Nissan Stillen 370Z - 500+ HP Review
 

Link to article and a couple pictures: Nissan Stillen 370Z - Stealin' The Stillen - Super Street Magazine

Whaddya think? :excited:

I think it looks nice, but after the 12.8's@112 that the last "500+hp" Stillen car ran, we need to hear about actual performance instead of the "Technowizardry" that is an oil-cooler.

they could have washed it lol but i like that system

The shopkeeper at Concord said Stillen SC aren't really that great. The best ones are probably GTM and GReddy.

ha.. FTA:

After only a couple of corners it was obvious that Stillen knows exactly how to tune a street car

I'm sure there are few guys here that disagree with that statement.

Oh dear. They make it sound like an oil cooler is some revolutionary earth shattering technology invented by stillen or something

I know, I LOL'ed. Back when I was building my 5.0 about 4 years ago there was TONNES of stuff like that available. It's been around for quite some time. I wonder if there is a reason noone has ever posted actual 1/4 mile times in good conditions without making excuses for the kit?

Same for dyno-numbers, although there MIGHT be some in that monster of a thread in the FI section. I'm not wading through it to find them, though.

isn't there already a thread for arguing about GTM vs Stillen?

I hate how everyone spreads this misconception, it does not completely bypass the oil cooler when the engine is under operating temperature and your engine WILL run too cold if your weather permits.

Tough crowd.. :P

This was just the impressions of Super Street's editor after spending some time with the car for a couple of days.. why is it so hard to believe they enjoyed it and think it's great? Aren't they allowed to have an opinion, especially since they have access to all kinds of vehicles?

It was detailed when it was picked up by them.. lol.. I think they just kept driving and driving and driving..

Can you post 3rd party dyno numbers or track times? I'm curious to see how the car does. There has been quite a bit of opinion about it already, yet very little substance in the way of quantifiable review besides the 12.8 second 1/4 mile run one magazine tester got out of it.

I know there are some members on here that are track junkies, but I don't have back to back testing on any cars I can post, someone else may be able to help.

I'm sure as it gets back into spring a lot of customers will also be returning to their local tracks and reporting their results as well.

Well, I found a 389whp review from someone with a A7 trans. Not quite 500bhp, but they were pleased it seems.
http://www.the370z.com/forced-induct...it-review.html

This guy got 455whp after installing bolt-ons (Stillen Ceramic Coated Headers, Stillen HFC's, Stillen Catback, Stillen Light Weight Crank Pulley) + the SC kit. Is your 500+bhp rating after full bolt-ons? Are these included with the kit?

http://www.the370z.com/members-370z-...z-journal.html

Here is 390whp after a pulley swap.
http://www.the370z.com/forced-induct...ger-story.html
It made 343whp before the pulley swap, but with HFC/CBE on a mustang-dyno.

Is an exhaust included with the S/C kit? No, it's available separately. Cars can vary, the last couple installs on the current tune are leaving here with 418-430whp depending on the car, so roughly 500HP, and only with exhausts.

RCZ has headers, HFCs and our exhaust, along with a higher boost pulley and 93 octane, with a custom tune from HP Logic.

Looks like the 500bhp was figured on a 20%+ powertrain loss, when installed on an otherwise stock car.

The article certainly isn't the best article and the guy doesn't seem to know too much, or writes like he doesn't....

But if I look at the setup of the car I can surely see why the guy was enjoying the car. SC for extra power, oil cooler to keep it cool, KW's, AP brakes and Stillen Sway bars (although a bit soft for my liking, I believe these are the only bars that actually won't give your car tons of extra understeer, like all the others).

Seems like a winning setup to me! :tup:

Let's say 415whp and 18% drivetrain ~506HP.. so approx 500HP is a reasonable assumption for the CARB version of the kit on 91 octane.

Fair enough. Perhapse I jumped at it too early. I am very curious to see some track times. I would expect 11's@117+ on a tire with a good driver considering corvette's with around 375-385whp have done it. Hence why I was totally unenthused about 12.8@112. Especially when their stock trap was about 10mph less. Comparable driver and condition, only gained 10mph = 100whp=375whp or so.

I'd love to drive that car. I've seen it in person a couple times in the Stillen garage.

Josh, I ran into a nice yellow 350Z with black aftermarket wheels, exhaust, and who knows what else on the 55 today with a Stillen plate frame. We had a bit of fun when traffic broke :) I may have to come down and pick up a plate frame from you whenever the license plate shows up in the mail!

lol.. that's funny!

Be happy to get you a plate frame!

I'm srry but that stillen supercharger is effin junk....my boys 03 350z with a vortech blower laid down 414whp and 346 trq...might as well save the money and go gtm twins and that's xactly wat I'm doin come february...

I have to ask, why all the hate for Stillen? It seems anytime a Stillen product is released everyone is very quick to rip on it and put their products down.

I see Stillen reps on here fielding questions and responding in a reasonable manner, but the amount of hate for Stillen seems much higher than any other company that has products available for the 370z.

Am I missing something in the company history that would deserve this animosity or is it just trendy to hate on Stillen these days?

What exactly is "junk" about the stillen kit, it uses the Vortech V3 supercharger. If you have some constructive criticism after real world experience with the product, by all means please share, otherwise lets stop spreading fud.

I agree, I have no issue with Stillen and a lot of that comes from Josh and Kyle!

I don't even have anything on my car from them, but I would buy from those two any day!

Stillen's presence on the forum that I have seen is polite/professional.

My thought is that my and other's angst is stirred because of consistantly low dyno numbers from those with the Stillen SC, as well as the issues Stillen had with bringing the SC to the market. It appeared to me, an outside observer, that the whole thing was very hap-hazard and had serious issues regarding the tune that weren't corrected before it hit the market. The way people rip on Nissan for not having an Oil Cooler on the NISMO from the factory, this is 10X worse in my opinion. The whole "No 2 cars are the same" thing is certainly true, but Diablo and LS1Edit and Predator and all of those canned tunes seem to have no issues improving stock tunes across the board. Stillen shouldn't, either. Maybe (probably is) there is something I don't know, but I always heard Stillen was good, quality, expensive-but you see where your money went- type stuff. This SC kit has not struck me as such. The hardware looks great. The implementation, not so much. I sure as hell wouldn't pay that much for what amounts to a 100whp* increase on a stock car when there are other options available.

*Backed up by track times and dyno numbers I have seen for the setup with a standard pulley.

Enough of all this jibber-jabber.

Much more importantly...

What are the 'Stillen brake ducts' ???

I see what you're saying and believe me, what you all felt about the initial release struggles was nothing compared to what we have all experienced here at the shop. In regards to the issues that you describe, no doubt there were some issues with a few of the early installations. Some issues were caused by the installation, some were caused by glitches in the factory NISSAN tune that were unknown until UpRev was able to find them. The good news though is that all of the installations that are being done now and the customer's who were experiencing issues have been sorted out or are in the final stages of being sorted out. Keep in mind, out of all of the kits that we have sold only a VERY small percentage have actually had any issues. I'm sure everyone has heard the saying that you don't hear from the happy people, you only hear from the upset ones.

Unfortunately the issues that some of the early adopters experienced have cast a shadow over our testing and our development. A lot of people have made statements along the lines of "if they really did that much testing, all of this would have shown." I know how much testing we did because I was closely involved in a lot of it. Some members of the forum will remember when I brought our test car up to the So. Cal LA meet back in February or March. Right before I put miles on the car Steve took it to Mammoth mountain to do cold weather, high elevation testing. Carrying all the way onto Virginia City near Reno, NV. We also took the G37 5AT to El Toro air force base and flogged on it out there. We also completed some installations on beta testers that very few people knew about. Before a single kit shipped we had probably 5 cars running in perfect order with thousands of miles on them.

In regards to power output, it really depends on how you look at it. When we did that initial release that dyno was still during winter. All of the dyno tests performed recently have been during summer which means higher temperatures and higher humidity...two things that hurt power. I think it was last week that we had a G37 hard top convertible automatic trans with heavy aftermarket wheels that put down 430 horsepower. During summer we had a bone stock 370Z with auto trans that put down around 415. I'll bet if we put that same car up again today we would probably "make" another 15 horsepower without changing anything.

Another car that we installed a kit on just before SEMA completed the installation friday afternoon and drove straight to SEMA from our shop and has been great ever since with the standard R8 tune. Another car drove from Georgia straight to SEMA and back in a week (around 4,300 miles IIRC) with our standard kit and R8 tune with no issues at all.

When I worked for Ford in sales, the number was 1:7. 1 happy person reported back for every 7 unhappy people who reported back.

I have a feeling that it is going to just take time for the Stillen kit to redeem itself. People are going to have to see people posting 11 second timeslips, etc. and people saying "I have 50K miles on mine", etc.etc.

Had it worked perfect out the door, people probably wouldn't be so bi-polar about it--but it didn't, and they are--right or wrong.

Waiting for my brake ducting answer...

Probably a new product similar to this: Stillen Active Rear Brake Cooling Kit Nissan GTR R35

ImportConvert cares because he had one for his Z and . . . Wait. He has no Z. He just knows how to turn every thread he touches into an argument. *sigh*

lol

Sure they have the right to an opinion but that doesn't stop us from realizing how cheap Super Street editors can be bought. :) How much advertising has Stillen bought from Super Street over the past 12 years? :D

My conspiracy sense is tingling!
(I'm not saying the review is incorrect, just pointing out the blatant purpose of magazines like SS)

GTM



that is all

http://www.the370z.com/nissan-370z-g...tml#post843199


*sigh*

Really?


Lets just go ahead and ask. Do you have a Stillen SC? No? Well why were you in here? Is this a case of the pot calling the kettle black? Why did you want to veer so far from the original topic? Seriously? What's you're point? Why are you talking about me instead of Stillen's supercharger or brake-duct kit or something else related?

You sure like pretending you are a moderator, don't you? Or are you just looking to waste band-width. There. I indulged you. Another post to go along with your worthless entry into this thread. In fact, much like the thread I linked, this is your ONLY post in this thread up until this point.


Stillen:

You allude to a tune-issue from Nissan. Are you saying that the tune nissan gives the 370Z is faulty on the stock/oem equipped car, or that problems show up with the algorythms once FI is added to the equation? If the former, is Nissan going to address it?

yeah srsly
Yeah, there's definitely a reputation here on this board because of that. Hopefully people won't completely turn away based on the experiences of a few early adopters and actually check things out on their own. Unfortunately, aftermarket parts are so expensive, people often go by reputation alone. I wish you guys the best.

I personally like the GTM SC kit solely because of the Rotrex supercharger design. Although I would have no problem buying any of Stillens products. They do tons of research. They have been making after market performance parts for years. It sounds like they have worked out the initial issues with the SC kit. It's just a matter of time before the reputation changes. I would like to see some more independent dyno numbers and quarter mile times though.

It really kindof sucks that this thing was "perfected" during a time of year where that is less likely. Couldn't have been planned/helped, just sucks :(

Yes, it does. Hopefully more people will provide some numbers when the warm weather comes back. I will say that I got to mess with a Stillen SC 350z a few weeks ago. A completely different setup but it was impressive none the less.

:icon18: :stirthepot: