Time for another build here at Lutz Performance!

This time we're stepping away from the German cars and have Fresh New Nissan 370z 40th anniversary edition...

Of course many of you have seen our fabrication work, as Shawn (our lead forced induction/Fabrication designer) has done it again with a very tight fitting single turbo build up, designed for this customer and this car ONLY... We will not replicate this kit for another car, this is a one off build for this customer and this car!

However that does not mean we cant build another 370z or Import with exact specifications requested by YOU the customer!
Enjoy!


The car






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Whats being used:
The build list includes:
Precision billet 6262 turbo .82 a/r
Precision 750 intercooler
Tial Q BOV
Tial MVR wastegate
Deatschwerks 600cc injectors
Walbro 255lph fuel pump
Z1 25-row oil cooler kit
JWT oil pan spacer
ACT 6-puck clutch
Fidanza flywheel
Z Speed HD CSC kit
Innovate Wideband
Blitz SBC ID-III

Here are some pictures of the build so far







Turbo Mounted


Turbo Mount Bracket



Up Pipe



















This was all achieved on the 1st day of Progress

2nd day of progress!!








Downpipe























More updates to come!.

 

wow very nice.

 

Thank You.

 

 

Wastegate, manifold, new lower raditor pipe, and charge pipe ... tight fit!

 

 

She's done, ready for tuning tomorrow!























Ready for winter!
























Thank you everyone for your comments along the way, this has been a great project for me that definitely tested my abilities! Looking forward to the results from tuning tomorrow and what Ryan does with the car from here on! Anyone that gets to see the car in person around town or at Zdays coming up here soon, please let me know what you think when you see it first hand!

-Shawn-

 

your welds look really nice!

what are the pros/cons of this turbo location compared to other setups?
is it mostly to make the single setup piping easier?

 

I know this is a bump from the past, but I feel that everyone should be informed of what kind of shop Lutz Performance is.

Here is the link to where my entire story is posted.
http://www.the370z.com/forced-induct...urbo-370z.html

A quick update if you don't want to read the above link, but it's a good read with almost 80,000 views:

I dropped the car off at Lutz Performance at the end of April and picked it up the night I left for ZDayz at the Tail of the Dragon on May 19th...Yes, that was a quick turnaround time, but my car was the only car that was having any fabricating done. So I do not think 3+ weeks is too far fetched. In the end though, if that was too soon of a time frame, Lutz should have said so. At the time, Lutz seemed great...well, really just their fabricator (Shawn). He was texting me making sure I made it up safely and asking for updates while I was up there.

I drove the car to ZDayz and enjoyed it, other than the overheating issues and my horrible driveability because of the way the intake pipe was fabricated. I averaged 11mpg on a 1200 miles interstate drive. On the way home, about 30 minutes after leaving the Tail of the Dragon, I burnt through one of the power steering hoses because the uppipe was fabricated laying against the hose. I made it to GA where the car went into limp mode due to the passenger side wiring harness being fried because it was left dangling on top of the passenger manifold. I spent $250 having the car towed to Z1 Motorsports. Once the car got to Z1, they tried starting my car and the pulley on the power steering pump snapped from the pump seizing due to no fluid. My repair bill was $2k. This does not include the 4 days (local Nissans didn't stock a power steering pump) of work I missed out on and I had to pay for a hotel. They had to rewire the entire passenger side wiring harness and I needed a new power steering pump $500+ new and there are no used ones around since they don't fail for no reason. The 140-amp fuse on the battery also failed because the wiring harness was burnt through.

Uppipe touching power steering hose


Burnt line


Blown power steering pump


Melted passenger wiring harness


I make it home and the car goes back to Lutz so they can redo my intake piping. That was clearly an issue from the beginning regarding driveability and tuning. Since the intake piping was different diameters, one bank would see much more air than the other bank, netting in extremely rich cruising AFRs (10/12 mpg city/highway) at crusing speeds and not allowing me to get into boost because the AFRs would get too lean when I got into it. Lutz said they would redo it at no cost to me. My car sits there for 2 weeks with nothing done. They told me they preferred to bridge my MAF wiring instead. My car was in the shop for 1 month to have a 30 minute wiring job done. When I went to pick up my car (Friday) for a professional photoshoot and possible magazine coverage I had booked, one of my tires was flat because it had 2 nails in it. How did that get there when the car never moved? I'm not sure... Photshoot cancelled. I go to pick up the car again the following Wednesday (FYI Lutz Performance is a 45 minute drive from my house), and the tire was still flat...nothing was done in the 3 full business days my car sat there. So I finally go pick up the car the following Monday with the tire patched and the MAF wiring bridged, even though I asked and they said they would redo the intake piping...but they suggested bridging the MAF wiring and they are the experts. The car still ran like crap, granted I never had it retuned to see if it bridging the MAFs would fix the issue.

I take my car to another friend who fabricates out of his own garage and we redid the intake piping and intercooler setup to dual 3" equal-length intake piping and a 2-1 intercooler...the way it should have been done from the beginning.



We also replaced the POS band clamp that Lutz installed and bowed the edge of the clamp to make the piping fit inside (causing a bad exhaust leak), which Lutz replaced once already to try to solve the issue. Since we redid the piping, I had to unbridge the MAF wiring. I called Lutz to see how to unbridge it and I was told and I quote "just cut the bridge wires". So I do so because the experts told me to do so. The car ends up going into limp mode and I can't shift above 2500rpms. A few days later when I had time to screw with the car, and a few hours of brainstorming, I finally decide to peel back the wire sheathing on the MAF wiring and see if Lutz had done me wrong again and found this


That was my last dealing with Lutz. Out of allll the troubles I had, they only compensated me by taking 2 hrs of labor off my total bill ($210).

Here is a reply to a post made by a friend (G35 owner who was caravaning home from ZDayz with us and who also stayed with me for the 6 hours we were stranded in GA until a tow truck could come out) by a Lutz worker trying to defend their expertise
Let's be realistic... You are correct in saying there are no guarantees when adding forced induction to an NA motor.

After getting Lutz's problems fixed by my friend in October, I went to Bradenton becaue I was anxious to see how the car would perform on a base map tune. I wanted to get a baseline before I got tuned for some big power. I ran a 11.85 @ 119mph on my 3rd pass. Based on that mph (460-480whp), my car was well below the limits of the VQ37 (plenty of people are making 500-550whp). The boost was turned up from 12.6psi to 13.1psi on the next run when the motor started ticking.

In my eyes, Lutz are thieves. They treated me like gold when I was paying the bill during the build, but as soon as the problems started and no money was coming in, they treated me like I was some punk kid. The turbo kit did fail.
I'm sorry, but I fail to see how $12k was a budget build. I could have went with an off the shelf, RELIABLE TT kit for $7500 and would have had NONE of the problems I experienced due to Lutz's negligence.

 

Holy crap, $12,000 for a custom one off kit? Exactly what was included?