Top Car Challenge - ECU Tuner Techno Square

I was freaking out about this point. We had yet to break-in the engine, and I still needed to retune the car for the new parts and align/corner balance. I didn't have time to drive to Vegas and back to break-in the engine, so we did the next best thing: we threw it on the dyno for three hours while varying the RPMs (you should have seen the dirty looks we go from the neighbors!). Tadashi Nagata, the ECU tuner at Techno Square, plugged in his laptop and went to work. We refueled with 105 octane race gas and Tadashi started reflashing the stock ECU to accommodate for the new boost levels and gas. As we were tuning the car, drops of oil started to come out from underneath the car. I took a closer look and my oil cooler adapter had cracked! It was a cast metal piece with a built-in thermostat that cracked at the seam. A quick rummage through the spare parts in the shop yielded a billet aluminum one originally made for a 370Z that would fit, so we machined the opening more for better oil flow and stuck it on and went back to tuning. A few hours later, we had our tune that we'd go to the competition on, and based on the dyno numbers at Techno Square, I got much higher numbers than I previously did there with the old engine setup. I was somewhat confident now that I'd be able to at least make it to the K&N facility on time.

The next afternoon, I went to see Tom at Lucent Motors in West LA to get corner balanced and aligned. This shop typically only does Porsche, Ferrari and higher-end cars, so I felt a little intimidated by bringing my Nissan over, (after hours), but Chris Marion from KW Suspensions highly recommended them to me once. Tom had the Z on his neat-o laser alignment rack, he got me dialed-in and balanced. But he found two issues with the car: 1) the lower front control arm bushing was shot, and the front shock that it was mounted to was sagging and 2) the Cusco A-arms I had wasn't giving me enough negative camber that I wanted to run. I wanted -3.5 and it was only giving me -2.5. Tom suggested that I get solid bushing if I could and modify the A-Arms to see if I could get more camber. By this time, it was nearly midnight and I only had two days before the start of the event.

Well, bright and early next morning I went straight back to Torrance and met up with Howard. Luckily, he had a set of spare solid bushings for the lower control arm (it's like magic!) and we pressed out the old bushings with little problem. As for the A-Arms, with the redesign of the Cusco arms, all you need to do is cut out about 3 or 4mm of material and you can get the upper joint to go inwards more so that you can get more negative camber. We matched both sides and off I went back to Lucent to get the final camber and toe settings completed. As soon as I got home from that, it was sticker time, and I spent the next five-and-a-half hours putting on my super bling-bling holographic & chrome stickers on the car. Those things are worth at least 50hp or more, aren't they?

We're sure they are, but in order for you to find out if they are worth it or not, you're gonna have to tune in next month where we finally announce the winner of the Castrol Syntec Top Car Challenge and give you the final wrap-up behind our 350Z. See you then!