From Nissan 350Z & 370Z Wiki
Is this the best aftermarket turbocharger installation I've ever plonked my big, hairy butt in? I've kept myself busy plundering what's left of my brain cells to think of a better one, but I can't.
See, all too often aftermarket forced induction can wind up feeling disturbingly home-made. Even a power-up of an existing factory turbo motor can go all wrong in the hands of a well-meaning workshop, leaving you with a twitchy, undriveable son-of-a-diddly (copyright Ned Flanders) with iffy legal status and questionable long-term and short-term reliability. But when you're bolting a pair of turbos onto a tightly packaged, highly strung, factory V6, well... it can all go horribly arse-shaped.
Then came that phone call from Peter Luxon of Victoria's APS Engineering (APS). Such chats usually elicit a little tingle of the neck hairs because they often involve a day out in some improbably powerful WRX, or XR6 Turbo, with enough torque to peel back hot mix. And when the conversation starts with Pete saying something like, "You've gotta drive this thing. It'll blow you away," the tingle can migrate south pretty fast.
When you think about it, Nissan's 350Z was always a candidate for a knacker-sac injection, partly because it's got the basic chassis for it, but mostly because it's got the right bloody attitude, too.
It's also a hot seller in the big ol' US of A, which is where Luxon can see big ol' dollar signs. And that's why this mule is a left-hooker. The kit's engineered to fit both left-hand and right-hand drives, with complete commonality of parts - 197 brand newies, to be precise, once you've counted clips, washers and seals.
Now here's the interesting bit. The kit is fitted without lifting the cylinder heads or altering the engine's internals in the slightest. Yep, you still get the factory Zed's 10.3:1 compression ratio, which might seem monstrously high for a turbo charged car, but the rub-off is that boost can be kept to a very manageable 7psi - and you retain all the standard car's low-end driveability, which is considerable.
It's typical of the APS ethos for road cars. Instead of some light-switch power delivery, where the world goes from dull and boring to acid trip in a split second, you get great bottom-end punch and that rippling mid-range rush only forced induction can provide.
The maintenance of driveability also explains the V6 copping a small turbo (a Garrett GT28/35R, as it happens) on each bank rather than a dirty big single bugger. Two smaller snails will always spool up faster than one big mother - and that does low-end urge no harm at all. Throw in the fact that they're ball-bearing and water-cooled and they spin up mightily fast.
It also means that the turbos can be mounted low in the airstream under the car, while clever design ensures that the plumbing between each snail and the intercooler is the same length.
Of course, even with all that going for it, there's no guarantee (from where I sit, anyway)that the result isn't going to be a pig. But proof that there is APS genius at work comes the first time you stand on the barst. The Zed doesn't just accelerate; it plain rips away. Big time! We didn't put a clock on it, but if this thing can't pull an easy 12 (which is Turbo 911-fast), well, we'll just about bloody stand rooted.
Rear-wheel power has been measured at a neat 280kW, which is way, way up from the stocker's 160 or so. Combined with the El Fatso torque curve, this makes it both effortless and very attention-grabbing. Yet much, much more impressive than this is the driveability of the bugger. Flatten the throttle in sixth at just 1500rpm or so and the thing accelerates smoothly and briskly. Any gear, any speed, any revs, the Zed doesn't cough, puke or pig-root; it just leans back on its rear tyres and breathes in the horizon.
Overtaking? No worries. All you really need is about 2000rpm showing and tramp the gas pedal. Provided you've got that many revs on board, there's no real need to shuffle down a gear. In fact, it spools up so damned fast in the mid-range that it's a higher gear you'll be looking for, not a lower one. Whatever was in your path microseconds ago will be now be a distant second. Yes, indeed; there are fast cars and then there are cars like the APS twin-turbo Zed.
The installation may have smoothed the Zed's gruff engine a little, but it's still no sewing machine. The grumble is still there at lower revs and there's still a bit of thrashiness as you really wring it out. This time around, of course, there's also a very satisfying nose-blow noise when you abandon the noise pedal and the blow-off valves dump their boost.
The all-up cost is still in the air, but take it as read that you won't be getting much change back from about $15,000. That's partly because APS won't be offering the thing as a spanner-it-up-at-home kit. The only way to get hold of it will be as a turn-key installation, including all fitting, tuning and an engineer's certificate to prove to Plod that it still meets all relevant noise and emissions targets. That's purely because Luxon knows the kind of bloke shelling out for a modded 350Z sure as hell doesn't want any legal hassles - quite literally - down the road. Turn a perfectly legal set of wheels into a liability by spending a large amount of cash thereon? Well, that makes no real sense to us, either.
Projected annual sales volumes are 25-30 a year in Australia, so it could never justify the $380,000 to date that APS has tipped into the development and testing of the set-up.
But the potentially hundreds of installations our Stateside friends might be interested in? Now that, speed freaks, is a different story entirely.
