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

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….

We all knew it was bound to happen and I’m happy to announce that as of last Thursday Z Car Garage has an official ZCG 370z.  The car is going to be used as a platform to show everything we offer for the latest Nissan Z.  We will be bringing the car to all upcoming Z events and as many other shows as we can get to, and don’t think for a minute that we aren’t going to put the hammer down on the track!!

We decided on “Solid Red” to make the car stand out in the sea of bland colored vehicles and to let everyone know as soon as they see it that THIS IS THE ZCG 370z.  As you can see from the photos we can’t ever leave a car alone.  Our crew immediately added a set of stock R35 GT-R wheels to our car to set it apart from all the others while we wait on building a custom set of wheels.  We have so many amazing plans for this car and we can’t wait to share it with all of you!  Can you tell that I’m excited!?

ZCG took control of the car with 150 miles on the odometer and it is close to 350mi already, and yes we have already had the car on our dyno.  The car will be dyno’d every few hundred miles so that we can monitor how the engine is loosening up.  You can see the attached dyno sheet for the for the power curves but we are happy with the base numbers of 272 rwhp and and 233 rwtq.  I realize that the car isn’t broken in yet but it was good to get some super early baseline numbers to see what we are working with from the factory.

We have plans to offer the 370z community ZCG exclusive modifications and performance parts in the near future and are really excited to begin work on this new project.  More updates will be here at ZCarBlog as they happen!

There are more photos after the ‘read more.’  Enjoy!

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I wanted to get this post up again because reserved spots in the Z-car Corral are filling up quickly!  Getting the weekend pass for $65 is a deal by itself, and then you throw in great parking at the Z-car Corral and a parade lap around the full Laguna Seca circuit and you would be a fool not to attend!!

Z Car Garage will be bringing AT LEAST four cars from the shop and we have verified that other customers and friends have already signed up.  This is going to be an amazing race weekend with all your Z friends and we hope to see you there.  Visit the Z.O.N.C. Website to sign up TODAY!!!

It’s Tuesday here at Z Car Garage (and everywhere I guess) and we have another busy day ahead of us.  We are still working on getting some ‘real world’ results on the Cosworth plenum and the full results post will be up in a couple of days once we finish testing and tuning on the dyno.  So far the results have been interesting…