase with a simple bolt on solution... ...and that was my motivation to push forward this DIY project of mine that i'm now working on getting a Patent and offer the setup in a commercial manner.





If this interest some of you guys, i'll post updates about it in this thread so you can see the results and build of this final version.

Cheers!

Rej

[alanp]

Impressive hope you make a few pennies off it!

[GrindCustoms]

Impressive hope you make a few pennies off it!

Thanks Alan!

Don't know if i'll make real money out of that but simply achieving new things is a reward by itself.

[imjonwain]

I used to be into cars quite a bit (80's Rx7s) but mostly tinker on motorcycles in my spare time now (parts are so expensive ).  That's an insane HP gain for an NA bolt part/setup, I think that'll sell really well.  Does it sacrifice torque at all?  You need to an ECU/dynotune obviously right?  Are you doing it custom tune only or gonna do a loadable generic map for people? Are the bigger throttle bodies OEM for a different model?  I guess that's a lot of questions haha just curious

[GrindCustoms]

I used to be into cars quite a bit (80's Rx7s) but mostly tinker on motorcycles in my spare time now (parts are so expensive ).  That's an insane HP gain for an NA bolt part/setup, I think that'll sell really well.  Does it sacrifice torque at all?  You need to an ECU/dynotune obviously right?  Are you doing it custom tune only or gonna do a loadable generic map for people? Are the bigger throttle bodies OEM for a different model?  I guess that's a lot of questions haha just curious

Rotaries, you're a masochist! 

The prototype setup was'nt sacrifiying torque at all, in fact it increased it and brought it's peak torque 600RPM earlier and maintains it until the redline (7600RPM).
It asks for a complete new tune, with Nissan we use Osiris Uprev for the engine management, pretty neat and efficient software. The bigger TBs ask for a complete "re-scaling" of the MAF, even greater with the use of the 3"CAI. So yeah, Dyno tune is mandatory.
Those TBs comes from Nissan Maxima 3.5l wich uses a single of these. The stock setup uses "mirror" TBs wich means that one is wired NPN and the other PNP, so i had to get into the electrical aspect of the car aswell, to find the correct pinout so the TPS (Throttle Position Sensor) works properly, wich was probably the greatest challenge in this, since the improved setup uses two NPN throttle bodies.

There's another company in the market that offers a 70mm conversion kit, but they don't push the concept as far as i'm doing here. It's an adapter plate aswell but it keeps the stock intake manifold bore, my modification is a bit more intense but it also yells greater gains...

[gordo]

I really don't know how anybody figures this stuff out.  I know just enough about cars to know not to fiddle with them.  This is a fascinating thread though.  One of the girls I work with wrenches her own Subaru.

[blearyeyes]

That is awesome Rej! 

[GrindCustoms]

I really don't know how anybody figures this stuff out.  I know just enough about cars to know not to fiddle with them.  This is a fascinating thread though.  One of the girls I work with wrenches her own Subaru.

No joke, i think that it's within the Subbie owners that you have the greatest amount of women who are mechanic enthusiast... ...wich is good, because they'll need it! lol (intended pun)

[GrindCustoms]

And here's another progress pic, been working on this for most of the weekend... have 5 complete units to prepare.

This is what it looks like when the "match porting" is done, so the transition between adapter plate and intake manifold is done.



Now what is left to do is to "mold-in" the adapter, wich i do by using a very active chemical that brings the high carbon content plastic of the intake manifold close to it's fusion point, and i then insert the adapter, for wich i made a special tool so i can "spin" it place, wich causes friction & heat, that in the end "vulcanize" it in place... ...and tadam!

Everything is also secured with bolts... ...for peace of mind, although the "fusion" process is strong as hell!

[flanagan0718]

Please forgive my ignorance (with Nissan engines at least) but is sounds like you are trying to make a spaceship! JK! This is awesome. My wife keeps telling me to buy another project car. I want to get a 240sx and build it to skyline specs.
Long ago, about 14 years now, I have an 85 Monte Carlo SS that I modified. I pot a 454 with an IROC 5 speed transmission in. Also did a MASSIVE rear end upgrade and some suspension work too.
This is great, keep posting!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[GrindCustoms]

Please forgive my ignorance (with Nissan engines at least) but is sounds like you are trying to make a spaceship! JK! This is awesome. My wife keeps telling me to buy another project car. I want to get a 240sx and build it to skyline specs.
Long ago, about 14 years now, I have an 85 Monte Carlo SS that I modified. I pot a 454 with an IROC 5 speed transmission in. Also did a MASSIVE rear end upgrade and some suspension work too.
This is great, keep posting!

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

It's indeed a bit intense of a work, but the gains are there and it's very cost effective for what it gives... ...until i have the money to go Forced Induction... ...i'll try to get the most out of the N/A setup, but what i'm doing with the intake setup the absolute maximum possible.... ...i mean, to push further i'd need to go ITB(individual throttle body per cylinder) and that is out of the way....

Sooner or later i'll have a legit V8 car, or at least a V8 swapped car.... ...nothing beats that rumble!

You should definitly get a 240SX... especially the latest generation, S15 "Kouki"... they just look incredible! And they are part of the last period where Japanese sport car where truly built with "sport" in mind, the shells are super rigid and lightweight... ...everything is there for an awesome ride, aftermarket support is second to none too, so much options!

[GrindCustoms]

This is another part of the engine intake that got some serious work done on, by me and my buddy Joe... ...who's a beast at P&P. That's the lower part that goes between the plastic intake manifold and cylinder heads of the V6.

It had bunch of casting burrs, nipples extruding in the "runners", etc... it's now completely free of all obstruction, "Gasket Matching" porting was also made on the cylinder head side.







Shame that i don't have "before" pictures, it's a night and day difference....

[playpunk]

So this is what you do when the Habs are terrible huh?

J/K this is really impressive to me. I don't even change my own oil.

[blearyeyes]

When I was a kid, I took engine rebuilding in college. Did all of the machining and rebuilt my cars engine. Feels so good to start the car and have it not blow up. The loud mouth self proclaimed king of the shop somehow got gas in his oil and blew the pan and both rocker arm covers down the block. I smiled for a week. Karma a bitch.

[GrindCustoms]

So this is what you do when the Habs are terrible huh?

J/K this is really impressive to me. I don't even change my own oil.

Hahaha! The worst is that i still watch the games... ...i think that i'm a better fan than what they are as players... ...oh well!

When I was a kid, I took engine rebuilding in college. Did all of the machining and rebuilt my cars engine. Feels so good to start the car and have it not blow up. The loud mouth self proclaimed king of the shop somehow got gas in his oil and blew the pan and both rocker arm covers down the block. I smiled for a week. Karma a bitch.

That is one thing that i love a lot when it happens... ..."self proclaimed gods", at my job it happens a lot since there's lot of high pressure welders, mechanics, machinery operator and what not... ...usually those who pretend that they are "king pins" are just trying to make up for their lack of skills with makeup... ...does'nt too long to withness the truth out of the speculations!