First off we would like to congratulate the owner of this car on it’s (now not so recent) purchase! He traded in his ’05 35th Anniversary edition with the VQ35DE engine for this ’08, it turns out he just couldn’t resist the call of the HR!!
This build started off some time ago when it came into Z Car Garage fully stock with plans for a simple Injen intake system, a new-to-the-market ARK cat-back exhaust system, and a set of high flow catalytic converters. It turns out that we saw nearly zero gain from the ARK exhaust (we tested it on it’s own with no other modifications) and the fitment was beyond terrible so it was packed up and sent back immediately. Bummer I know.
Not willing to accept defeat we decided to go with the tried and true Bassani cat-back system in search of actual power. The new exhaust came right back at us with a nice gain and the Bassani exhaust note can only be described as GLORIOUS!
Now that the car had a little bit of get-up-and-go the owner decided to upgrade the rolling stock, and with a set of VOLK wheels it is hard to go wrong. A hard to find, and very expensive, set of VOLK GTS wheels (with a killer looking matte black center) was chosen and wrapped in Toyo Proxes rubber which I’m pretty sure are 255’s in the front and 285’s in the rear.
This list of mods was able to hold him over for awhile-ish. Actually the need for more power and a killer stance on the Z33 was eating away at him… as it does all of us. Now a set of Stillen headers were ordered and added to the mix. More exhaust flow means more power… within reason of course in a normally aspirated engine. To up the ante one more level we also contacted UPREV and decided to do a computer re-flash so that we could form the timing and ignition maps to a higher level.
All of the hardware changes without the re-tune netted us 18 horsepower and 12 ft/lbs of torque at the rear wheels. From here on out we started to play with the UPREV re-flash system. You will see from the dyno graph that it took us quite a few runs to get the tune to where we were happy with it. We were able to gain 8hp and 1 ft/lb of torque and we still think that there may be a little more in the Z. We have the software to re-tune the car anytime we wish now so we will be taking another crack at it in the near future. Plus I have a feeling that there will be a few more modifications done which will require further tuning magic.
Now to obtain the proper stance for the car a set of PSS10 Bilstien coil-overs were delivered to the shop. It even says on the shock that they are tested on the Nurburgring, how cool is that? (see photos after the jump) The issue here with a Z or G is that camber becomes an issue when the lowering gets aggressive. Once again a preemptive strike was made before any problems arose with by installing front and read adjustable control arms from SPL Parts. One look at the pictures of these parts and you understand why they are so special. Furthermore we also installed a new set of Hotchkis swaybars just so that we left no suspension stone unturned. Looks and awesome handling should always go hand in hand.
You can see from the final picture here that the car now has that killer stance and a good amount of new found power to go along with it. But, like the title says, I’m pretty sure this car will continue to be built up in the constant pursuit of the perfect Z. Will the owner ever reach it? Only time will tell, and we are certainly willing to help.
There are quite a few more photos after the ‘read more’ at the bottom so check them out!!
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