Building the Nissan VQ37VHR!

VQ engines tend to burn oil, this was actually the reason why the car came in to our shop with a custom block ventilation job. Although we will be taking steps to reduce this before we start dyno tuning we decided to give our build a little more oil capacity. To increase our oil capacity we got JWT’s oil pan spacer part number OHR07-PANSP.  This spacer for the pan and the oil pump pick up increase the engines oil capacity by one quart.

To handle the external aspects of getting air into and out of our engine, we recruited the help of Z1 Motorsports and their 400 hp package for the VQ37VHR.  The first part of the package is their equal length stainless steel headers.

Z1’s headers are constructed of back purged and tig welded 16 gauge 304 stainless.  This is much more corrosion resistant than the cheaper 409 stainless found in many street headers.  The headers also feature 3/8″ thick stainless CNC machined flanges for a leak free life. The headers have primary tubes 13/4″ in diameter.  The workmanship of the Z1 headers is superb.

The headers feature a true merge collector which usually provides both good top end power and low end torque.  All of the welds are hand finished inside the tubes for good flow. The provisions for the 02 sensors are in the factory locations so no modifications are needed to the wire harness.  The headers are designed to be direct bolt on replacements for the stock exhaust manifolds and can bolt to the factory catalytic converters.

For dyno testing we will be using Z1’s 304 stainless down pipes.  These bolt from the factory manifolds or Z1’s headers to the exhaust, which can be the factory exhaust or a performance exhaust.  Making Z1’s system truly modular. The down pipes are 2.5″ in diameter and feature smooth mandrel bends, rear O2 sensor bungs and extra bungs for a wideband O2 sensor if you wanted to run a Air Fuel Ratio gauge or logger.