Keep Testing Fun: Mike's Day Off!

By Mike Kojima

Bringing you MotoIQ is a pretty tough job, we generally work as much as 80 hours per week which involves writing, layout, photography and wrenching.  On top of that, I am a suspension consultant which keeps me busy traveling and working when I am not here.  We don't get much time off but we love our job and that helps.  We really like driving but we hardly every get a chance to actually drive!

Other stuff we do for fun!

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Stoptech's Nissan 350Z Bombproof Brake Upgrade

By Mike Kojima

Team Falken Drift Ace Dai Yoshihara is currently developing a Nissan 350Z roadster for competition in Time Attack street classes.  Unfortunately the 350Z roaster did not come with Nissan's excellent performing Brembo track package brakes.  In the cars maiden outing at the Buttonwillow Superlap Battle, the car was hampered with multiple problems with the brake system on the car.  The car had been fitted with an aftermarket prototype performance brake system for the SEMA show.  The car was plagued by cracking rotors, fade, long pedal and the rotors separating from the hat section...

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Ask Sarah-Hey Sarah, what did the cost of all the Phase 3 mods on project Ruckus cost?

By Sarah Forst

If bling isn’t your thing, you can skip some of the pretty stuff and save about $600 but to get to the 50mph, open your wallet. READ ON...

Got a Tech Question?  Email Sarah at asksarah@motoiq.com

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Dai Yoshihara’s Two Week Wonder, GT Channel’s Time Attack Nissan 350Z

By Mike Kojima

Pro Drifter and Formula D ace Dai Yoshihara is used to working on tight deadlines. Perhaps you have read our story on his 8 day wonder S13 that we covered in detail. To tell this story, and appreciate it, you have to rewind to a week before the 2009 SEMA show. Dai got the request from his long time supporters, The GT Channel to build one of their show cars into a time attack car for Source Interlink's 2009 Super Lap Battle Finals. The folks at the GT channel had a Nissan 350Z roadster that had been originally built as a SEMA show car two years ago, it had been gathering dust and the GT Channel wanted to do something with it. Dai was contacted and a deal was struck to give him the car to build into a time attack car.

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Congratulations Eric Hsu-Sierra Sierra and Billy Johnson-FX Motorsports Development for your Source Interlink Superlap Battle Wins!

MotoIQ Staff Report

MotoIQ's master Tech Editor Eric Hsu helped Sierra Sierra win the overall victory at Source Interlink's Superlap Battle Time Attack with their locked and loaded EVO VIII.  Eric's contribution is supporting the Cosworth Powertrain that propels the potent EVO.

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Ask Sarah:  We have a stock 350Z N/A engine.  Can we add a turbo without messing with the ECU if we want to run 8 psi boost?  A 1 or 2 bar MAP? By Sarah Forst From the scope of the question, I think you might need to do a little more research and learn the basics of engine management and how modern fuel injection systems work.  READ ON... Got a Tech Question?  Email Sarah at asksarah@motoiq.com

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A Look Inside, Technosquare's Ultimate Street Car Turbo Nissan VQ35DE

By Mike Kojima

Cheston Chiu’s turbo Nissan 350Z is well known in the Nissan Z community as being a fast well rounded machine.  Cheston’s car is more than just good looking, its been the runner up in Sport Compact Car’s Ultimate Street Car Challenge, placing just 10 skinny points out of first place.

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Girl Gone Green: Verena Mei’s Time Attack Nissan 350Z

MotoIQ Staff Report

Photos by  David J. Dowling

A little understood fact about prepping a turbo car for reliable track use is that extreme cooling is needed and the off the shelf performance radiators and oil coolers on the market are not enough to keep a turbo engine cool under actual track conditions. The VQ35DE engine is kept cool by a custom Ron Davis C&R core dual pass radiator with swirl tank and large 13 row Setrab oil cooler.

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VQ35 on the Engine Dyno

Several months ago when we had the VQ on the engine dyno at Cosworth, I snapped a couple of pics. Since I never got to work on engine dynos very much in the past, I thought it was way cool to see a street car engine that we [the mostly unibody car crowd] commonly build/tune/whatever on a professional grade engine dyno. The ease of working on the engine is nice: there are no cut arms, burnt hands, busted knuckles, and emanating under hood heat blasting you in the face like on a chassis dyno. The amount of data we can collect is ridiculous too.

In the US, we do not have transient dynos. I think Cosworth has 7 transient dynos in the UK, but that is the SUPER big dollar equipment for ...

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VQ Crazy

Recently all around me have been Nissan VQs. There's the Cosworth Castrol Top Shop engine that I have been coordinating and tuning at Cosworth, then over at XS they are building a Z33 for my buddy Andy who owns Ark Design, so as a I built that engine on my own time, then I have been writing reports at Cosworth on VQ35DE camshafts like a madman, then I have been working on the Cosworth VQ35 long stroke crankshaft, my daily driver Maxima has a VQ30, I've been driving my mom's G35 which has a VQ35, etc. VQs kick ass.

The Cosworth Top Shop engine made 4xxbhp (buy the magazines) normally aspirated which impressed me. Th...

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