My half-assed reply to what I was going to post before the thread was deleted.
I dropped the car off at Lutz Performance at the end of April and picked it up the night I left for ZDayz on May 19th...Yes, that was a quick turnaround time, but my car was the only car that was having any fabricating done. So I do not think 3+ weeks is too far fetched. In the end though, if that was too soon of a time frame, Lutz should have said so. At the time, Lutz seemed great...well, really just their fabricator (Shawn). He was texting me making sure I made it up safely and asking for updates while I was up there.
I drove the car to ZDayz and enjoyed it, other than the overheating issues. On the way home, about 30 minutes after leaving Fontana Village, I burnt through one of the power steering hoses because the uppipe was fabricated laying against the hose. I made it to GA where the car went into limp mode due to the passenger side wiring harness left dangling on top of the passenger manifold. I spent $250 having the car towed to Z1. My repair bill was $2k. This does not include the 4 days (local Nissans didn't stock a power steering pump) of work I missed out on and I had to pay for a hotel. They had to rewire the entire passenger side wiring harness and I needed a new power steering pump because the pump had seized and the pulley snapped off. The 140-amp fuse on the battery also failed because the wiring harness was burnt through.
I make it home and the car goes back to Lutz so they can redo my intake piping. That was clearly an issue from the beginning regarding driveability and tuning. Since the intake piping was different diameters, one bank would see much more air than the other bank, netting in extremely rich cruising AFRs (10/12 mpg city/highway) and not allowing me to get into boost because the AFRs would get too lean. Lutz said they would redo it at no cost to me. My car sits there for 2 weeks with nothing done. They preferred to bridge my MAF wiring instead. My car was in the shop for 1 month to have a 30 minute wiring job done. When I went to pick up my car (Friday) for a professional photoshoot I had booked, one of my tires were flat because it had 2 nails in it. No photoshoot. I go to pick up the car again the following Wednesday (FYI Lutz Performance is a 45 minute drive from my house), and the tire was still flat...nothing was done. So I finally go pick up the car the following Monday with the tire patched and the MAF wiring bridged, even though I asked and they said they would redo the intake piping...but they suggested bridging the MAF wiring and they are the experts. The car still ran like crap, granted I never had it retuned to see if it bridging the MAFs would fix the issue.
I take my car to another friend and we redid the intake piping and intercooler setup to dual 3" equal-length intake piping and a 2-1 intercooler...
the way it should have been done from the beginning. We also replaced the POS band clamp that Lutz installed and bowed the edge of the clamp to make the piping fit inside (causing a bad exhaust leak), which Lutz replaced once already to try to solve the issue. Since we redid the piping, I had to unbridge the MAF wiring. I called Lutz to see how to unbridge it and I was told and I quote "just cut the bridge wires". So I do so because the experts told me to do so. The car is in limp mode. A few hours of brainstorming and I decide to finally peel back the wire sheating and found this
http://i52.tinypic.com/1z7z3p.jpg
That was my last dealing with Lutz. Out of allll the troubles I had, they only compensated me by taking 2 hrs of labor of my total bill ($210).
Quote:
Originally Posted by georgek350z
(Post 9536269)
You say you dont want to start drama , But clearly you are
Lutz performance was asked to build a 1 off turbo kit for the 370z . Now
1. Customer wanted the vehicle done with NO RND BS
2. NO Reasonable time frame ( wanted the vehicle done asap !BS
3. Im sorry to hear about the cooling issue . ( we did NOT build a cooling system ) we built a custom 1 off turbo kit with no RND ! Which the customer was aware of .BS
4. Lutz Performance did not tune the vehicle .Correct
5. Lutz Performance did not build the engine .Correct
With all this being said , lets get realistic here . There are NO Guarantees in racing or Building a custom turbo kit on a engine that was built from the manufacture designed to be a N.A. engine .
Last we heard that the customer turned up the boost on a vehicle that was past its safety zone ( If that even exisits ) and as a result the engine has blown .Thats all i have to say . Lutz performance is a great shop with great employees .
P.S. The turbo kit never failed and made power
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Let's be realistic... You are correct in saying there are no guarantees when adding forced induction to an NA motor.
I went to Bradenton and ran a 11.85 @ 119mph on my 3rd pass. Based on that mph (460-480whp), my car was well below the limits of the VQ37. The boost was turned up from 12.6psi to 13.1psi on the next run when the motor started ticking.
The turbo kit did fail.
Quote:
Originally Posted by georgek350z
(Post 9536327)
Budget was the equation for the customer .
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I'm sorry, but I fail to see how $12k was a budget build.
Quote:
Originally Posted by georgek350z
(Post 9536329)
No nothing what so ever . the vehicle was worked on both shops .
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Lutz did all the fabricating. S&R did the initial tune.
