OnPoint Dyno's 350Z: 420 NA WHP
When your business allows you access to a dyno 24/7 and your mind is always in overdrive trying to find new ways to make horsepower, then you are in the perfect spot to be coming up with ideas, developing these ideas into reality, and then testing the idea on the dyno to see if it works. Meet Sasha Anis, owner of OnPoint Dyno and a true racer at heart. Originally I was going to be seeing Sasha to get the NX GTi-R tuned before it travelled to the west coast, however, timing just did not work out as my car was not ready for tuning. That meant that I got a bit more time to spend in the shop with Sasha as he was fitting larger throttle bodies and horns onto the Z – and looking for some big horsepower numbers to go with it.
The 350Z was just wrapped in this almost metalic green. Sitting in front of his garage, it looks stunning. The hood was off as the major work of fitting 57 mm throttle bodies and the 3-D printed horns had just taken place.The Nissan 350Z in Sasha Anis' garage started off its racing life as a Koni Challenge GS car. Sasha acquired it about eight years ago and has been building his dream ever since. After building an insanely fast Nissan 240SX that won the Canadian Touring Car Championship against Corvettes and Vipers, you can appreciate that this 350Z is literally beyond insane. Two years ago Sasha and his Z car placed second behind a screamingly fast Corvette at Road Atlanta at a Global Time Attack event. He put down a 1:28.07 lap time. Now let me point out that this 350Z is all motor. There is no forced induction under the hood. There are well over 400 naturally aspirated ponies resting in the engine bay. Sasha has a goal of breaking the 1:20 barrier at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park (formerly Mosport) while maintaining a GT car setup. Without forced induction. The question I hope to answer – how is that possible?
418 wheel horsepower from a naturally aspirated Nissan 350Z. Individual Throttle Bodies with custom components for OnPoint Dyno. With even bigger throttle bodies Sasha is hoping to maintain the power band even higher through the RPM range.
Apex, Sasha's dog, has been with him for years. Whether it was his former shop and storefront or his current garage, Apex is a standard feature.With the 53.5 mm throttle bodies the engine produced 418 whp. The test I was observing was with 57 mm throttle bodies which should lead to some interesting results – with Sasha hoping for more high RPM power. However, before we get into that let's take a look at this car and what groundwork Sasha is building upon.
Trevor placing the first 3-D printed horn on the 57mm Jenvey Throttle Bodies that are mounted on CNC'd OnPoint Dyno runners.The engine is a VQ35HR that came from a junkyard. The stock crankshaft was replaced with a 370Z crank which upped the displacement to 3.7 litres. While the rods are also stock they are held together with GTR rod bolts. JWT custom 96 mm pistons are used in combination with JWT cams. C12 intake cams are used while on the exhaust side, the intake cams from the Koni Grand Am days have been repurposed. This idea came from Clark Steppler at JWT. JWT valve springs are also used. While trial and error may sound easy when you have a dyno readily accessible, keep in mind that changing cams in this engine is a minimum of six to seven hours of work. It's not something that you attempt without serious thought behind it.
OnPoint Dyno running some tests with the new, larger throttle bodies.Like me, you are probably wondering about more trick internal parts. But there are none. The head is neither ported nor polished. Apart from what we have already mentioned, everything inside is stock. The majority of the work has been done outside of the engine. The most obvious component being the Jenvey Individual Throttle Bodies – but that may only be obvious to me as Sasha and Trevor are just in the process of finishing the installation as I am gathering information and photos for this article. As mentioned already, the 53.5 mm throttle bodies have been replaced with massive 57 mm Jenvey units. OnPoint Dyno has created the ITB kit for the VQ35 setup using the Jenvey throttle bodies. Sasha was both optimistic and realistic at the same time – hoping that the 57 mm setup would provide big power into even higher RPMs; yet also realizing that they could simply be too big.
