Horsham Developments 350Z blog
Below is a record of the events surrounding the H-Dev 350Z car. It was bought completely standard in January. Since then we've fitted new brake pads, decat pipes and remapped it. Things to come include: new headers, new exhaust system, plenum spacer, suspension modification and probably turbos at some point...
26/02/2010
Just got back from the trackday at Abingdon - had a great time. The car performed really well - much better than we expected. The brakes were very good all day - no fade at all. They work really well from cold on the road too. One problem we did come across was that there was increased pedal travel on brake application after driving for a short time - I think we're getting some pad knock off of some sort - could be play in a wheel bearing or something else. We'll try to get to the bottom of the problem as its a bit disconcerting to have less brake effect than you expect. Does make you brake later in to the corners though, so great for laps times ;o).
Another annoying trait of the 350z is the stability program - even with the traction control switched off the system applys the brakes when it thinks you're likely to spin. We found this quite annoying in some parts of the track. Finding out how to switch this off will be fairly high priority.
24/02/2010We have booked the car into a trackday at Abingdon on the 26th February - this will be the car's first track outing with us. From driving the car on the road its pretty clear that the brakes need upgrading for track work. After hearing great things about the Performance Friction pads we thought we'd give their 01 compound a go, along with some high temp brake fluid.
In the first of many modifications we also fitted a pair of decat pipes. We found that the ECU wasn't happy about the removal of these (the check engine light came on and diagnostics told us that the "catalitic converters were not working efficiently" - ha ha. Not really surprising as they weren't there! We carried out a remap to remove these errors and to optimise the fuelling to 0.85 lambda (12.5 AFR).
We have finally got the UpRev ECU mapping software and cable. This will allow us to remap the standard ECU to accommodate any modifications in the future. We have not finalised the long term plan for the car yet, but it will involve engine tuning of some sort.
06/02/2010
We took the completely standard car along to Surrey Rolling Road to see how the engine was performing. It made 257bhp at the flywheel, which isn't that great really. Hopefully we'll be able to improve on this in the future
27/01/2010
Met up with Ebized from 350z-uk.com today - bought some uprated boot struts, the Nismo
spoiler is quite heavy and the standard struts aren't strong enough to hold the
boot open. Hopefully these will solve the problem.
24/01/2010
We took the car along to an SXOC.com / 350Z-UK.com meet in Surrey - met a few familiar 200SX owners and a couple of new 350Z owners. Thanks to Jerry (for organising the meet) and Ebized
from the 350Z crowd.
22/01/2010
Today's the day! - we got our 'new' development 350z car. The car was a cat C write off about 1 year ago, but has been repaired to a very high standard and has only 26k miles on the clock.
Its a UK 2004 (very nearly 2005, was first registered 15/12/2004) GT model in Azure blue with Nismo body kit. Its completely standard at the moment and in great condition.
It needs a little bit of work carrying out - new rear tyres for the MOT (that expires next month) and as with all cars that are new to us, we gave it a full service
(engine oil, oil filter, gearbox oil, diff oil and air filter). We put the car on our
4-wheel laser alignment machine and set it up to the factory spec and also
measured the corner weights. Results and pictures are below.
Next up - we're going to put the car on the dyno as it is and see what results we get. We'll then have a bench mark for any power modifications we carry out.
