Gussied Up Hawkeye

Burnout…..

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Reducing the Vibration, Upping the Performance

NISMO Rear Performance Damper 350Z

NISMO Front Performance Damper 350Z

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!

New Internal Engine Goodness for your Subaru

Tomei has recently released several new components for the Subaru EJ255/57 engines.

First up, their unique barrel forged piston set. The ellipse barrel shape profile was chosen from the advanced analysis of the analysis distribution of piston temperatures, material properties and the coefficient thermal expansion rates. This allowed our design to use much tighter piston clearances for maximum power range. This greatly reduces blow by gases, friction loss and no noise. This maximizes power and longevity of the piston. Specs: Bore diameter: 99.75mm, 19.5cc dome volume, 380 grams (503 grams with pin)

In concert with this new piston release comes their new EJ26 stroker kit. Tomei has made an option to include their Competition Bearing Series product with our kits. All the engine internals are brought to static temperature (20 degrees Celcius) and blueprinted with 0.040~0.060mm clearance bearings
KIT CONTENTS
FORGED FULL COUNTER CRANKSHAFT
FORGED H-BEAM CONROD
FORGED PISTON KIT

To compliment the above components, Tomei also has released their newest headgasket design for the EJ 2.5 liter engines. They are all 101mm bores, and offer 4 possible thicknesses: .7, 1mm, 1.2mm and 1.5mm. These are all grommet/stopper types, which are a superior overall design to the OEM bead style. Priced at $114 per pair + shipping.

Contact us for availability at z1sales@z1auto.com for any of these items.

Strengthening the Weak Link in the Chain

Tomioka Close Ratio Gearset Subaru WRX

Subaru’s have proven themselves on the rally circuit, the track and the street as fun to drive, easy to modify, and easy to own enthusiast cars. The once utilitarian brand has emerged as a cult car, and has a massive following. Any go-fast goodie you can think of is offered for these awesome vehicles. With increased power, you soon find the practical limits of the surrounding parts. The one part that seems to be plagued with problems as torque and horsepower is significantly increased is the transmission.

Thankfully, Tomioka Racing has their 5 speed semi helical cut set available for the 1998-2005 WRX. It uses a SNAM420 Alloy steel, to give terrific strength, and smooth shifting, without the whining noise of a full straight cut set. This is a very close ration gearset as shown by the ratios:

1st 3.272
2nd 2.285
3rd 1.667
4th 1.238
5th 0.958

Priced at $2442 + shipping. Comes complete with all parts shown. Contact us at z1sales@z1auto.com to order yours.

(Subaru) Crop Circles

Appropriate on a snowy day….

History

Doing some cleaning around the house last night I discovered this lurking in a closet, of all places. It’s now back on display where it belongs. It’s huge – nearly 4 feet long!

Mom Jeans Strictly Prohibited

When the Forester came out, it was a New England mom’s dream. Now they could join the Subaru party and ditch the Chrysler minivan they had to endure in the past. But let’s face it, the Forester wasn’t much of a looker.

Then Subaru dropped in the Turbo 2.5 engine, and suddenly, some ears perked up. Now the car had a bit more of an edge. Some Hyde to go with the Jekyll. But the vehicle was largely lost in the wake of the WRX and STi. Of course we never got the cooler STi Foresters sold in Japan.

As they say, necessity is the mother of invention. So for those who wanted to Zig rather than Zag, people have began taking these Foresters and doing some cool things with them. Subaru’s are the VW’s of Japan – virtually everything swaps into everything else more or less.

While certainly not common to mod, this represents an awesome canvas for someone who wants a great platform to build on, has a budget in mind, and doesn’t want to go tearing into a brand new car. But, wants to maintain reliability, interior space, and the safety and performance benefits of AWD.

Stacked

Neat cluster design from L’aunsport for the 08+ STi

Gotta Keep Them Separated

….oil and air that is, if performance is anywhere remotely on your radar screen with your car. From the factory excess crankcase vapors, residual oil and moisture are vented back into the intake manifold and intercooler which compromises performance and durability. Removing the excess crankcase vapors, residual oil and moisture are accomplished by having two tanks; one tank collects from the intake manifold tract and the second tank collects from each cylinder head. If both were plumbed into the same tank then the crankcase ventilation system could not operate the way it was designed to, the Moroso kit is the only Subaru air separator that accomplishes this. Removing this oil mist before it reenters the engine; reduces detonation, deposits on the intake track including the valves themselves and from lowering the efficiency of the intercooler itself.

We have these kits from Moroso available for a variety of cars, including the Subaru WRX/STi, Mitsubishi Evo, Mazda Miata, and more. Contact us at z1sales@z1auto.com for details

Billet Cam Sensor Bracket for Subaru

This part is used for mounting the cam angle sensor to the front of Non North American Spec STi cylinder heads. Perfect for adapting USDM cylinder heads to Japanese and European market engines or adapting
STI heads to non AVCS engines.

-Made out of lightweight 6061-T6 billet aluminum
-Street and track torture tested
-Black anodized / Torque Solution Laser engraved
-Lifetime Warranty
-Made in USA
– Fits Subaru WRX 2002-2005 or any STi to WRX Head Swap

Contact us at z1sales@z1auto.com to order yours

Transmission Member Bushing Install Guide for Subaru

A few weeks ago, we posted about the new urethane Transmission Member Bushings for Subaru’s. Thanks to one of our customers in the NorthEast, we now have a detailed writeup for a DIY install, as well as confirmation that these bushings fit a non turbo 2.5RS.

To order a set of the bushings for your car, contact us at z1sales@z1auto.com

Click here for the install guide: TransMemberbushing

Dream Car Garage: Rising Sun Edition Volume III

A track day special from the folks at FHI. The RA-R took the notion of the lighter weight sSpec C and augmented with massive front brakes, factory lightweight components throughout, the full STI suspension catalog, and a twin scroll turbocharged, forged internal EJ20 making a rated 316hp. Very rare, very limited, never found its way to the states sadly

First 24: Impreza Build

Alpha Bits

RSM9+GRB = sweetness

Twin Scroll (Subaru Content!)

For years people have tried to get their hands on the elusive factory twin scroll manifold/turbo setup for their WRX and STi. Tomioka Racing heard the cries, and now has released a complete setup, under $2500, that is totally complete!

Comes with a USDM spec downpipe, equal length twin scroll manifold with up-pipe and a 20G turbo! Contact us at z1sales@z1auto.com to order yours