When you have been doing this stuff for over 38 years you learn quickly what's a good ROI and what isn't as mods can put you out living in the street and broke real fast...

There is a definition or standard that is a defacto agreed upon understanding in the performance mods arena for determining ROI....ands its what I have stated above...$25 to $30 / 1-HP gain....

No reason to fan the flames here. I'm not upset over what I paid. Just because a $1200 exhaust on a Camaro gets you more hp than on a small displacement car doesn't mean that it's going to be cheaper. The prices I paid weren't exhorbitant. The hp gains were smaller than expected, but that's why I posted this....so people would see the truth and understand what they are getting into when they start adding up manufacturer's claims of 18hp here, 10 hp there, etc., then go and dyno and find out they didn't get what they thought.

Try crunching those numbers on a Porsche, Lambo or Ferarri and see what you get.... the turbo Lambo kit from Heffner is widely acclaimed, but $30,000 for 300 hp. Superchargers for the Cayman are about $10,000 and give you 100 hp. The only cheap place to get hp is on engines that are making 50-60 hp/liter. The Z doesn't fall into that group.

Me giving Stillen money isn't going to put me on the street, nor is it going to cause the US economy to collapse. I paid cash for my goodies and have enough cash on hand that I'll give Stillen even more money when their supercharger kit comes out. I don't even care that this is money lost in depreciation when I sell the car. This is not an investment, it's a play toy. Not only that, but it's a cheaper play toy than the girls I get to ride around in it with me. When I go out and buy parts for it, it's just a good excuse to tell my girl that I'm not going to buy that hand bag or heels that she wants because I spent my cash on car parts!

-Phim

:bowrofl: So true! How does it feel compared to stock? Is it more of a no comparison, or just abig improvement?

Ditto... I would like to at least hear the thoughts of these guys with 320+ power. Do you feel you Z can hang with a c5 Z06 on a road course? What about an autocross track??

Just curious....

What a piece of work. Do the following facts not compute for you?

1) Amount spent on car is completely unrelated to, and says nothing about, one's financial situation. I make a damn good living, and no amount of 370Z modding is going to put me "out living on the street and broke real fast". Perhaps for someone who works at McDonalds, even a hobby of painting plastic model planes once a month could do that, but that's neither here nor there. The point is, different people can afford different levels of spending on hobby stuff, and you're not the arbiter of what makes financial sense for anyone else.

2) A "dollars per horsepower" figure is senseless. Think of the extremes. A very small, fast, light car might weigh 1,800 lbs and have a 200hp engine. A 20hp bump in that car is worth a lot more (performance-wise) than a 20hp bump to a 4,500 lbs car that has a 400hp engine. Therefore there is no universal performance value for "20hp", it varies by car. Further than that, there is no universal standard for how much a unit of horsepower costs. Some cars are more expensive to mod. Some methods of modding are more expensive than others, because you're looking for other secondary effects (like throttle response and handling issues and lighter weight methods of adding the same power). Think about the case of a titanium exhaust system. Same power gains as a steel one, costs 3-4x more money for the same gains. Worth it to some, not to others.

I'm sorry if my "novice naive beliefs" offend you. I think your statements make no rational sense.

:superghey: who cares how much he spent per HP.. Its his money and hes blowen the doors off any other N/A Z.. Sure with a turbo or S/C you get more HP for your buck.. but its his buck and his car and his plan.. If i wasnt planning on gettting the Greddy TT kit I would drop 5k for 330whp in a sec.. you gota pay to play.. I think you are just jealous he's got the paper to play more then you do.:rofl2:

Yayayay love!

:drama:

True. It's like any hobby. You want a expensive one, get into DSLR cameras with all the lenses. :)

Regardless of the merits of your original argument, what really puts your posts in the shitter is that you're constantly throwing out insults. I've now been called what? Stupid, naive, novice, dumb-azz? Is that your plan to win a rational argument?

If your dollar per horsepower figure is such an accepted industry standard, surely you can find a reliable source online to quote this from, with some kind of rational argument behind the quote, right? Link it, now. This is the era of the internet. I could find a reference on the mating habits of some obscure Australian earthworm in 5 minutes flat. Surely you can find some backup for your iron-clad dollars per horsepower figure. For that matter, why don't you find some backup for your Porsche engine oil testing data you posted in that other thread in same sort of manner?

And if you don't think enhancing the performance of your car is worth it, perhaps you should spend your money somewhere where ROI even makes sense as a term, like the stock market.

The Porshe engine data can be found here:

ELEPHANT RACING Tech Topic, Oil Temperature and Engine Life

And an FYI...Elephant Racing is internationally well known for its race-design partnership with Porsche.

As I stated about the mod dollars / HP figure....I found out about this when I got started in doing mods on the various Mustangs I owned and dragged raced since 1997. There were roads I was going down much the same as you folks but I quickly learned to listen to the folks who had the experience and not pursue trying to one-up one-another and casting to the wind all common sense when it comes to price-point / HP gained.

The real insulting part is that the vendors and performance shops certainly can easily identify easy targets who decide dollars spent by way of emotion...its the oldest sales trick in the book...

So, can we get references on your data next time without a side of smartass insults? What made you decide I can't extrapolate data?

So more insults, now I'm a dummy too, and have no common sense...

And your data is basically, "Well I once raced mustangs, so I'm allowed to pull numbers outta my ***", got it.

And more insults...

What the **** is your problem, seriously? Do you honestly think you can read my mind from Ohio? Do you know of a source for a better bolt-on setup than what most of us are running, getting all the same benefits cheaper on a 370Z? If so, please share your knowledge with the rest of us, even though we're idiot losers. :rolleyes:

Maybe you just need to slow down and rethink how you're posting. Read what you're posting before you hit that button. You realize if you talked like this to anyone in person (say at a car meet), people would either walk away, call you you a *******, or beat you into the ground, depending on their personal demeanor, right?