DIY: Z1 Intake Plenum and Spark Plug Swap [Picture Heavy]
 

Ok all i know most of this is rather basic but i thought id create a DIY anyways.

First off you will need to remove the brace bar (Yellow boxes) and then the Cover (blue circles)

http://i1332.photobucket.com/albums/...ps12421e82.jpg.

Next you will need to remove the connectors off the back side of the plenum, there should be 4 small bolts back there. Then remove the sensor on the upper right corner. After that is done pull and remove all the hoses on the back and the two in the front. (Light blue circles)

After that you will need to remove the main bolts that hold the plenum down. (yellow box)

Then you will need to disconnect your upper intake from the throttle bodies. (green circle)

http://i1332.photobucket.com/albums/...psecbfb217.jpg

Once all that is done you need to clamp the two coolant lines on each throttle body and then remove the 4 bolts and 4 washers that hold the throttle bodies on to the plenum.

Once both throttle bodies are disconnected, remove the clamped lines and take the throttle bodies out to clean them. You will have some buildup and since they are off now you might as well clean them up.

http://i1332.photobucket.com/albums/...ps7add4759.jpg

Now that everything is disconnected remove your plenum and set it next to the new one. You will need to transfer over both throttle body gaskets and the primary gasket on the bottom. You will also need an E6 socket to move over both upper studs. Once this is all complete you can move onto the spark plugs.


With the throttle bodies and plenum out of the way, changing your spark plugs is a breeze. You can see one of the coil packs on the engine and my wrench pulling another out. Each coil pack is held down by a small bolt. Remove the bolt, disconnect the electrical connector and pull the coil pack out of the way. Then take a spark plug socket on an extension and remove the spark plugs. Reverse the order to put the new ones in and Tq your new spark plugs to 25nm to call it a day. . NOTE. ONLY DO ONE AT A TIME TO AVOID MIXING THINGS UP!!

http://i1332.photobucket.com/albums/...psf86c0a10.jpg


Once spark plugs are all done, reconnect the coolant lines to your now clean throttle bodies and set them on the sides out of the way.

http://i1332.photobucket.com/albums/...ps5d1ecdf1.jpg

Put the new Plenum on the engine and re-install the 4 bolts on each throttle body to secure them back to it. Then install the 6 primary bolts and 2 nuts to hold the plenum down to the engine.

http://i1332.photobucket.com/albums/...psa26857f6.jpg

Once the throttle bodies and plenum are secure you need to reattach the lines on the back and front and re-secure the intakes to the throttle bodies.

http://i1332.photobucket.com/albums/...psb780f330.jpg

Once that is done put the strut bar and engine cover back on and you are done!

If you liked this DIY toss me some rep or a comment on my profile page! If you have questions hit me up in a PM and ill do my best to answer promptly!

how are the power gain with the new manifold?..do you have a tune ?

Nice write up man! :tup:
I'd be VERY interested to see the internal design of the Z1 plenum to see what's going on and what was really changed in comparison to stock. I know that it IS an improvement over stock but, how so is my question.

Did you take any pics of the z1 manifold prior to install? Im curious to see what was modded.

Also, did you need to do a recalibration when the throttle bodies were removed?

Nice work!

Did I see they picked up 10 whp from a just a pnp of the plenum???

That's pretty good -- under $300 aint bad either I will have to think about getting this...

Plus the core charge... Another $250.

Core charge is only if you are having them mail out the Z1 Plenum first..
they will refund you the 250 once they receive yours..

This ......How's car running

Great write up. I've been wanting to do this.

Just porting...

http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e1...ps055ad1b5.jpg

http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e1...ps452c645e.jpg

http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e1...ps589bce53.jpg

Maybe. This dyno says its 8-9hp over the m370 mani which we all know loses power over the stock mani top end. Whats it vs just a normal mani though??? The graph looks like it keeps up with the m370 mid range power but the top end should be no different than the stock mani. We need a back to back. Far as I can tell its cheaper than the m370, you gain "almost" as much mid range as the m370, yet you keep your top end as if you kept the stock mani. All in all seems worth it. I think though $300 is a little to much. A local shop or you could knock this out with a drill and the right bits/sand paper bits.

http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e1...ps3a396aea.jpg

Mozen, looks like you could use a catch can? That first runner looks dirty from the PCV hoses coming in right there with oil and blow by.

Does it look hard to pull off the 6 runners the mani bolts too? That cast piece looks rough and could use a PnP too! Might pick up some more power. I want to do the TB, mani and runners all PnP.

Is it possible they are flow balancing the runners as well? Just looking at the variable ammount of grinding that looks like is being done to each runner (Hard to tell for sure from the pics).

For $300 I doubt it. Would make sence though for optimum performance.

I wonder which plenum ( motordyne & Z1) produces more gains of torque ? Has there been comparison's yet ?

Isn't that what post 11 shows?

Looks like MD is less Hp but more TQ.

I'm curious as to what other mods the car has and if this had any of the VV played with while tuning.

I originally decided the MD wasn't worth it. But the Z1 mani might be with the HP gains.

its z1 power mods, header, intake, cai, test pipes, cbe. not sure on tuning.

what gains? its showing power over the m370. we all know the stock mani makes more power over the m370 up top. your stock vs this modded stock mani should have the same numbers. however since the modded stock mani has close to the same tq numbers as the m370, itd seem you will gain a little mid range but thats all.

Sorry all, i should have chimed in sooner on this. All in all i wasnt sure i wanted to review it yet. When i got it i was rather dissapointed in the quality. 2/3ds of the sanding or porting done was rather rough and i ended up grabing some light sandpaper and smoothing it all down in the end. Whoever did the work also made a mistake and in the core i got there was a dollop of resin where they had sanded through a wall and needed to repair...which wouldent have bothered me if whoever did it had bothered to sand it all back down smooth. As it was it took about an hour to smooth all the rough spots out and clean it up a bit.

That all said its been on the car for some time now and ive logged just over 500 miles with a tune and love it. It is a gain although how much im not sure since my tunes are Etunes through Dynotronics.

Its hard to see in the picture below but on the left side where the throttle body meets the manifold there is a part that has a rough look. Its where the resin is. I can take a closer picture if needed to show it.

http://i1332.photobucket.com/albums/...psb780f330.jpg

Wow!

Sounds really shitty for 300 bucks

I have one at the house ready to put in. I was waiting for the garage to get above freezing! I think I'm just going to suck it up and install it before Thursday. I'll take a look at the workmanship on mine and report if it is rough or not.

Good writeup though! Thanks Mozen!

Just saw a review on g37. It to looks rough and I saw some frays. You'll definitely need to smooth sand it.

We wanted to chime in on this since you guys have some concerns regarding the roughness and methods used to produce these plenums. We have put in a ton of hard work and dyno time testing many different configurations to find the best performing modification.
We have been doing this work locally for over a year we recently decided to make it a service available globally. Before we decided to do this we tested 8 different configurations with back to back testing on the dyno to refine the port work we do. Targeting the most consistent, and maximum gains based around our 400HP package.

For our dyno testing reference it is worth noting that when we perform these test back to back but we put a couple pulls in between the runs we show, because the car cools off when we swap the parts and it has to get back up to temp to make the same similar/equivalent power.
We have tested smooth and rough finishes on the same ported out plenum to see if any gains were to be had and no measurable distinction could be found however the difference in labor time was extensive, a smooth finish with no power to be had would come at a much higher cost. We already spend 3 hours per plenum removing extensive material from targeted locations and then work to refine the finish.

From a plenum to plenum standpoint we have found that there is quite some range in the accuracy of assembly. Having worked with many of these parts now it is not uncommon to see some where the two halves are put together accurately and the runner unions are reasonably smooth with not much overhang or "lip", while other plenums will have a distinctive shift or twist where they are assembled. So each plenum is worked by hand as needed some need only moderate matching and porting while others need quite a bit more labor. In the end they make great power and we are offering with an exchange service to keep the down time to a minimum.

Tuning cars with the mod has become weekly occurrence for us here and the P mod has never let us down.

I'm away from home atm but I can take a pic of what bothered me when I get back. As I make clear tho I do like the gains.

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I did look at mine when I got home, and think the workmanship is fine! No rough edges or bumps that are visible. The finish made it look a little dusty, but a quick wipe with a microfiber cloth revealed that it was the plastic's finish and not dust. My plenum was smooth enough that the microfiber did not stick. I'm looking forward to installing this over the weekend!

what is the purpose of changing the spark plugs too base on the first post? I thought it was just a simple swap for the plenum?

Just because he wanted to. I do mine every 40k. Some do 50k, some do 100k if they have iridiums.

Correct...I'm at nearly 50k miles and figured that since I had it all apart I should do the swap.

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Installed mine last Sunday. My throttle bodies had been cleaned about 5k miles ago, so I did not need to remove the coolant hoses. I just loosened the four bolts and moved them out of the way. I am getting a tune from Z1 to maximize my mods. Until then, I really noticed a difference in the drive with the plenum install. Very happy with it and looking forward to the tune!

Oh, really??? I didn't catch that this wasn't a comparison to the OEM IM -- then I don't know what to make of it. :icon14:

It could be anywhere from 3 -5 over OEM then. Maybe. If that's the case, then yeah, $300 is a bit steep, and doing on the cheap by DIY/local shop who knows what they're doing would be the only way to make it even worth the trouble.

No comparisons of that floating around? :confused:

Local shops charge $35hr. No comparison as of yet that I've seen.

The shop and I are going to do a full test and tune on this. We are porting the stock lower, upper and throttle bodies. We will install the lower and dyno. Then tune it with dyno. Then the upper and dyno, tune, dyno etc. we should have results soon.

Anyone know if the TPS relearn and idle relearn needs to be done when installing the intake plenum? I know on the my g35 vq35hr if the TB was disconnected, you would have to do the relearn.

When you say you noticed the difference with the drive can you be more specific please of the difference VS when you have the OE manifold. Been trying to consider this if its worth the money to gain some minuet hp or torque. Thanks

I second this :iagree:

Can you explain both of these statements??? Between 4500-5k RPMs, where the M370 is known for its low end tq gains, the Z1 manifold is clearly almost 10whp AND ft/lbs of TQ lower!!???

Its all going to come down to opinions of "which is better" because different people have different wants out of the manifold(top end whp, or lowend midrange TQ). The Z1 Manifold has some clear gains up top over the M370, but are those truly "gains" when comparing to the M370, or just avoiding losing top end AND losing low end vs the M370.

The Z1 needs to be compared vs the OEM manifold, not the M370 to get true gains vs OEM.

That's only 500rpm and probably a MAF spike. You wont be able to feel that or compare it cause look at 4000-4500rpm. It says the OEM made the opposite vs 4500-5000rpm. Hence why run 7 and run 12 both make the same TQ.

I wouldn't say it's clear, what else was done? Do we believe this with no other data? I hate peoples belief sometimes in a big company that what's put down on paper must be 100% true.

I did this already but I compared the OEM mani vs a ported upper, lower and ported throttle bodies. Theres a reason they won't show you OEM vs just a ported upper (1-2hp maybe). My testings not complete though. We will redo this soon with this cars cats remove.


http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e1...ps6020f57c.jpg

I never purchased your manifold for me, I don't own a HR motor. That was a customer in Dubai that did who bought our TB's and lower. And check your dates Jon. I first had stuff ported for just me months before and my mani was already done and installed before I ever started doing it for others!! The porter I have do this lives in Indy and never saw your mani. Kinda hard to coat tail isn't it? Go ahead and check your dates when he bought and then check my date when I started the porting thread. I'll wait....

And I'm sorry, I didn't know you were the only one allowed to do something. O and since I started porting the TB's and lower first, does that mean you're coat tailing off me?

We are also finishing up flow bench testing now and we dynoed the stock vs ported stock, I haven't seen either from you guys so you sure you want to call me out?

And I'll continue to conduct myself the way I do. If I feel threatened, attacked, called out, trolled upon etc I'll respond in a way that's equal and to put them in their place they need to be at. And if I call someone out like you just did I'll at least have my facts straight. I'll ask you to do the same.

True there is no great mystery to cleaning up this stock manifold.
Just good practicable experience.