Project 370Z: Part 1 – Testing the AEM ETI Cold Air Intake
By Mike Kojima
Nissan’s 370Z is a pretty damn good car. It is a nice improvement over the already good 350Z; it is more powerful, handles better, is lighter, stiffer and faster. We wonder why it doesn’t sell all that well as we feel that it is a class leading car at a reasonable price. Perhaps in this sluggish economy, the market for a mid priced two seat sports car, which for many people is a second or third car is too much of a luxury.
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| With two throttle bodies, two air flow meters and two airboxes, the 370Z has quite a complicated intake system. |
Nevertheless, we are going to visit the 370Z and work it over to improve its track day prowess without compromising its street drivability. We are also going to see how well it does in street class time attack. Now we are not starting off looking for a car that is going to break street class records but we will find out just how competitive we can make the car while keeping it fully streetable, which means no gutting, no removing things like the A/C and no impractical, easily breakable aero.
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| Our first step was to do a baseline dyno on our Project 370Z. AEM's Mustang dyno is very conservative so it's important to look at the change in power numbers, not just the peak numbers. |
For our first round of mods, we tested the remarkable AEM ETI cold air intake. If you are into modding the 370Z you know that the car does not respond too well to typical intake tuning. Most of the cold air intakes on the market for the 370Z get into a fight with the car’s ECU and after the initial few dyno runs do not register much of a power gain, some popular intakes have even registered a loss in power during some of our prior testing.
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| We were pleased with AEM's instructions which were pretty concise and easy to understand. |
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| We first laid out all of the parts to orient ourselves. The AEM kit was very complete. |
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| Next we put the car up on a rack, removed the front wheels, the belly pan and inner fender liners. This is a pretty involved air intake installation. |
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