Just wanted to show some pics of what I've been up to the last 2-3 weeks. It's driven my wife nuts, but if I get any gains, it would have been with minimal $$.

After my Kinetix V3 cracked, I sent it back to Kinetix for a refund. I decided to go with the Crawford and be done with it. I wanted to polish the plenum myself, so instead of powdercoating it, Doug at Crawford said that he would make the welds a bit cleaner so that the plenum would more suitable for polishing. I sent my stock plenum in, and got it back in 1 week. (There's about a waitlist of 30 people if you want Crawford to send you a V5 without you sending a core in first).

While the plenum was being modified, I took apart the lower plenum, and intake manifold. I cleaned up the intake runners on the lower plenum and port matched them to the intake manifold. I decided to clean the intake manifold while I had that out of the car.

I also port matched the throttle body to the plenum, and widened the throttle body intake side a bit. Everything was polished a bit.

Overall, it's a fun project. Butt dyno says the car is stronger in the top end, but I'll wait for the next socal dyno day to make any further claims.

On to the pics.....

 

Here's the Crawford V5 plenum. I'm still not done polishing, but I need the car tomorrow for work....



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Another shot of the plenum. Bear with me, I'm trying to upload everything via modem right now...



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Here's the underside of the Crawford plenum if anyone has ever wondered what it looked like. I cleaned up the opening of the plenum a bit.



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Here's a shot of the runners in the intake manifold. The one on the left has been polished a bit, the one on the right is in original form.



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Here's another shot of the intake manifold This is the side that bolts up to the lower plenum. Everything was port matched. The top runner has not been worked on yet.



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Here's the lower plenum back on the car. All my pics were taken without flash.



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Here's the other side.



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Here's the throttle body after I cleaned the butterfly plate, but before I touched the side walls.



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Here's the throttle body after I widened a mouth a bit and polished up the sides.



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Last pic for now..everything back together. Again, I still have to polish the plenum more, but even without flash from the camera, it's pretty shiny.

Even if I only gained 2 or 3 HP from all this, it gave me something to do while I waited for the plenum. The $ cost of the port matching and polishing was about $20 for the dremel bits.

I have other pics if anyone is curious as to how our engines look behind the plenum and plastic cover. Time to rest now...



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Wow the polished plenum and everything looks great!! I thought polishing the manifold ports and heads were a big job that had to be professionally done and costs a lot of money? I could do it myself witht he right tools? And what are the advantages of it? Thanks. Martin


Martin
2003.5 BS G35
Nismo Aero/Sport Package
Injen CAI
B+G Springs
ADR M-Classic 19's..

 

Thanks for the compliment. I didn't touch the heads. Jeff at Performance Nissan had his engine heads P&Ped and he lost low end. I didn't do much porting since that is best left to a professional, all I did was port match the intake system. I figured that the polishing would be ok. Infiniti claims that the intake is "micropolished" from the factory. It was still quite rough with casting imperfections. That's what I tried to get rid of.

 

Great project and very nice photos!

You should post this on the DIY board to keep this information more accessible.

 

Nice work EK