Was reading about someone trying to make their own spacer out of wood or plastic cutting board. Was curious as to what some of the knowledgable people on here have to say.

http://my350z.com/forum/showthread.php?t=324855

 

Why not support a good, honest org sponsor that is making a quality product?

 

In my case he doesnt make them yet. But yea i would get whats been tried and true .

 

I was just asking if people thought it could be done. I guess some people like to try things that might be done by themself.

 

Anything can be done. So the answer is yes.

 

A big part of the benefit of aaron's spacers are lower intake manifold temps. What do you propose you would gain from homemade spacers made of lesser materials?

 

Not spending the money. That can be the only thing he can gain.

 

Man tough crowd. Where did I say anything of gaining anything or not supporting the sponsors of .org? I just noticed someone was going to take the effort and try and make some. I guess my main question was will they work as stated in that thread. Meaning will making a spacer out of plastic(such as a cutting board or wood) work somewhat to a degree that the other spacers work.

 

the cutting board IMO i would go for maybe for a TB spacer sure but for the lower intake just buy some phenolic and get it done bro i support any DIY person!

 

350Z spacers work on a different principle. From the factory the front 2 cylinders are starved for air relative to the others. This is why they see such nice gains, phenolic or not. So in essence, they could make a spacer out of granite or drywall and as long as it held vacuum at idle it would be just as beneficial as any other spacer. This is not the case with FWD IM's. I don't want to hypothesize about what %'age of the gains from aaron's spacers come from the added thickness (effectively lengthening the intake tract) or from the lower temps but added thickness alone won't have the big benefit you might want. So unless these homemade spacers are made from phenolic plastic and significantly lowers intake manifold temps you'll leave something on the table.

 

Thanks for the technical reply.

 

yes it can be done excatly what kind of wood not sure but muscle car guys have been making them for years but they use them for carb and tb spacers. just in the last few years have companies started to make them.

http://www.competitionproducts.com/p...p?number=65015
http://www.edelbrock.com/automotive_.../tb_ford.shtml

 

My last post was edited somewhat for clarity. Sorry about coming across the wrong way. I just didn't understand what the question was, initially.

 

Thanks. Was kinda wondering what strength the material needed to be made of. I had one of the first versions on the kinetix on my 350z and it cracked and they replaced it.
So being a so called gasket(spacer) see"s less force than say an intake itself?

 

i guess that wood can be used for tests/prototyping, just to see how things feet together, but as a permanet solution.. i don't think so. as for plastics... cutting board? like those used in the kitchen? I've done one zim spacer out of delrin and a few of aluminum. delrin seems to be fine as a material for that kind of spacer.

 

YET! The 4th gen is the next kit to be released! Just hang in there!

 

You need to get some dyno numbers and preorder lists up! I'm ready to put my advance payment down right now. I check this site every day hoping for more info on your progress and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

 

Thank you. I appreciate all your support.

I will not take any advanced orders. It only complicates matters. I will be doing full dyno and temp testing before and after on the same day. All within 3 hours of one another.

I hope to have the first set of prototypes complete within the next 3-4 weeks. Testing will happen very soon after that.

 

De-K kit on the way as well?

 

Yes it is. But there are no guarantees it will help. But it will be worth my time to design a prototype in order to conduct testing.

 

I doubt the DEK will see much benefit. The UM stays cool very well as it is, being plastic, compared to the aluminum manifolds.

 

Yes, but that's not the only thing my spacers do to gain HP. I know the DEK isn't effected by heat soak like other VQs, but my spacers are port matched and eliminate the poorly sized OEM intake gaskets. This reduces a lot of turbulence. Also, the DEK might like the lengthened intake runners. I will have to test it to find out.

 

What about me . I plan to go to a mevi. would your spacers work on that also?

 

With all the research I've done, yes, I believe the 4th gen kit will work with the MEVI. The LIM Spacers will be port matched to the LIM itself. The UIM Spacer will be port matched to the upper ports on the LIM. And the TB Spacer will be port matched to the larger port on the stock UIM, but contour matched to the 4th gen TB itself.

The TB Spacer should also work with a Pathfinder TB with a little porting of course.

 

I should have clarified, I was talking about the UM to LM spacer in my previous post.

I too have found that that the 3.0 LM and heads are not well matched, but in a lot of cases you need a die grinder to really rectify that, ie it's not just the gasket that's the problem. But having said that any intrusion caused by the gasket that you can correct/remove, will of course help to some degree.

 

Yeah, you're right. The only way to really solve the problem is to do port work to your intake manifolds and make sure they are matched all the way to the heads. But all that aside, the OEM gaskets are not matched. So, eliminating that valley the air has to cross over will reduce turbulence. Every little bit helps. It's still worth it to me to test the DEK Spacers. But the UIM Spacer could possibly be made out of aluminum to help reduce costs.

 

Awesome, it's good to hear things are rolling along. We appreciate your support!

 

One of the issues I see with a DE-K spacer, let say you raise the level of the Lower Intake manifold by a 1/4 inche then the heads would not align anymore with the LIM, there is not much offset when it come to align the lower intake manifold with the heads so a spacer on the DE-K might work but the spacer thickness will definitely play a role with the alignement of heads versus LIM.

DandyMax: I'm still working at P & P the DE-K heads, I'm really surprise at the material I was able to shave, but also I think Nissan could have made a much better jobs with those heads, they left some power on the table. I'm now absolutely sure that this will give really good gain once finished. I'm now just waiting for the valve guide tool to arrive as I want to remove them all so I can do a much better jobs at porting the heads. I first tough that they must have precisely machined the heads but it is very surprising to see the somehow difference in size from one port to the other.

 

Oh no. The Spacers that go between the LIM and the heads are only 1/16" thick. That is how the VQ35DE Kit is designed. You can't go much thicker than that without running into alignment and airflow issues.

Here is the VQ35DE Kit. Noticed how thin the two LIM spacers are.



I am mainly referring to the UIM Spacer, which will go between the LIM and UIM. Right now, that is expected to be 1/4" thick. It depends on how the dyno testing goes.

 

So i will get out of this thread now. Let me know as soon as you get the vq30 kit.

 

It's ok. My goal is to have the the 4th gen Maxima Intake Spacer Kit ready by the Florida Maxima Meet this Spring. It'll be REALLY tough, but that's what I'm shooting for.

 

Im thinking about making the 20 hour drive to the florida meet

 

Thinking? You are already on the list. There's no backing out now!

 

I found a old Turbo Mag from 2000 the other day. One of the feature cars was the 2000 Stillen Maxima. In the specs it mentioned having a manifold spacer. I'll try to look it up again. Not sure how they came about getting one for the Maxima back in 2000.

 

I knew you would be making your home work so to speak, but because I've been extensively working on the DE-K I just wanted to share some though. Anyway my car might not see pavement before spring 2009 so I can wait and see when your DE-K kit is ready, I'll be on your list of buyer for sure. Good work Aaron.

 

Ok thanks.

I hope your project goes smoothly. It certainly is a LONG one.

 

When I decided to stored the car 15 months ago in order to start a complete rebuilt of my 2k1, I knew it would be a great challenge to do all by myself, because of the many aspect it involve but I have a heck of a time doing it.

I wanted to do something like this for a long time and so far I can say thing are going smoothly & quite well. Without the help of guys like you ,DandYmax and few others it wouldn't have been possible for me to push the build as far as I wanted. I appreciate very much the help & encouragement that I get here, this give me hope and extra layers of protection. I dream of the day that I'm going to turn the ignition key but until this happen I'm going to work hard and deliver what I've promised.

Have a good one.

 

This would be a little risky I would think...