350Z – Boosting Power With DC Sports and Berk Technology
So in the past installments of Project 350Z, we took a look at getting the car's suspension and brakes up to snuff. With the car handling and stopping well, we turned our focus to freeing up more power. Since the car is mostly a budget track day beater, we decided against forced induction options for now because making a high power forced induction motor reliable under continual hot lapping conditions is a somewhat expensive proposition.
To make a car that was not originally designed to be forced induction track reliable would require big changes to the car's oil and water cooling systems and modifications to the lubrication system all of which end up being expensive and adding complexity to the car. Big power in the Z33 chassis usually makes adding a diff cooler mandatory as well on a car with a mechanical LSD for anything more than just a few laps. On an early VQ35DE, forced induction track reliable power will usually mean building the bottom end to upgrade the pistons rods, bearings, cylinder head water circulation and head gaskets. Bigger power might also mean bigger tires, bigger brakes etc.
So to keep a decent budget balance, we decided to focus on some good bolt ons to see what we could get from our Z. For our first step we decided to free up the exhaust side of things with headers and an exhaust from DC Sports and free flow cats from Berk Technology.
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