So last night was the Hot Import Nights show in San Mateo, what a crazy event!   The HIN personnel always run a top notch event and everyone at the shop holds their crew in the highest regard.  The drifting was awesome, the cars were amazing, and the girls were…. well…. hot.  Grade A good times.  I took a few hundred pictures of the best the show had to offer and I should have them edited and up on the blog in the next few days.  I also was in touch with our friends over at PhotoShootMyCar.com and I should be getting some high quality footage from them as well in the near future.

Today (Sunday) we are heading down to Laguna Seca to observe the vintage 2.5 Trans-Am race.  We all love seeing Datsun 510s beat the crap out of old Alfas so it should be a good time, plus the weather looks like its going to be beautiful.  If you are in the area or plan on attending today stop by and say hello to your friendly ZCG crew.

On Friday we tested a new exhaust system and a few other familiar modifications to a 2008 350z with the VQ35HR engine and I will have pictures, dyno graphs, and a full report on the modifications up as soon as I get a chance.

Finally,  we have been getting a few parts from all over the world for the ZCG GT-R.  They are now starting to pile up and we want to get them onto the car ASAP.  Included are a new set of VOLK Racing track wheels (in 19″ so that we can finally get a decent track tire), an Aero Motions electronically adjustable rear wing, carbon fiber trunk, and the COBB Tuning sway bars that have been at the shop for what feels like months.

Sorry for the lack of pictures this morning but I am sorta in a hurry to prepare for heading to Laguna Seca.  Now please let me enjoy my weekend!!  ZCG

What a busy day here at ZCG.  We went to William’s Autobody around lunch today and took a few photos of the first exterior paintwork to be done to the RB28 240z.  The paint looks amazing and there are still more coats to go with tons of color sanding in between to make sure the finish is perfect.  I’ll have more photos soon!

Rob and I were also out driving the ZCG 370z and a white 240z that is here to get triple Mikunis (see above photo) and we decided to stop by the scales and weigh the newly acquired 370z.  The car tipped the scales at 3,320 lbs with no passengers and almost a full tank of gas.  Not too shabby.  (For reference the ZCG G35 Twin Turbo came in at 3,600 lbs.)

More to come tomorrow.  Long Live the Z

Photos of this horrendous Nissan/Lamborghini conversion were on the first page over on the Jalopnik blog this morning and I had to share it with all of you.  It made Rob (owner of ZCG) speechless for a few seconds before breaking into tears.

We’ve all seen terrible body kits in the past but this is taking it to a whole other level.  I’m going to let the pictures speak for themselves from this point on because I’m afraid this cars is going to affect me negatively if I keep writing.  Please DO NOT enjoy…

I was pointed towards a link on the Edmund’s Straightline Blog the other day that gives us a view into one of the 370z designer’s mind.  Randy Rodriguez penned the original 370z sketch and it turns out that he grabbed some inspiration from a few exotic Italian motorcycles.

While the 370z was in it’s early design phase Randy was piecing together a MV Agusta F4-750 and it is easy to see how one beautiful two-wheeled machine was able to lend a few design cues to a four-wheeled one.  There were also influences from a Ducati 749/999 upper triple clamp that was morphed into the final design of the sport-package wheel.  His MV Agusta motorcycle now sits behind his desk at Nissan Design America in San Diego when he isn’t out putting it through it’s paces.

Many of you know that we here at Z Car Garage ride motorcycles or have close ties to them and it is always nice to see our two passions come together in a car that we get to enjoy, the 370z.  In a side note, I’ve had the chance to own a few Ducatis and still own a 2006 749s, small world…

There are a couple more photos after the ‘read more’ including one of the Ducati 749s that I own.  Enjoy and thanks to Edmunds Insideline for the Nissan info and a few of the photos.

…[read more]

Here are the results from this morning’s plenum swap.  The results are… ummm… about what we expected.

This car is a 02/06 350z with an automatic transmission.  There is an extensive list of aftermarket components on this car ranging from a carbon fiber diffuser to a custom painted roll cage, but this post has nothing to do with any of these mods, it is about the before and after dyno numbers.

The plenum install went off without a hitch and the car was back on the dyno in no time.  This mod was a straight plenum swap with no fuel or timing changes made (the owner did not want to install a Uni-Chip or other tuning hardware at this point.)

Run 003:  Stock Nissan Plenum (BLUE)
Run 005:  Cosworth Plenum (RED)

On to the dyno graph you can see that the Cosworth plenum LOST a healthy amount of horsepower and torque through the entire rev range except between 5,800-6,000 RPM where it gained two, yes two, horsepower.  The design of the plenum just doesn’t seem to work on lightly modified normally aspirated cars.  Unfortunately this is a loss that will really be felt when driving the car.  This plenum is so beautiful that we really wanted to make a ton of power with it so that we could improve the looks and performance of the engine.  At this point I would find it really hard to recommend this to a customer.

Mind you that this is the first normally aspirated car that we have installed the Cosworth on.  My full post with all of the boosted car tests is still to come this week.  That post will include all of the dyno results and all other pertinent test data.  Very, very interesting….