This is what I've always heard was the cat killer

Stillensuper cat killer!







Just kidding hahaha!

Talking about cat's. My car exhaust smells so bad and funky in the morning start up's. Like it's super super rich so bad that i have to get out of the car till it warms up.

Agreed! Eyes watering rich.

Test pipes are not really an option for me. I live in the city with the worst air pollution in the US. I'm a professional and the city I live in is not that large, so I'm relatively high profile. All it takes is one angry person driving behind me with burning eyes from lack of cats to make a call to CHP and my supercharger fun is all over. The 10 hp loss is worth the 30x reduction in emissions.

What's your plan, if any, come smog time? I live in CA and am really torn on going FI on a 370Z because of the hassle.

Hey phim are you also running stillens tune or are you custom tuned. Judging by what you said about being in cali and all i am assuming you have the stillen tune going for the carb legal.
Frank

Solution is get a kit that is carb legal.

On a side note you probably won't have to smog till the year of 2012-2013 depending on the year of your car.

Don't have a 370Z yet, but I thought there was 5-6 years on a new car. Had to sell my STi before I moved back to CA because of CARB and recently sold my M3. Currently torn between an Evo X and FI 370Z. I want a turbo car, but not sure if I want to deal with the hassle of a 370Z TT in CA and the S/C kits just don't excite me that much.

The most difficult thing about CARB inspections is the visual section: most of these FI cars with a good tune and functioning cats will pass the sniffer just fine however the visual inspection will bite you. I found someone who "forgot" the visual on my big turbo '96 Saab and the car passed the sniffer but it is a bit of a pain to worry about finding someone who won't do visual.

Yeah, that's all I am worried about. I think the visual is BS by the way. If the point is to regulate emissions, why not judge the cars based on their emissions? Chances are your FI 370Z runs much cleaner than the '92 LeBaron driving down the street, but for some reason your car is illegal and the other isn't.

I don't keep cars that long, so it will be sold before it needs to be smogged. Hopefully by that time Stillen will have carb approval on their kit and I'll revert it back to the CARB kit specs before I sell it. As a side note, smog occurs at 6 years. from the Cal DMV website: "Vehicles that are six or less model-years old are abated from the biennial smog check inspection requirement."

About my tune: It is a "custom" tune. Stillen tuned it, but then that tune is probably being used as their canned tune for anyone who's running the 9 lb pulley, using 93 octane and has headers and cats. It's definitely different than their 91 octane, 8 lb pulley, stock exhaust tune.

Thank you for answering. So it is safe to say that yes your car was tunned by stillan but was custom tuned. I am trying to understand then why you are running rich. I though normally rich was a common thing to see on canned tunes because it is safer and less chance of error.
Frank

I don't have time to review it now, but my dyno graphs from early july in this thread show something like 10.2:1 to redline. That is rich. Rich mix gives quench effect, lowering cylinder temperatures and preventing pitting of pistons. Rich also is less likely to detonate because it takes more energy to light the mix.

On the flip side, with stock cats back on it, it's not eye watering from exhaust fumes anymore, even though the A/F ratio is the same. I've never owned hi-flow cats before, but now I 'get it'. Stock cats have like 2" diameter inlet/outlet and 10 pounds of catalyst material in them. The hi-flow cats have like 2 1/4" diameter with 2 pounds of catalyst in them. The "hi-flow" part is more that there's not really much catalyst in them rather than being a better design with less resistance, but same catalytic efficiency.

with the stock cats back on with a really rich mixture will kill those cats.

wow, that was a lot of reading. i really wish most of the bs was not in there. i learned to skip over it at about page 100 or so. It seems that most of the issues have been resolved and the cars are running good. Are there any cars with custom tunes that are having any problems? it all seems that the canned tunes were having problems and that was so you can keep you warranty so if you dont care about the warranty and went with a custom tune how are the cars doing?

HAhaha! YOU're kidding right? I didn't even read through 10 pages lol. THe warranty only applies if you use stillens tunes and is only good for 1yr for the hardware. AFTer it's CARB legal then you have the option to purchase the optional engine warranty.

As far as I know the guy's that has a full custom tune is running good and making very decent power. Osiris was having some issues even on a custom tune, he probably got that taken care of already.