Here is a post over on another forum about our new 3.9 final drive.
Cheers
BJ@350EVO.com
PART 1 - Info, Install, Impressions and 0-60mph.


INFO

I received the 350EVO ring and pinion on Friday of last week. BJ was nice enough to honor the pre-order price from way back in November. Thanks BJ! Product arrived in 1 day!! In the box was two gears, instructions, ring bolts and an extra shim for the pinion gear. Gears were numbered and marked to give the proper information to the installers.

My present mods are mostly suspension/traction because I am interested in what the car can do with stock or near stock power. I have the Technosquare ECU, Ultimate Racing Y-Pipe and Unorthodox Crank Pulley and K&N panel filter. I purchased the ECU to augment the 3.9 via the increased rev-limiter and plan no major bolt-ons in the near future as all my resources are going to track modifications.

For suspension/traction, I have 295/35/18-265/35/18 Toyo T1-S tires and 10.5/9" CCW wheels, Tein Basic Coilovers, Hotchkis Sways and the Kinetix Traction Arms.

INSTALL

I had Motorworks in Dekalb, IL do the install. They specialize in transmissions/driveline and repairs for imports. The price was $560 for labor and $50 for shims and bearings. The guys at Motorworks rebuilt the transmission in my Pathfinder and have proven themselves to be excellent mechanics.

The install took about a day and half, which is longer than usual because they had to order shims and bearings from NNA. I had the stuff overnighted to the shop so it could get done faster. I have a bunch of pics which I will post at the end. I also had the NISMO differential cooler installed at the same time.

INITIAL IMPRESSIONS

I think the EVO gear is even quieter than my factory setup, which had a noticeable whine at 60 in 5th gear. I wound through the gears gently as I pulled out of Motorworks and took it for a little spin to make sure everything was heated up. After that, I started to get on it. Straight line acceleration is definitely improved. But its subtle. The car winds up a little quicker, 7200 comes up fast. Its just that subtle. The difference is hard to feel with the butt dyno until you go around a corner.

Once the thrill of straight line acceleration wore of then I started to get on it in the corners. This is where the gear pays for itself! Holy Sh*t!!! The car takes off hard coming out of a corner. The best way to describe it is to imagine that someone has removed 350 lbs of fat from your Z. It just screams out of corners. This thing is going to be a handful at the track.


ZERO TO SIXTY

Once home, I got my datalogger and set out to my testing grounds. I have a Sony Clie and Pocketlogger. I get 5 samples per second so its relatively accurate.

I did five 0-60 runs with the EVO gear and the results are as follows in seconds from slow to fast;

5.63
5.57
5.44
5.34
5.28

Wheel spin upon launch was just a little bit easier than before. Very easily corrected. And second gear spun rather than sqawked. That can be reduced with more practice. These times were very easy to get. I did not practice. As I get used to it, I will log some more runs. I think 5.1 to 5.0 is probably within reach.

I've done fifty or sixty 0-60 runs this summer so I just took the set with my record in it, ordered from slow to fast;

5.90
5.68
5.67
5.55
5.44

My previous best was 5.44, that was after 50+ tries!

That is the first installment of my review.

Part 2 will come tomorrow when I go to Byron Dragway to see if I can lower my time of 13.6. I will report back with the results sometime tomorrow evening.


Part 3 will be in 2 weeks or so when I have a "real" track day at Blackhawk farms where I recently performed a trial time. I will compare my experience and time with the new gearing with that of the previous time trial.

Pictures to follow soon.