Innovate SCG-1 Boost Controller with Integrated Wideband, Shift Light, and Datalogger
If you have a turbo charged car, the 2 most important gauges you can install are a boost gauge and a wideband air fuel ratio gauge. In the past, this generally meant individual gauges stacked up on your a pillar, or on top of the dash. Let’s face it, that look went out even before the original Fast and Furious movie.
Innovate Motorsports came up with this thoughtful, intelligent solution. An all in one gauge that combines a powerful electronic boost controller with a wideband air fuel meter. It even includes an integrated shift light! Housed in a convenient 52mm (2 1/16″) body. The boost controller portion will control up to 44 psi (4 bar map), has programmable waste gate reference pressure threshold, has programmable solenoid duty cycle (with separate gain control function), and the best part, a user-programmable boost cut safety using Air/Fuel and Pressure as as data reference points!
The wideband portion is compatible with ALL fuel types, gives you the bility to calibrate O² sensor for maximum accuracy
has one configurable linear 0-5v analog output and gives you 4 channels of log-able data (MAP, RPM, A/F, WG duty)
Designed by an American, built in Italy, powered by good old USDM iron – the De Tomaso Pantera was always a bit of an anomaly of the sports car world. Only about 7200 were ever made, from its debut in 1972 till the final one rolled off the line in 1991.
Our customer contacted us with a unique request for his even more unique Pantera. His car has a host of very custom parts, including some carbon fiber components. To compliment this updated look, he wanted to update the aerodynamics as well. We spec’d out a custom made APR GTC-500 spoiler, with bespoke offset mounting brackets to allow it to custom blend with the rear hatch lines.
This isn’t some show queen though, as it has plenty of brute force under the Italian bodywork. A Roush Yates engine powers this redheaded stepchild. Future plans call for a custom carbon rear diffuser, which is already in the works, and a custom front carbon splitter as well.
We are now offering the full Radi-Cal big brake kit setups from AP Racing. This caliper design has raced successfully the world over, and is now optimized so that even a street car can take advantage of them. Some features that separate these setups from others, Firstly, these use a forged caliper, which are both lighter and stiffer than a typical cast caliper used in other big brake kits. One of the neatest aspects of these kits are they were designed to be user friendly. Not only are they a total bolt on, but from a servicing standpoint, they offer very quick and easy pad changes with the removable forged “H” brace at the top of the caliper. The caliper stays mounted to the car, and pads are quickly able to be swapped out.
The pistons are staggered hard anodized aluminum for equalized pad pressure, which in turn promotes better bite, more consistent brake torque, and the best pad wear possible. Dust seals are incorporated to ensure long life and minimal running costs.
The kits are all designed around OEM ABS and traction control systems as well, so no guesswork involved from a chassis setup standpoint. While many nowadays fit a big brake kit simple for their aesthetic value, AP has gone a long way to ensure these are both beautiful as well as the most durable calipers out there – they are both anodized and high temp painted, not just one or the other.
The disks used in these kits are directionally curve vane vented for maximum air flow through the disc. AP Racing’s unique curve vaned discs are Dyno and race proven as the best designed rotors for optimized cooling. The curve vane rotor acts an air pump pulling air into the center of the rotor and blowing it through the veins and out of the top of the rotor. This act allows the rotor to be self-cooling and work extremely efficiently.
AP Racing’s Wide Disc Technology (WDT) is used for the most efficient way to transfer heat to from the disc. Designs using wider discs with larger air gaps increase air flow rates within the discs as proven by AP Racing’s FEA, CFD and TSA testing. This goal was achieved while not increasing disc weight or disc stress and decreasing disc temperatures by up to 300 degrees F.
The disks are of course a 2 piece design, with anodized 6061 T-6 hats. That in and of itself isn’t necessarily “news”, but what is interesting is how they mount. These hats use 12 point mounting vs the 10 point that is more typically found. What’s more, these use floating hardware for the hat to disk which allows both components axial and radial movement. This allows each to cool quicker and more efficiently, while simultaneously allowing the disk to remain centered relative to the caliper. That feature then pays the user big dividends by significantly limiting pad knockback.
The disks also feature the J Hook slot design which increases frictional surface area across the rotor face but without being prone to cracking, like in a cross drilled rotor under extreme temperature swings. We can also offer the kits with a combination slotted/drilled rotor for those that prefer such a configuration.
The pads supplied are true dual purpose
The last piece to the puzzle is of course the brake lines. These can often be a weak link with other offshore kits, but not so with AP. They are made by Goodridge and feature fully extruded PTFE inner sections wrapped in a high strength stainless braid that is both corrosion and fire resistant. This is then all wrapped with a clear outer sleeve as well.
These kits are being offered initially for a wide range of vehicles including the Audi A4/S4 and A5/S5, BMW 3 series, Z4, M3 and M5, Cadillac CTS-V models, Camaro, C5-C7 Corvette, the various SRT-8 models, Mustang, Infiniti G (G25, G35, G37), FX (FX35, FX45, FX50 and M models (M35 and M45), Jeep, and the 350Z/370Z, with additional models to appear. We will be offering free shipping through March 31, 2014, as well as free brake fluid as well (from several choices, depending on your individual needs).
For all retail and wholesale inquiries, contact us at z1sales@z1auto.com
AEM’s Infinity series ECU is now available with a plug and play harness for all 2003-2006 350Z and G35’s with Manual Transmission only (will not support automatics).
This is one of the fastest, most powerful ecu’s on the market at any price point, with a feature list that reads like many higher priced units.
Full Drive by wire control, supports factory widebands on 04.5+ models, full CAN support (so your gauges, check engine light, traction control VDC all remain functional), programmable 3 step rev limiter, even the ability to store and cycle through multiple maps via the cruise control switch.
Click the picture above to read more about it, or to place your order.
A close friend of ours down south has a 350Z. For the last several years it served as faithful daily driver, and weekend track slut. Now that the stars have aligned, and a truck now handles daily driving duties (and doubles as the track-rig on the weekend), the Z has been relegated to primarily track use only. He runs the car all over the Southeast, and despite the fact that it (for now) is still a stock engine with some bolt on’s, it’s wildly competitive. The reason? Intelligently selected modifications. Everything on the car has a purpose. Nothing was selected by accident, and in several cases, it took some trial and error of different components in order to come up with the faster combination.
The car was recently in NASCAR country, North Carolina, for a recent round of upgrades, including a differential and ring and pinion change. While there, a former NASCAR tech got hold of it, and using some fabrication skills and NASCAR carbon splitters (the rear deal), this was the creation. Next set of shakedowns is a few weeks ago at Barber, stay tuned!
There is an old expression in the sports car world “handles like it’s on rails”. In other words, a car that changes direction with such eagerness, authority, and minimal loss of energy, that its akin to a train following a track. To this end, people often go about fitting the stiffest springs they can, with the biggest possible swaybars, and rubber-band thick tires, hoping to reduce lean and roll. This works great on cars with huge sticky tires and lots of downforce (and thus high speeds), and ideally, driven on perfectly smooth tracks. While many try to mimic this on a street car, it’s usually not the case. Normal roads, and even many racetracks around the country are anything but glass-smooth. We’re genernally not running slicks or even R compound tires when we drive to the local diner or for a weekend blast down some backroads, and while we may have installed them on our cars, we’re not generally using dive planes, functional splitters and spoilers to their potential due to street-legal speeds. The same car that handles on rails is also crashing over every imperfection out there. Expansion joints might as well be speedbumps, uneven pavement akin to driving over road spikes. Geometry aside, these super stiff setups often compromise road car handling, more than they improve it. Chassis stiffening is not the same as suspension stiffening, and this is an often-overlooked feature. The chassis of the car is like the skeleton of a high rise building. It’s made of steel girders, because it’s the backbone of the structure. Similarly a cars chassis is the skeleton of the car: it supports everything else.
When NISMO developed the 350Z NISMO edition, mane shunned it as merely a cosmetic upgrade. The engine afterall was the same – but it wore a wildy out there (for a factory car) body kit – a long front bumper with low splitter, a long rear bumper overhang, and a decidedly “Fast and Furious” style spoiler. Delve deeper and you find what makes it so special. The chassis is fully seam welded. Meaning every joint, where 2 pieces of aluminum are bonded together, are full sealed. There are no gaps, there are no open joints. This increases chassis rigidity by a decidely large amount. This is one of the things people often do when bulding a race car from the ground up. To that chassis, Nissan fitted significantly stiffer springs (one of the stiffest out there on a road car) with heavy duty dampers. While the bushings and swaybars remained the same compared to other NISMO cars, the car was noticeably stiffer. But this is, afterall, a road car. While it is very much at home on weekend track days and club events, it’s designed to be a fun, sporting day to day means of transportation. Had it been left alone, it would have been panned for being too obnoxious on the road, too upset by the concrete jungle. To solve those issues NISMO worked with Yamaha to develop a Z-specific pair of body dampers. These attach fore and aft of the shock pointing points, between the 2 biggest “holes” in the chassis – at the front bumper, and in the rear spare tire well. Why there? When a suspension compresses and rebounds, energy is created, stored, and released in very quick succession. The stiffer the spring, the more aggressive the shock valving, the quicker this process happens. Which is why from inside the cabin, that uneven pavement can be downright punishing….whereas in a Toyota Camry, it’s just soaked up effortlessly. The dampers Yamaha and NISMO developed are designed to specifically combat these vibrations, without toning down the benefits that the spring/shock combo gives the handling aspect of the car. When you look at them out of the box, they are basically a strut brace, with a little shock built in. They compress and rebound, like a strut does. However they mount veritcally, whereas shocks mount horizontally. So they combat the natural vibrations the chassis will face when hitting potholes, uneven pavement, and normal bumps in the road. This minimizes energy losses, and lets the spring and shock more efficiently do their job, while keeping the driver comfortable, and thus confident, behind the wheel.
Think it’s still just marketing hype? F1 cars began using similar devices in the 2006 season. Or, just try it for yourself: we have. A 350Z with coilovers (pick your poison, it even helps with wife-friendly coilovers such as Bilstein and KW). With the typical set of low profile 18 or 19 inch tires, and at the typical lowered stance these cars look so good at, it turns the car from a bit erratic over bumps, to downright stable. The suspension is now more able to work in unison, left and right, front to back, whereas without the dampers, it’s a bit of a free-for-all, with the driver being asked to control it all on the fly. It is truly eye-opening how these simple bolt on devices stabilize the vehicle.
The neat thing about these, is they are available for several carswe get here in the US, including the Subaru WRX (02-07), 350Z/G35. Need one for your car? Just drop us a line!
Best of the best on this 350z – Endless Racing 6 big brake kit, Zeal Coilovers with Eibach race springs, Roberuta Cup Kit (to adjust height on the fly), Esprit forged adjustable a-arms, and a bevy of Whiteline and SPL bushings. The end result is going to be out of this world, stay tuned!
Chargespeed carbon hood duct for the GC chassis Impreza as shown on a customer car. A great, stylish option for guys running a front mount (or non turbo guys just looking to change up the look)
We get this question ALL the time – what is the ‘right’ material to select when buying aftermarket body parts? There are a range of materials that manufacturers use. Several higher end manufacturers, mainly in the Japanese realm, offer several of their products in both FRP as well as a blended, or hybrid material. FRP stands for Fiberglass Reinforced Plastic. This term is tossed around alot in the aftermarket aero world. It’s a bit of a catch all term, that generally describes a range of composites (parts made by mixing various materials together). Without getting boring, there are differences among “FRP” blends. Not only do the materials mixed together vary, so do the epoxy types used to hold them together. Since a fiberglass part is only as good as the quality of the mold used to produce it, that is why you see such a huge variation in pricing among parts that on their surface look similar. This is an area where you get what you pay for. For ease of terminology, I will stick to using the generic term “FRP”, but I am specifically referring to the better-branded/manufactured stuff out there, since that is what I am most familiar with. FRP has many fantastic properties. It is extremely strong relative (especially) relative to it’s weight (it’s light), it can be molded into many complex shapes, it is easily repaired should it get damaged, and it’s able to be produced at relatively low costs. FRP really has no downsides in and of itself, it is a terrific material for these type of parts. Some will say that urethane is ALWAYS better, and it’s simply not the case. Urethane molds are extremely expensive to produce, which is why you rarely see aftermarket aero parts offered in the material to begin with. When you do, they tend to be extremely heavy relative to their FRP counterparts. Urethane is extremely durable, mainly because it has so much tensile strength, but should it be damaged via impact, it’s very difficult (and often impossible), to repair. Most times when it suffers such an impact, it has to be replaced. Fiberglass on the otherhand can literally be decimated – shattered into multiple chunks after an impact, but joined back together relatively easily. Serviceability is a big benefit of FRP parts. Another issue with aftermarket urethane, that is often overlooked, is longevity. Depending on where in the world you live, the urethane can break down over the course of time, due to environmental conditions. This process can cause the urethane to lose its shape and literally deform. As this happens, its aesthetic value and its durability both suffer.
In the last 10 years (give or take), we’ve seen variations of fiberglass hit the market. These are components use a combination of different man made materials (urethane, various plastics, etc) added into the “FRP” mixture, and sealed with a different type of epoxy. The purpose of this type of material was to bridge the gap between the aftermarket urethane parts and the OEM plastic/urethane level parts. These blended, or hybrid materials are more flexible vs their straight FRP counterparts, but not as flexible as a full urethane part. In the case of manufacturers like INGS and CWest, their blended materials have the added bonus of requiring much less prep time before they are ready for paint. This type of manufacturing is more expensive to do, so only a handful of worthwhile companies offer it. Several try (mostly knockoff firms), and succeed to varying degrees. In many cases I have seen, while the material itself is generally quite good, in the interest the mold quality suffers. Molds are used for longer than they should be, or simply are inaccurate in the first place. This results in unwanted gaps when installed, or parts that are too long, too short, and require significant prep work in order to actually install on the car. Prep work is expensive, generally charged per hour, and can quickly make the ‘savings’ vs the genuine article disappear. While the hybrid/blended parts are slightly heavier than their FRP counterparts, they are nowhere near the level of a urethane part. Somewhere on the order of 5% or so heavier.
This new wheel is the ultimate for sports and GT drivers, seeking an all in one solution. It combines critical engine data via the engine ecu, combined with GPS track data, and camera data, in a series of customizable pages. Allowing you instant access to multiple channels of critical data. In addition, it features customizable shift lights at the top of the rim, as well as customizable alarms for various user-programmable warning thresholds. There are also user-customizable multi-function buttons allowing you to enable/disable various functions such as traction control, pit speed limiter, radio communication, etc). Using a sequential transmission? No problem – optional paddle shifters are also offered for a seamless integrated solution. Data derived from lap times, speeds, etc can then be played back by the driver at the end of a session right on the wheel display. It’s thoughtfully produced in either 320mm or 350mm diameters, with carbon, Alcantara, and leather for the ultimate combination of strength, weight and grip. The leather features a special cool system design, which reflects sun rays and keeps the grip surface cool to the touch.
Contact z1sales@z1auto.com for purchasing information
Audi B7 Avant on a fresh set ADV1 ADV005. While I’m not a real fan of the tucked look, I just know that with maybe a 1/2 ride height rise, this car would be an awesome daily driver. The wheel design looks awesome with the long lines that the Avant’s have. Contact z1sales@z1auto.com for all your ADV1 custom wheel needs.
Kwame
Z1 Performance
Jonathan
Corner Balance 