I was looking around and surprisingly I didnt see much about this swap here in the 5th gen section, so I assumed we should have a thread to make sure everybody knows this IS possible, and even possible to have no hood interference problems

Parts used:
Z33 Plenum, collector, Lower intake manifold, Driver's side valve cover, gaskets, 3" ID aluminum tube





And for hood reference, since I know the question will come up. See, no cutting


My opinions/impressions:

I have z33 VTC maps from a technosquare ECU, so my impressions are probably a little different from what most people would have, but I LOVE IT. I think it makes as much power everywhere before 6500 that my SSIM did with an AFR tune, but with no tune on the 350z AFR.

I looked into the MREV2 collector and decided I could do it myself (forgot to take pictures ) and I think I did pretty well. Acceleration in second gear from ~25mph and dry pavement will break my heavy 18's loose at ~45 MPH, which is something that has never happened before, even with my 253whp tune I never lost traction in 2nd gear if I had it earlier in the gear.

If anybody is thinking about doing this, seriously just pull the trigger on it. Ill be going to the track on 3/17 to try and verify what the butt dyno is telling me

My advice though would be to cut the outlet pipe at a steeper angle and make sure it is shorter than mine. The angle is too shallow and pipe too long such that the filter is too close to the hood for me to put on a spacer without trimming the hood

 

nice! .. who did the welding?..and how hard was moving the tb around..

 

Very nice. Now you dont have to take the IM off just to swap spark plugs. lol.

Thats good to know that you dont have to mod the hood on the 5th gen. It makes it easy to compare since this and our FWD manifold comes off so easy.

 

wish I had a 3.5, I would do it in a heartbeat

 

Any dyno comparisons?

 

I was planning on doing this, but I dropped it when I heard about the potential hood issues.

I might just pursue this again.

Do you have your engine dropped (I.E. on the ES motormounts?) or is it still at stock height?

Edit: The more I look at your pictures, it looks like we might actually have more clearance with the 350z manifolds vs. the stock one.

 

just a regular guy that runs a fabrication shop down the street. cost me $40

not any legitimate ones. My last dyno was with a vafc-2, which ive since sold. my next dyno will be with 3" exhaust and UTEC

Yeah, I have ES bushings. It definitely doesnt have more room than the stock FWD manifold. With our stock manifold you can easily fit aaron's spacers which add something like 5/16 clearance. This manifold is definitely close to hitting the hood (closest where the filter is which would be easy to fix) and Im sure I would have to cut the hood up a bit to put on a 5/16 spacer. I do have aaron's spacer on the LIM still though

 

I guess what I meant was it looks like there's more clearance toward the rear of the engine bay, by the FSTB. My manifold is about 1/2" from hitting mine.

And yeah, that filter issue would easily be fixable. I can see potential rubbing/hitting in the front, but the rest looks pretty good.

Maybe it's just a picture illusion that makes the manifold look smaller. Or the shape or something.

 

its the shape, and yeah theres a lot more room toward the firewall. The FWD manifold is all toward the firewall and as you know hangs over the rear valve cover. The z manifold is more 50/50 on the engine and doesnt cover up much more than just the space between the valve covers. There is definitely more strut bar clearance too. My FWD manifold would rub it until I put in strut bar spaces, but now I can but my hand between the manifold and bar

 

I had a couple of questions. First, in the pictures, is your MAF attached directly to your filter? Second, what was the purpose of cutting and welding in the straight section? Was there not enough room to attach the TB to the curved neck and then move the intake from there? I only ask because looking at the OEM 350z manifold, it would seem you could put the intake between the engine and the battery and behind the radiator. This may seem like a bad idea at first, but you could put a box around it and a scoop where the OEM intake scoop location is (above radiator on battery side) and then have a SRI with good cold air.

Again, I don't have any of this in front of me, but just thinking out loud. It may be worth trying for somebody who buys one because worst case scenario they end up doing what you did.

 

yeah. I've had it this way for a while, even with my SSIM and it works fine. Just need a filter for the valve cover breather

if you try to do it this way, the manifold neck will hit the hood in a big way and that's before even putting the throttle body on

 

Good to know. It never hurts to ask!

 

nice job on the mani man. im in for the track times...any previous times? and is that a home made torque dampner?

 

my previous best was 13.526 and yes, thats a homemade torque damper. great for fixing that weird thump that comes from the passenger side engine mount lol

 

prob a dumb ?.. but would there be any gains over the stock clamshell if someone did this with the kinetix shell? or one of the other ones offered that give said gains over stock on 350z'. . .

 

How much do 350Z IMs go for?

 

By the time you find an upper and lower, you'll spend about $160 on eBay.

 

Yeah. You should see similar gains to what the 350z guys see up top. As for down low with stock VTC's, I have no idea what you could expect

I think I spent around $200 for all the manifolds, gaskets, welding, etc to have everything I needed. I bought all the manifold parts used from my350z.com, you can find some pretty good deals on this stuff there

 

I'm wondering do you have a picture of the whole engine? I just wanna see how you distributed everything around.

 

what specifically are you wanting to see? will be easier for me to get your pics if I know what to target.

 

Find a Rev-up lower plenum, see if a spacer will fit...and you will see even more gains.

 

I think he's talking about where/how you routed all the vaccuum lines, the VIAS solenoid, etc. At least that's what I'm assuming.

Anyone care to give me a quick cliffs on rev-up versus non parts? Sounds newbish, I know, but I've never really figured out the difference...

 

Looking for pics right now...damn it where is puppetmaster

anyways, the rev-up has shorter runners, giving it the same low end and small gain mid range and huge gain up top. Kind of like the 00vi is to the 4th gen, allows for power past that 6k rpm mark and beyond

 

this can be done on a 3.0 just research it

 

Regular plenum Left - Rev-up Right

 

Hmmm...

Wonder what the odds of finding the rev-up manifold are, though.

With a 350z manifold, spacers, 350z VTCs and a BBMAF, I can see some potential decent gains being had. Especially considering that it looks like the Z manifold is quite a bit less restrictive than ours.

 

From what I've seen on results, just running a basic 350z plenum setup it tends to dyno right around the same HP. Its when you do the Rev-up plenum and spacer that makes the difference.

Rev-up manifolds can be found...they pop-up and their is a replica that can be bought too....for a pretty penny IIRC.

 

God I was so close to doing this on my 3.0 but I sold all the parts right as I was selling the car...

 

You weren't kidding when you said pretty penny. Fawk.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Motor...item20ab98763f

 

simply put, no. The revup plenum is terrible. Most people with revup engines that are serious into modding get an MREV2 manifold, which is a modified NON-revup manifold. This is because the extremely short length of the revup runners make it a dog in the low RPM range, its only better than the STOCK non-revup manifold after like 6000 RPM and the MREV2 manifold is better than the revup everywhere under 6100 and its hardly worse after with a spacer. That said, I did the best I could to copy the MREV2 manifold onto my manifold, along with polishing the backside of all the runners. I would be willing to bet that I will be making much more area under the curve with my current setup than if I were to switch it out for a revup manifold

thats an MREV2 manifold, not a revup. Its basically a modified non-revup manifold. This is one of the first recommended mods for guys with a revup engine, along with a spacer. Check out this comparison and the 20+WHP difference at 5600

 

Check out this comparison of the stock non-revup manifold vs. stock revup manifold

Edit: Deleted the graph cause it was freakin huge, added a personal opinion from someone over on g35driver that seems to be the norm for people going FROM a revup plenum to a non revup plenum

"Hey I finally put in the non-rev up lower plenum. Gosh I love the extra torque. All I did was trim down the runner 1 and 2. I'll post up pics later. BTW I only have a Z-tube and I doubt I gained anything from that maybe 1-2 hp, mainly got it for the sound. So my comparison is a good one coming from stock.

My ghetto way of testing it was racing a car before and after. lol


Raced a friend's Trans-am V8, stick, with intake and straight pipe exhaust.

Before: We raced about 3-4 times from a roll. 40mph to 100/110mph. As soon as we started he would jump one car (all the v8 torque) and then it would stay that way until the whole race. All races he beat me by one car length.


After: Today, same car, same driver, raced again. About 4 times, with the same results! This time as soon as we started I stayed with him (he no longer got the hit and jumped infront). 40-100mph ,
I pulled 2.5 cars on him and kept pulling but we slowed down (100-110mph). "

 

Time for a spacer. Those front cylinders are begging for more air.

 

Yep Gemner is correct. The revup lower is widely considered junk on the Z/G forums when compared to the MREV non-revup lower. Most swap it out... not in.

It's cute how Drunkie was pulling all that out of his anus, though. He really knows what he's talking about!!!

 

I don't visit the Z/G forums...There are a couple threads on the org saying otherwise back in the day...so I was still under the impression it was the other way round don't be a chrome91

 

Don't worry, I'm not that stupid... Nor the one spreading misinformation.

 

Well every once in a while I get a little wood on the ball.

 

I did this years ago to my 3.5 4th gen but didn't really notice a difference.

 

makes sense....as stock for stock both IMs tend to give the same HP numbers

 

Having "fixed" cam timing makes a world of difference from operable VTC's. I think my SSIM and tune made the same amount of peak HP as this manifold is making, but it feels like the power before 6300 is much greater

you mean revup vs non revup or non revup vs FWD IM? Its not uncommon for stock z's to dyno 230+whp, where stock FWD IM cars dont dyno past 215 whp (typical). I think most people if they were to do this would not get the same effect as me since i have z33 vtc's, polished plenum and semi polished collector, headers, etc. My butt dyno is reading more power than my SSIM'd and tuned manifold and I dont have a spacer or tune. I guess well see next weds though what the reality is, everybody knows a butt dyno can be seriously out of calibration

 

there is a dyno floating around with maxima before and after the IM to Plenum swap...he gained a small amount but it was chopped up to be cooler weather or something. Don't know how his before and after tune was setup but I figure it was a simple VAFC tune w/ wideband type tune IIRC. SSIMs were proven to loose power from some recent info that surfaced recently a couple months back