Dan's VSR top-mount turbo 370 v3.0

[FireDan50]

I call this Version 3.0 because it kinda went through three phases:
1. Bolt-on parts, no tuning
2. Stillen supercharger
3. VSR top-mount turbo

I've had the car since about the beginning of 2012. I was living in Belgium (USAF) and had a sweet R33 GTR from a previous assignment in Japan. However, I was moving back to the states and didn't want to gamble on trying to get the GTR back. I shopped around to see what kind of cars other military/American people were selling in the area and found this stock 370Z in Germany.

Started with the usual: Wheels, tires, suspension, intake, exhaust. I had it dyno'd at a couple places in Europe and got the same results, about 300 rwhp


AEM intakes:


Akrapovic exhaust:



Berk HFCs



Volk GTS wheels (19x9.5 +30 / 19x10.5 +18)



KW Variant 3 coil-overs





Z1 25 row oil cooler w/ fabricated block-off plate






Also added miscellaneous exterior parts: Evo-R carbon door handle cover, rear diffuser, front fang cover, and b-pillar covers.







Nismo front/rear sway bars:


Tried Planted seat brackets....passenger side, totally crooked, had to modify to get the seat pointing upright, it was leaning towards the outside of the car. (Had pics of this but lost them)

Evo-R carbon mirrors and Stillen front canards


I got a sweet deal from a friend selling his Brides, so I sold the Sparcos and added Takata Drift II harnesses.


I had fun with the Z in Europe, driving on the Nurburgring, Spa Francorchamps, Circuit de Clastres, and a couple other smaller tracks. Then I ended up moving to South Carolina. I found what looked to be a good/used Stillen kit for sale on here from a local seller. I took it to Motion Lab in South Carolina to install/tune with a Quaife differential, Z1 6 puck clutch/light flywheel, Mishimoto radiator/thermostat, and I pulled the Akrapovic exhaust off and replaced it with a GReddy Ti-C that I got a great deal on...ended up with the results below:
horsepower bumped up to 420rwhp






Everything went great for about a week. The supercharger whine was nice and so was the immediate power. Driving it was pretty fun and awesome. I drove over a thousand miles from South Carolina to Florida. Then drove to San Antonio and stayed in Texas a couple days. As I was driving on base in 1st and 2nd gears, the supercharger wining went from a nice whine to a horrific grinding noise...I thought my motor was done.

Somehow, it looks like the internals of the blower went kaboom. I had just checked the lube level the day prior and everything was fine. Luckily it was all internal and no chunks went into my engine. So now I was stuck halfway across the country away from home and a broke down Z. After a couple days of thinking and searching, I decided to send my car to VSR Performance (previously S&R Performance) in Tampa to pull all the Stillen stuff out and go with their top-mount turbo set up.

It took about a couple weeks to get done. I flew down to Tampa and met the guys at VSR (nice people, even picked me up at the airport) and test drove my car. Everything was great and I was more than happy. The car was tuned to about 10 psi and put down 503rwhp (about 80 more than the Stillen at the same boost level). This thing ROLLS OUT. I drove it several hours home and didn't have any heat/cooling issues or any problems. The day after I drove to Columbia with a few other friends for a meet. I did a fly-by each of them...they had their windows down...open wastegate SCREAMS and they told me it scared them lol. I'll have to get a vid up to show how this thing behaves.




Their kits comes with a Precision 6266 turbo, custom replacement crash beam, custom breather/catch can, custom coolant reservoir, turbo blanket, heat wrapped pipes, Turbosmart 42mm wastegate (8psi spring), Turbosmart RacePort blow-off valve, and some other goodies.





So this is where my car stands now and will stay that way for a while hopefully, while my bank account recuperates from the beating its taken the past two months :P I'm sure I forgot to mention a lot of stuff on here that I didn't think of. I wanted to post on here to help spread information and help other people out if possible. If anyone has any questions, post up.

-Dan

[jae35]

sick, love that exhaust

[SS_Firehawk]

Awesome to see more top mounts running around here. Glad to see everything came together. Don't be surprised if you wake up to find your seats missing and an update to my journal Great build.

[G37sHKS]

Sick build

[Skyline6mt]

Pretty cool stuff. Looks like a really tight fit in the engine bay.

[theDreamer]

Congrats and good looking car, adding your finished build to the thread.

[FireDan50]

I took my car to Motion Lab Tuning in North Carolina to get dyno tuned again. I had an o2 sensor go out right after the VSR turbo install, I turned down the boost a couple pounds, and had been noticing some rough spots when driving in WOT.

Here are some specs:

Dynomite vs Dynocom
Florida vs N. Carolina
9.9 psi vs 7.7 psi
503hp/408tq vs 495hp/436tq

VSR did a great job with everything, but it just needed a little fine tuning with timing, fuel, and VVEL. New baseline at Motion Lab was 460hp / 396tq at 7.4 psi. Todd worked his magic and was able to get about 500 hp / 437tq boosting a couple pounds less. Drove the car on about a 2hr trip home last night and it felt AWESOME . It just felt a lot smoother and pulled just as hard at a couple pounds less boost.

[Nissan370]

Because the cars are shipped to vsr they do not go aggressive on the tune
I asked for a very safe tune even tho I have a build motor
And they tuned it just to get me over the 500 mark
I plan on having the car retuned and a aem boost controller added
To really pull some power out of the kit

[FireDan50]

Updated with some pics I was able to take while the car was on the lift....shows a more detailed view of how the piping is routed.

Open wastegate = LOUD...but I LOVE IT

[Mozen]

Very sick!

[EZT]

Looks like some nice work out of Tampa, not too far from me!

[Motion Lab]

Your car looked great with the new Stillen lip this last visit FireDan. Ive always been a fan of the Volk GTS also, you have good taste sir haha. Glad we got the opportunity to tune it with the new turbo set-up. Still sucks about the supercharger set-up but the car absolutely screams now and I can tell you are a fan of the powerband that the turbo set-up provides :P. Sounds wicked that's for sure!

Thanks,
Alex Goodwin
AlexG@motionlabtuning.com

[FireDan50]

Hopefully the wifey buys me a GoPro for my birthday or something soon so I can get vids!

[gussyturbo z]

Sick build firedan!!

[FireDan50]

Just a couple updated pics...had a Stillen front lip on but that got destroyed by a possum Decided to just restore the front bumper for now. Also cleaned up the engine bay a little: move some stuff, re-route some stuff, DEI reflect-a-gold wrap the pipes near the engine. I think the stuff works pretty well; don't have any data logged temps yet, but I can just feel the difference by touch (before/after wrapping) and I have better piece of mind. I'm about 90% sure I'm going to chop the hood over the turbo to get more hot air out....that snail gets HOT all stuffed in there.