Double Down Motorsports 370Z
The Build - Phase One
Purchasing the Car
Given our past history with our old time attack 350Z it was only natural to progress into the new Nissan 370Z. The new Nissan 370Zs hit showroom floors in January 2009. Ideally, we would have chosen a base model 370Z with the stock sport package in either black or red, but with the first time attack of the season only two months away and each dealership only having two 370Zs each, we didn't have the luxury of choosing our perfect car. After searching all over the west coast, it seemed that 95% of the new 370Zs that were available at the time were equipped with automatic transmissions which we did not want. After a few weeks of searching we ended up with our new 370Z, the only manual transmission model within a 200 mile radius of Las Vegas. We ended up with a Brilliant Silver color, which is the same exact color our old time attack 350Z started life with. We also ended up with a touring package instead of a base model. The touring package offered many creature comforts that are awesome for a daily driven street car like our 370Z is, including bluetooth hands free phone, satelite radio, and heated power leather seats. At first we didn't want this package because of the extra cost and the extra weight it adds to the stock car, but after living with these options on our daily driven 370Z, the added comfort on the streets was worth the small peformance disadvantages on the track due to added weight. That is, until we swap the seats and steering wheel out anyway. We did get a sport package though which included the Nissan (made by Akebono) big brake kit, stock limited slip differential, and 19" Ray's sport wheels with wider Bridgestone RE050 tires. The other thing the sport pacakge gave us, which is really why we wanted it, was the new SyncrhoRev Match transmission where the transmission automatically and instantaniously blips the throttle on downshifts mimicing perfect heel-toe downshifting every time.
SPL Parts Pro Rear Camber Arms
As soon as we recieved our 370Z the first order of business was to get on the horn to all of our previous sponsors and other companies that may have or want to build parts for the 370Z. The first company to jump on the opportunity was SPL Parts, one of our sponsors on our old time attack 350Z. SPL Parts makes incredible suspension products for the Nissan/Infiniti sports cars and they were quick to send out a set of their rear camber arms for the Infiniti G37 for us to test fit. Luckily the parts were an exact fit and we officially had our first modification on our 370Z! The SPL Parts Pro Rear Camber Arms are exceptionally well made pieces that allow you to adjust your rear camber well beyond the limits of the stock adjustments. The benefit to this is being able to adjust your alignment as needed to maximize grip and tire life both on the track and on the street. Not to mention the SPL Parts Pro Rear Camber Arms are much stronger than the stock non-adjustable counterparts and made to withstand the abuses of track driving.
Click here for a photo of the SPL Parts Pro Rear Camber Arms on our 370Z!
Berk Technology High Flow Catalytic Converters
Berk Technology, who was a sponsor on our old Project Evo IX, also stepped up to the plate and sent us some 350ZHR/G37 High Flow Catalytic Converters for us to test fit on the 370Z. Like the SPL Parts Camber Arms, these parts crossed over and fit perfectly on the 370Z! Not only did we want to test the fitment, but we also wanted to test the power that these were sure to gain on the car. The stock catalytic converters are very restrictive on the 370Z and rob a lot of horsepower from the engine because of it. These high flow catalytic converters free up some of that horsepower while maintaining a catalytic converter, which is a part of your car used to reduce pollutants in your exhaust. In addition they aslo include extra o2 sensor bungs for use with aftermarket air/fuel gauges or tuning tools and the main o2 sensor bungs are spaced out so your factory o2 sensor will not cause your check engine light to come on due to the increased flow. They also offer a cat-delete pipe, aka "test pipe" for the car which eliminates the catalytic converter all together freeing up even more horsepower. We chose the high flow catalytic converter as they are required within the Redline Time Attack Street Class rules.
To test the power, we first took the car to Nevarez Racing here in Las Vegas to use their DynoJet dynomometer, which is a device used to calculate a car's horsepower and torque at the rear wheels. Before we installed the Berk Technology high flow catalytic converters we took the car to Nevarez Racing in completely stock form to get a baseline of what kind of power the stock 370Z was putting out. The result was 280 horsepower and 233 torque at the rear wheels. We then swapped the stock catalytic converters out for the Berk Technology high flow catalytic converters, the rest of the car remained stock. We re-dynoed the car now with the Berk Technology high flow catalytic converters and the results were astonishing. The new results were 299 horsepower and 251 torque at the rear wheels yeilding a gain of 19 horsepower and 18 torque at the rear wheels! In addtion to adding excellent performance, these catalytic converters also improved the sound of the stock exhaust greatly. And to add even more value to these excellent modifications, they also weigh a full 10 lbs. less than the stock catalytic converters and we all know that weight is the enemy of performance. These also removed those 10 lbs. off of the front end of the car, which is the hardest area to shed weight on a front engine vehicle. This is without a doubt an excellent bang for your buck modification on the 370Z.
Click here to see our 370Z on the dyno at Nevarez Racing during testing!
Hawk HP+ Brake Pads and Motul RBF600 Brake Fluid
With the first round of the 2009 Redline Time Attack season right around the corner, upgrading the stock brake pads and fluid is a must for safety and performance reasons. The stock brake pads and fluid are not meant to withstand the heat generated by driving a car at its limit around a race track. Either one of two things will happen, the first usually being boiling of brake fluid. When your brake fluid reaches a certian temperature it will actually start to boil creating air bubbles in your brake lines. When you get air in your brake lines the result is that when you go to hit the brakes, your pedal will go to the floor and you will not be able to stop. That is why it is absolutely mandatory to swap your stock brake fluid out for a performance brake fluid before going to a race track. We chose Motul RBF600 brake fluid which has a much higher boiling point and works with factory brake and ABS systems. Be sure to read your car's owner's manual to see which types of fluid your car can use. Most will require a DOT3 or DOT4 fluid.
The second issue with tracking a car with stock braking components is overheating the stock brake pads. All brake pads have an operating temperature range that they are designed to work in. Stock brake pads have a fairly low operating temperature range because normal street driving will not heat your brakes up very much. The story is completely different when you go to a race track. Just driving a car at its limit alone will naturally generate a lot more heat in your brakes than normal driving, but there are other factors that can contribute to this as well incluiding tire size, tire compound, the layout of the track, and how fast the car is. Now most people dont realize that its acutally your tires that have the greatest effect on your stopping distance. You can only brake as hard as your tires will allow so the stickier and larger the tire, the better the braking capabilities, but also the more heat generated by your brakes. There is a catch though to brake pads and that is, the more you up your operating temp range, the worse they are at colder temps, so a true race pad will not be verry effective on the street. So it really is best to have two sets of pads for your car, one for the street and one for the track. Given the fact that our 370Z will be almost completely stock and on stock tires for our first track day we guessed that the Hawk HP+ brake pads would be an appropriate fit. The Hawk HP+ blur the line between street and track. They are right in the middle of being considered a full track pad and a full street pad. Now although they work well on the street, they are really noisy and creat a lot of brake dust. They are recommended for autocross applications or lightweight and stock cars on a track. The downside is that once your car gets faster, it wont be long before you out grow these pads.
Odyssey PC680 Lightweight Battery
As mentioned earlier, weight is the enemy of performance and as also mentioned earlier, taking weight off of the front end of a front engine car is much harder than taking weight off of the back end. In a perfect world, a perfect car would have perfect 50/50 weight distribution front and rear, side to side, and corner to corner, but unless you want to use your engine as an arm rest, this almost never happens coming from the factory. So when striving for that 50/50 front to back weight distribution, any weight you can take off of the front end is an exceptional bonus. One of the easiest ways to do this is to swap out your stock battery with a lightweight racing battery. Although small, a lot of these batteries will be more than fine for daily driven vehicles. The only downsides are that they will lose charge quicker than your stock battery and if big stereo stystems is your thing, then you wouldn't want one. Although if big heavy stereo systems is your thing, you probably aren't concerned with shedding weight in the first place. We chose the PC680 battery from Odyssey and mounted it in the stock location using a universal mount we had lying around the garage to bolt it to the factory battery tray. The stock 370Z battery weighs in at a stout 35 lbs. while the little Odyssey PC680 battery weighs in at only 14 lbs., a weight savings of 21 lbs. over stock!
Click here to see a photo of the Odyssey PC680 battery installed on our 370Z!
Mishimoto Universal Oil Cooler Kit
One thing we learned from magazine tests of the 370Z prior to the release of the car is that they need an oil cooler before heading to the track. It is an unfortunate issue with the 370Z from the factory and has been reported that it only takes a few laps for oil temperatures to reach dangerous levels causing the car's computer to drastically cut down on power and limit rpms. Two things that will not fare well for lap times at the track. Hopefully Nissan will rectify the situation on later model 370Zs, but for us, an oil cooler will be a must have before heading to our first track event. Due to limited product availability and time, we chose a universal oil cooler kit from Mishimoto and retrofit it to our 370Z by fabricating a mounting bracket for it. Aside from having to make your own mounting bracket, which is not uncommon for universal applications, the rest of the oil cooler kit fit surprisingly well. Hose length did not need to be altered and the sandwich plate and oil filter went on without a hitch. The oil cooler is mounted behind the front grille in order to get clean cool air flowing through it and in addition to air cooling the oil, the cooler also adds an extra quart of oil capacity which will also help with keeping oil temperatures in check. Since the oil had to be drained to install the cooler, we took the opportunity to fill it back up with Royal Purple 5w30 synthetic motor oil and we also replaced the stock oil filter with a PurePower Lifetime oil filter which is also advertised to help cool oil temps through its efficient design.
Click here to see a photo of the Mishimoto Universal Oil Cooler Kit installed on our 370Z!
Jim Wolf Technology Dual Pop-Charger Intake System
Jim Wolf Technology is another previous sponsor of our old time attack 350Z who was one of the first manufacturers to release an intake kit for the 370Z. Needless to say we were one of the first to jump on this product to add more horsepower and get any advantages we could going into our first track day and time attack with the car. Jim Wolf's "Pop-Charger" intake systems have been very popular items for the 350Zs, G35s, G37s, and now 370Zs. The intakes replace the stock air boxes and filters with high flow air filters, large venturi inlets, and heat shields to keep as much heat from the engine away from the filters as possible. Although we did not independently dyno test these intakes on our car, they are advertised by Jim Wolf Technology to proved 6.5 to 10 horsepower at the rear wheels. Since some of our Street Class competitors in the Redline Time Attack series are making upwards of 700 horsepower at the rear wheels, we will need all the help we can get in the power department.
Click here to see a photo of the Jim Wolf Technology Dual Pop-Charger Intake System installd on our 370Z!
BC Racing ER Type Coilovers
BC Racing Suspension, who was a sponsor on our old Project Evo IX, did an incredible job of getting coilovers ready and out to us for test fitment. BC Racing North America's owner even personally flew out to Las Vegas from Flordia to oversee the install and see if there were any fitment issues on this prototype kit. Luckily BC Racing makes a quality product and fitment was perfect right out of the gate.
Coilovers are one of the best modifications you can do to a car and are an essential part of making any car go fast around a race track. Not only do they provide us with better spring rates and dampening to increase overall performance but the BC Racing ER Type coilovers we chose for our 370Z offer so many possibilities for adjustment and fine tuning. The ER series coilovers have separate compression and rebound adjustments that will allow us to fine tune our cars handling easily at the track. The also offer independent ride heigh adjustment which will allow us to not only lower the car and its center of gravity, but also perform a proper corner balance, which will allow us to dial in a perfect 50/50 cross wieght for even better handling. With this being the first set of BC Racing coilovers on a 370Z the spring rates were a guess and BC Racing guessed 12k for the front and 10k for the rear. On paper that sounds like it would be a pretty rough ride for normal street driving but I was impressed to find that it actually was a very very streetable setup. Now we would just have to wait to see how they perform on the track. Another added bonus for us in terms of track performance is that without any factory camber adjustments up front and no aftermarket solutions, lowering the car will actually give us a little negative camber up front. It is not near enough for optimal handling but every little bit helps.
Click here to see a photo of our 370Z lowered on BC Racing ER Type Coilovers!
Time Attack Setup - Round #1 - Buttonwillow Raceway
Round #1 of the 2009 Redline Time Attack series was to be held at Buttonwillow Raceway at the end of March, less than two months after picking up our 370Z from the dealership. Going into this event we knew that our 370Z would not be competitve against the rest of our competitors who are all in highly modified versions of cars like the S2000, Lotus Elise, Mustang, etc. which have all been available for years and whom all have an extensive array of aftermarket modifications to choose from. Simply put, the 370Z does not have the aftermarket parts available to it to be competitive in this sport and in this class...yet.
That being said, our whole 2009 season will be dedicated to slowly helping manufacturers make and test aftermarket performance parts for this platform and transform this mostly stock 370Z into a competitive Street Class time attack car for 2010. Just because we were bringing a knife to a gun fight, didn't mean we weren't going to sharpen that knife as best we could. We were going to prep this car to the best of our abilities.
The first step was removing some weight from the car while staying within the street class rules. All of the plastic interior pieces, spare tire, subwoofer, tools, and carpeting were removed from behind the two seats shedding an extra 70 lbs. of weight off of the car in a matter of 10 minutes. And the best part is, all of those pieces can easily be put back into the car in about 10 minutes once you are done at the track!
The next step was to corner balance the car. Corner balancing is the art of trying to attiain perfect 50/50 weight distribution between the left rear wheel and right front wheel, also known as cross-weight. Balancing this out to 50/50 wieght distribution will improve your car's handling across the board. Improper corner balancing can lead to bad handling characteristics that can even change in different turns, meaning your car could have understeer in right turns, but oversteer in left turns. You will want to corner balance your car just as it will be when its raced, with the driver in the seat and a specified amount of fuel in the tank. We chose to corner balance our car with 1/2 tank of gas.
Once the car was corner balanced, we set the rear camber and toe. Since the 370Z doesn't come with any camber adjustment up front we were stuck with the -1.6 degrees negative camber we got from lowering the ride height. Ideally we would like to start at around -3 degrees and adjust from there, but that will have to wait until the aftermarket comes out with adjustable upper control arms. Because we had SPL Parts rear camber arms on the car though we were able to dial in our negative camber in the rear. Because we didn't have much negative camber in the front, we didn't want to go too agressive in the rear and cause the car to understeer greatly so we set it at -2.1 degrees which will help save our tire life and improve rear grip, but hopefully not to the point where we start having front grip issues. We chose to set the toe at 0 all around. Once done with the alignment and a quick brake fuild and brake pad swap, we were ready for the time attack!
Click here to see a photo of our 370Z with the rear trunk area gutted!
