Hey guys, I need some help.

Having some real trouble getting the two small tension clamps loose. Any recommendations? No chance with pliers as they are impossible to reach...


I'm no mechanic and I hope there is a stupidly simple answer.

http://www.the370z.com/members/azroa...-tubes-003.jpg
It's the middle tension clamps. (Picture is borrowed from before)

Are you referring to the little ones on the breather tube/plastic assembly?
Do you have the strut bar off? Which one can you not reach?

I used a long reach slanted set of needle nose piers, they worked great.
http://media.toolking.com/catalog/pr.../w/1/w1045.jpg

If you can only access the lower tube (black hose with black clamp in the pic) then remove that one. You can unbolt the 10mm bolt holding the plastic assembly (far right in the pic) and it will come off with the stock intake tube.

Thanks, I'll give it another go now. Those clamps are annoying - wish they'd gone for ones with a screw...

Thanks, Boost_Lee. That worked perfectly. Ended up removing the lower hose clamps on both sides, which then actually helped with the fitment of the HPS tubes (more room to play) - I recommend that to anyone about to do the installation.

Apart from the the driver side hose is just a little bit long and there is a bit of a squeeze just before the throttle body. The car seems to apporve of the tubes though and they look awesome! Overall very happy.

Received and installed mine along w/K&N filters yesterday. Had to trim the end of the small tube on the passenger's side a little. Other than that, easy install, haven't driven enough post-installation yet to give any feedback.

:hello:

Thanks all - under a week out if anyone else is interested :)

I just placed an order for the tubes from your web site and I already have the filters so hopefully the tubes will be in stock soon.

I recently installed a Kenwood DNX9980HD along with the KNA-EC100 that allows me to monitor intake temperature, intake pressure...etc. Temperatures haven't warmed up here in Oregon yet but the testing I have done so far shows the intake temperature only increasing 6 to 8 degrees anytime the car is moving at more than around 20MPH. I was very surprised to see how quickly the intake temperature dropped after sitting idle for a long period of time. With the car at full operating temperature and just sitting, the intake temperature would climb to ~ 110 degrees, but as soon as I start moving it would drop to 63 degrees with an ambient temperature of 56. My background is in mechanical engineering and I have done a lot of work with my companies modeling group where we use CFD (computational fluid dynamics) to predict flow patterns of gas through various pipes and reactor chambers. Due to decades of experience (yes I'm that old) only on rare occasions did we find that our original ideas and thinking about flow patterns were flawed. In looking over the Z intakes, there is very little to improve on here. The air is already drawn from a cold area at the sides of the core support and the inlet is fairly large especially considering there are 2 intakes. The K&N filters are slightly less restrictive and should help slightly with flow and the smooth HPS tubes should also reduce intake turbulence thus also improving flow. The weather here should be warming up this week and I will note the relative temperature difference as the ambient temperature increases and then compare to the HPS tubes to see if they reduce heat soak at all.

My original plan was to go with the stillen G3 intakes, but the more I looked into the factory setup and logged the actual intake temperatures, the less I was convinced that I would see much benefit over the K&N + HPS tubes and the latter is $300 cheaper with no warranty issues at the dealer. We'll see what happens when the temperatures warm up more.
Attachment 30184

all orders shipped; also have some in stock for immediate shipment :)

Sounds good. Have you installed the HPS tubes yet? Any findings?

They haven't arrived yet but hopefully by mid week.

Installed my Tubes with HKS Air Filters.I can really feel the difference.More Air means more power.UP REV Tune is next.

:iagree: Ordered mine this morning, I expect to have them next week.

I installed the tubes and took more temperature measurements. I don't see any difference in temperature between the HPS tubes and the stock plastic ones.....which is pretty much what I expected. There was speculation on here that the HPS tubes might be a better insulator and therefor help keep intake temperatures down. The temperatures still run about 8-10 degrees above ambient which I doubt any other CAI can beat. It finally warmed up to around 85 here and the intake temperatures ran at 95 while cruising at 60 on the freeway.

The car does seem to respond better with the HPS tubes + K&N drop ins as far as overall throttle response goes. BERK HFC's also went on today and seemed to really wake up the midrange which I didn't expect since I thought most of the benefit from HFC's was up top.

Thank you, got mine today, took less than 45 minutes to install without taking off the strut bar. Had to trim the passenger side small tube a little, but the install went butter smooth. I have not had the chance to drive it yet, I was getting ready to do so when a friend said he was paying for dinner!

I really like the clean look of these MAF tubes! They look much better than the stock set.

V.