onthemove MOD's

[onthemove]

Went out today and when I got back I checked the temps of various components by touch. I can hold the wrapped headers and mid pipes for several seconds at a time. The metal side of the heat shields on the cats is just warm, so they appear to be doing their job as well. The engine bay must be staying cooler but there's no way to tell anymore. The iat's in the intake still climb when at idle though much slower and they drop much faster, though I cannot say if this has seen further improvement since wrapping the exhaust parts.
Edit - on a heat soaked engine, I can touch the headers and heat shields for a second or 2 before I have to pull away. I can hold the wrapped mid pipes for several seconds.
The only time this is really going to pay off for the mechanicals is when it's so hot outside and the system (coolant, radiator, oil, trans fluid & cooler, etc.) is having difficulty keeping up. Operating temps will be maintained whether I like it or not.
My tuner told me I should expect better scavenging but at idle the scavenging will be worse do to the larger pipes. I suppose I could argue with him as the stock manifolds didn't retain heat like wrapped headers & other pipes do.
Totally unrelated, he also told me he's dealing with the "parachute bumper" issue on a 9 second drag car. Tape that shit!

 

[onthemove]

Not exactly what I was hoping to see but as they say, it is what it is. I had only 1 chance for a 1/4 mile run and f'd up the 60'. I used to be able to get 2.2 60' in my sleep. Did it at the track all three runs when the FX was near stock. There's something odd going on here and it's probably me and my stupid feet. So I ran another 0-60. Better, but still a little off my best. I suppose the outside temps being 10+ degrees warmer than the other test runs as well as 60% humidity tonight had something to do with it but you'd think the recent mod (headers) would've made up for that, and maybe they did by keeping this recent time so close to my best.
There's no doubt the FX feels it's best right now but I'm not seeing it in the numbers just yet. There's a couple things I can check before my last test, before the temps and humidity get too far off what they've been since I started testing the mods, and then off to the track asap. I don't think I could rightfully write off the headers as being a bust even if all I could do was match my best times (which at this point is all I've done) because the ambient temps and humidity really make a difference. The tune probably would've been a waste of time if not for the top end getting leaned out a bit.
The first 3 pics were the same run and the bottom 2 the second. Had I gotten it right the first time from the dig, it would've been another high 13 second run. Stitching one run to another to make up for driver error is totally acceptable in my book for the purpose of testing the mods. It wasn't long ago that I felt like I was at a 2.0 60' and now I struggle to hold onto a 2.2? Somethings off and it's probably me.

 

[onthemove]

Made a couple minor tweeks and I just cannot snatch a 2.0 60'. It works off data points every 2/10's of a second, so I could be on the cusp of a 2.0 and I like to think I am. I guess the drag strip will tell me.
One thing I noticed is that I've been shifting just after the rpms are in the red, maybe around 6,800. Redline is set at 6,900. I guess I forgot that the tach is short 3-400 rpm. Oops. Hit the rev limiter at 7,200. Gotta remember that for the track. Those last few hundred rpm are definitely noticeable. In auto, it'll shift around 6,800 1st to 2nd but 2nd to 3rd, maybe 6,500, so both shifts are leaving mucho rpms on the table.

Barely beat my best times below which were at the end of January when temps were more favorable. Shaved 1 mph off the 60' and a couple feet off the 0-60. Tonight was better than last night. Higher temps but humidity was 10% less. Don't know if that made a difference or not.
Enough beating on the old FX. What I've gotten from the mods and what I've learned from testing is what it is and I hope it's enough to pull down a mid 13 but I'd be thrilled with a high 13.
Sorry to anyone reading my ramblings. This thread has become my personal journal for the FX. I love reading my writing and looking over my photos.

 

[gto]

For N/A it kinda drops off up high there anyway. Blk is my tune. Car was tuned on a SuperFlow Windyn. I hear the numbers show lower & then you do a conversion to to Dynajet, or whatever. Regardless, my tune was done by Technosquare, . . Tadashi. He's a legend & worlds best VQ tuner, but I dont think he's stateside anymore. Japan found him.

After your shift at max, what rpm does it settle at when in next gear? Anywhere around 5K, it's at Max torque.
My redline is set to 8K. Dont need it, but that's where it starts to cut. Hated the stock program. 6700 was just stupid

 

[gto]

If you're looking for a couple easy more (& you always are . Here's a cheap mod. Why dont you get a TBS. Ive dyno'd throttle body spacer and saw back to back gain. No harm in it.
Chart below is on stock ECU tune, with just TBS added to what bolt ons I already had on there. CAI, Upper Plenum, Catback.

Red is after Mod

 

[onthemove]

I've read about Tadashi. If you ever get re-tuned, make sure they save the one you're on now just in case some knucklehead you thought might be good f's it up and then it's lost.

Obviously per your chart that t.b. spacer makes a few extra which is always nice but I can't use it. The first 1/2 of page 6 explains why.

I'm at max torque pre-4k rpm but hp doesn't plateau anywhere in that area, so it'd be nice to be as far into the horse power part of the band as possible. My old 0-100 vid on page 5 is in auto and 1st to 2nd it shifts at a high 6k rpm then drops to just below 5k but 2nd to 3rd shifts just into the red and drops to mid 4k. 3rd to 4th shifted pre-100 mph but in manumatic I can run the 1/4 in 3rd. The ecu thinks the tach is correctly calibrated. When I shift in manumatic, I shift around 6900 rpm but I do so in every gear I'm shifting, not just 1st like the auto does. I'm still leaving a few hundred rpm on the table every time and that's gotta be good for a better time. Redline's set at 6,900 or say 7,200 per the un-calibrated tach.

I just realized how old that 0-100 vid is. Dropped close to 1/2 a second since then. Ima try to make another vid now so onthemove can race and walk his former self.

 

[onthemove]

Had a couple hours to kill tonight. I've never worked with abs plastic before air box 1. I feel like the 2nd box I made was better than the first. I used a hair dryer on 1 and 2 but bought a heat gun to wrap the window trim so I'm better equipped now. Here's the final prototype for a permanent air box. I'll let this soak in for awhile before I make a permanent piece from abs. It is the biggest and gives all the room the filter needs. I'm sure most people that follow this thread are more tired of shit like this than I am of making it but for those that aren't...

 

[onthemove]

Here's some down and dirty regarding the effects of intake length and size. Found this while researching "lowest pressure drop designs". A written explanation of why elongating AND introducing a 90* bend in my pipe just to get the filter lower and out of the bay failed so miserably. The power loss was so dramatic I felt it right away and there was no doubt in my mind I fucked up.

Easy Performance | CAI System Design Consideration Primer

" What this means is going from a 4 inch duct to a 3 inch ID duct increases the friction losses by ~2.7 times. Thus, it is not hard to see that a 4 inch duct is preferable over a 3 inch duct by reducing friction losses as well as lowering the air velocity by nearly half. "

" If a 90° bend is designed into the intake duct, then the following can be estimated as shown in the following table. In these examples, 3" and 4 " ID pipes are given. For these pipe sizes, the centerline radius of close 90° elbows are typically equivalent to the diameter of the pipe.

These calculations illustrate the addition of a single 90° bend in a 3-inch or 4-inch duct is the same as adding 48 inches or 64 inches of straight duct respectively in its place. When compared to the rather short length desired for the intake duct, adding a single bend has a dramatic affect on increasing the intake's resistance to airflow. For bends other than 90°, they can be estimated by multiplying the 90° bend resistance by a percentage factor. For a 45° bend, the total friction loss is about 65% of the 90° bend's resistance. For a 180° bend, the total friction loss is about 140% of the 90° bend's resistance.
From the above table, one might conclude that the 48 inch equivalent length given by a 3 inch ID pipe would provide less friction than the 64 inch equivalent length for a 4 inch ID pipe. However, one must now determine the friction that is produced by these two pipe sizes before making such a judgment. As shown earlier, the 3 inch pipe has 2.69 times more friction than a 4 inch pipe. If you calculate the equivalent length of 4 inch ID pipe that would have the same friction as the 90° bend in a 3 inch ID pipe, then you would need to multiply the 48 inch equivalent length by 2.69. This result tells us the 90° bend in a 3 inch pipe is equivalent to 119 inches of 4 inch ID straight pipe. Thus, having bends and smaller pipe diameter is detrimental towards producing good flow characteristics in an induction system."

" Materials that have high reflectivity coefficients are primarily metals and of those, copper, silver, gold and aluminum are among the highest. All of these metals have reflectivity coefficients above 0.96. This means they reflect more than 96% of all the thermal radiation that strikes their surface. For the construction of induction systems, aluminum tends to be a good material of choice. Plastics and other organic materials tend to be very poor at reflecting radiant heat. The reflectivity coefficients of plastics and rubbers tend to be below 0.06. This means plastics only reflect less than 6% of all the thermal radiation that strikes their surface. This means over 94% of the radiant heat is absorbed by the plastics or rubbers. Consequently, they are undesirable materials when exposed to radiant heat. "

" Summation
When considering how to design an optimal induction system for a particular vehicle, all of the design aspects discussed earlier as well as other characteristics must be given careful consideration. Restricting the design considerations to the aspects discussed above, some basic design conclusions can be listed.

• Select a high flow surface impingement style filter element
• Use as large a filter element as practical for the application
• Position the filter so the least amount of dirt and debris will be entering the filter
• Maintenance the filter regularly to maintain optimal performance
• Use as large of an intake duct as practical to connect the filter element to the engine
• Intake duct's interior surface should be as smooth as possible
• Avoid rapid changes in diameters/cross-sectional areas through the induction system
• Avoid or limit the bends needed in the induction system
• Keep the intake track to the engine as short as possible
• The induction system should draw 100% of its air from outside the engine bay or where minimally higher than ambient air temperature regions exist
• All induction component surfaces that are exposed to higher temperature components and surfaces should be made of highly thermal reflective materials
• All surfaces that come in contact with the intake air should be insulated from all potential heat sources "

 

[DatMan]

Interesting... But from this, all CAI's that have the downwards bend would be detrimental to an intake system and short ram air intakes would be most effective? I prefer the short air ram intakes better anyways but looking it up, it seems some people still get better results with CAI's... Hmmm...

 

[onthemove]

It's a compromise. Make it as short as possible, no bends and with the ability to be quarantined from the engine bay. The link above is long but good stuff and it figures I'd find it now and not a couple months ago. My intake is a short ram and cold air, soon to be ram air as well.
I think it was a test done by Sasha Anis (I'd change my last name btw) where they removed the top collector while on the dyno. Don't recall torque #'s but they showed an increase in the 30+ hp range. That's how much power is there and the closer you can get to no intake pipe and a freer flowing collector, the closer you get to 30+ extra hp.
Make it short. Make it wide. Make it smooth inside. Keep it cool. Bring in fresh air.
In the link above, the writer talks about areas of high and low pressure. He mentions that where my air box is and how it draws from below the front end might be a low pressure area. I hope so. That means there's more power to be had and all I gotta do is find it.
The very front, like the face of the bumper is a high pressure area. Ima try my hand at making a scoop behind the grill for the new opening in the core support and another scoop at the bottom of the FX, attached to what is basically an extension of my air box, but what is actually the wheel well, frame and front bumper. "pressurizing" the air box goes above and beyond the test Sasha did as mentioned above. It's like a cheap little incognito supercharger that doesn't do squat until your moving. It's something that wouldn't show up on a dyno, therefore it would probably be hard to tune for it, but I'm still running slightly rich up top.

 

[onthemove]

Final air box. Bolted in 2 oem locations and used oem plastic fasteners to lock the back piece to the top. It's really just a cover as the hvac insulation is still in place to keep the bay air out. 4 pieces comprise this monstrosity. Kinda like a bumper fascia, just there to cover up all the ugliness that's behind it.
Hopefully will soon find the time to do my take on ram air. I've been trying to get to the track but the closest one keeps calling off t&t day due to rain. I tell'em "hey, just open the f'n track guy! I have AWD damn it!" They tell me to piss off every time.

 

[gto]

Never say Final, lol

Looks clean

 

[DatMan]

That thing is HUGE!!! But each time you make a box, they keep looking better :P

 

[onthemove]

Thanks guys. A fabricator I am not, though I do try. It looks better than the oem unit though anything looks better than the oem unit. Photo #7 makes it look like it rivals the f'n engine for space in the bay.
You were right about completely sealing it off from the bay D-man. I didn't think a little bay air would make a diff because of the easy access to all the cool air from below but it does. It's 100% sealed off now and the temps rise slower at idle and drop faster while driving. Best I've seen so far and short of figuring out just how to inject water pre-maf, I don't think the iat's are going to get any better than they are now.

 

[StuLax18]

Have you done any 1/4 mile runs at the track? Curious to see what kind of numbers you get. Those little box numbers seem pretty quick.

 

[onthemove]

Yeah, while reading about what others have done to the FX35's, going back years, it seemed like an uphill battle at best. I couldn't get over the fact that the g's and z's were sooo much faster, yet the only obvious difference was weight and not enough of it to explain damn near 1.5 seconds in the 1/4, depending of course where you source your info. The little box (scanguage) is supposedly accurate. I wrote about it some pages back in this thread. I wouldn't put all my chips in their bag though, as of course they'll (scanguage engineer) tell me it is.
In my acceleration vid, I used a vid of a 2006 fx35 awd and, was it a g37x? Unless one thinks I ran the FX down an extremely steep hill, timing the comparison vid's with my own one can see in the "me vs the 06 FX" that there is a considerable difference in acceleration. Long story short, I'm 99% positive that the scanguage is accurate within 2/10ths and 2 mph and I can't wait for the owners of the closest track to stop being a pussy and open up the gates before it gets really hot and humid.

 

[StuLax18]

Weight makes a huge difference in my experience. I think I removed about 150 lbs worth of stuff and dropped .5 seconds off my 1/4 mile time. I was around a 2.2 60' consistently on each run. That 5 second 0-60 is rather suspicious, just knowing cars that run that and usually have ~350 HP/TQ. Unless I missed something, I thought your dyno showed around 250 HP, which is where I'm at.

 

[onthemove]

I updated this comparison on page 10(?) but recently included a 2017 qx70 s v8 so I'll toss it up again. The top entry is me. Taking everything into consideration, it's not only not hard to believe but should be expected. If onthemove doesn't get his fat ass down the 1/4 in 14 or less seconds then houston, I got a problem.
I don't know what to believe about the horsepower #'s. These dyno's and their operators can be so wishy-washy. The goal for me isn't more hp/tq but faster acceleration. Power is one, a big one, but just one component. I've seen enough z's that have the headers, a better plenum or spacer, larger throttle body, 3.5 to 4" intake with whp in the mid to high 2's, so 350 at the flywheel on my FX is probably pretty close. Whatever. That's why I really like the scanguage and can't wait to see how accurate it is. I'll set it on every run down the strip and take a pic of it with the time slip.
I wouldn't doubt you shaved 1/2 a second by removing 150lbs, assuming that weight came off the wheels, tires and rotors.

2003 FX35 AWD 5 spd Transgo VQ35DE (onthemove)
3,926 lbs, 348/321, 0-60 5.0, 0-83 9.0, ¼ 13.8 @ 103 mph, 255/55/18, 29"diam. tire, 11.1 lbs/hp, trans 1st-3.54 2nd-2.26 3rd-1.47, F.D. 3.88 Drag Coefficient Cd = .35

2013 G37x AWD 7 spd slushbox VQ37VHR
3,823 lbs, 328/269, 0-60 5.5, 0-80 9.2, ¼ 13.8 @ 100mph, 225/55/17, 26.7"diam. tire, 11.7 lbs/hp, trans 1st-4.92 2nd-3.19 3rd-2.04, F.D. 3.36 Drag Coefficient Cd = .29

2017 QX50 AWD 7 spd slushbox VQ37VHR
4,019 lbs, 325/267, 0-60 5.7, 0-80 9.8, ¼ 14.3 @ 97mph, 225/55/18, 27.7"d.t, 12.4 lbs/hp, trans 1st-4.92 2nd-3.19 3rd-2.04, F.D. 3.13 Drag Coefficient Cd = .33

Maserati Levante S 8 spd V6 Twin Turbo
4,649 lbs, 424/428, 0-60 4.8, 0-80 8.4, 1/4 13.4 @ 104, 295/45/19, 29.5"d.t., 11 lbs/hp, trans 1st-4.71 2nd-3.143 3rd-2.106, F.D. 2.8 Drag Coefficient Cd = .31

2017 QX70 S AWD 7 spd slushbox VK50VE V8
4,508 lbs, 385/369, 0-60 5.3, 0-80 8.4, 1/4 13.7 @ 101, 265/45/21, 30.4"d.t., 11.7 lbs/hp, trans 1st-4.89 2nd-3.17 3rd-2.02, F.D. 3.54 Drag Coefficient Cd = .35

 

[StuLax18]

Does the scangauge get times by reading the speedo and just timing between first movement and when it reads 60 mph? That might explain the low numbers since you have 29" tires. I'm sure your FX is fast with all those awesome mods and ones that actually try to fix issues like getting as much cool air into the engine as possible, but I just have a hard time believing it's 5 seconds 0-60 fast. I would think it still provides for good comparisons if nothing else. i.e. I was hitting 5.2 0-60 before some intake mods, now I'm hitting 5.0, so a .2 second improvement.

 

[onthemove]

You should read the thread where I went into some specifics on the scanguage. The info is spread out a little, but I think much of it is on page 5?
I'll reiterate one thing I said about it previously. I ran a 7.1 0-60 prior to most of the mods. 1/2 tank of gas, a passenger but I had the Crapho tires which were 4 lbs lighter each and nearly and inch shorter in diameter. Never imagined I'd put ll this info online as I'm not one to participate in social media otherwise I would've taken pics of that run. So I ran what was expected stock, 7.1. The tires, diameter more than weight I'm sure, made up for the added weight.
So, you're running in the low 5 second 0-60 then? Cool.
Not sure why you're finding it so hard to believe I'm running a 5 flat when apparently you are as well?
What are you using to gauge your times?
You got a build thread? What kind of mod's stulax?
I am glad to see someone questioning something in my thread. I've got a lot of shit in here, some of it way out in left field and save for a hand full of fellas, I hear crickets. Ha.