About tune.
 

I spoke with Greddy because I have just purchased the kit. And I am installing it. Just to be sure, I called and asked them if the car needs to be tuned. the kit they sell is tuned already its plug and play. There is no tune necessary unless you are gonna boost higher then it is set at.

from my understanding people that blew their motor w/ the greddy were running on stock boost too so i would still get it tuned

Why would Greddy state that you don't need a tune. The way the kit was designed its tuned to plug and play. Its tuned specially for the G35 coupes.
Thats what they said word for word.

And that again is running 5.5 psi on stock internals no more then that.

B/c one map cant work for every car in every situation. Get it tuned or risk blowing your motor.

I would also add the ignition harness and adjust timing. I think it is crazy to go FI and not pull some timing and not tune. Gas, weather conditions, different cars can all effect the way your car runs. At a minimum you should put it on a dyno and check you AF and check for any knock.

That said, a bad tune by a tuner that doesn't know what they are doing, is probably worse than the Greddy tune. So, if you decide to tune, make sure your tuner knows what they are doing.

also might want to try asking on my350z, where the FI experience is more common

^^+1

A baseline tune cannot take into account average ambient temperature, avg humidity levels (which can affect air density), octane of fuel, etc. The map could be set for 91 octane (Cali.) whereas we have 93 octane here in TX (which would make it safer).

I would consider the money spent on a tune as peace of mind!

Is there more concrete information available on the limitations of the stock internals? I would venture that Greddy invested a pretty heavy amount of time finding a safe tune for the stock VQ motor... but I also understand everyone's concern about trusting some company-provided 'basemap'.

Must Haves
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1. Ignition harness

What are some other things IvoryGTV can look forward to out of this kit? Or look forward to purchasing alongside this kit?
Can he monitor knock?

Seeing that many people have blown their stock motors, was there any lesson learned? Or did the people just blame it on the bottom end and upgrade? Did they ever go into detail explaining what caused it? What is scaring me is that a lot of the people just seem to be throwing money at the car, It's like they buy these kits and crank out the boost until the engine blows... so they can use that as an excuse to upgrade their internals.

What seems to be the biggest problem here? 'shoddy engine tolerances' or the 'way the stock ecu handles knock' or 'lack of tuning/logging experience'?

Most people blew the stock motor for either not pulling timing at the top end or in the beginning just running around with the base tune. Like everyone else has said, gas, temp, altitude, etc.. all play a roll and no one map will work for everyone.

There's a 'reason' timing needs to be pulled. But a certain amount of timing also needs to be maintained in order to keep any power potential.

When people are blowing these motors up... are they logging knock, are they logging A/F? There's only one thing that's suspect for blown motors... detonation. It's too easy to blame 'timing' as the culprit... much like it's easy to blame the A/F mixture as "too lean". I'd like to see what these guys are logging(if anything) when their engines miraculously 'BOOM' because of timing.

I want to know: If someone has blown their motor on the GREDDY base tune(GReddy kit only)... please direct me to that thread.

While I'm on topic:
A persons' altitude will have absolutely no effect on FI tuning(vacuum or pressurized air, you are not relying on atmosphere).
Temperature fluxuation is usually taken care of by the stock ECU... it's not like you guys are rewriting these maps, you are merely slapping a piggyback on the stock ECU.
Gas octane rating is important to deter knock and detonation... but Greddy should've given a good basemap that is pig rich. If Greddy themselves stated that the kit is capable of bolting on and running... I wouldn't dismiss their claim. While it's true that one map won't give ideal power for everyone... there should be a solid basemap that can support all stock G35s with this kit.

meatbag,
I'm not trying to grill you or anything... I appreciate the answers that you have given so far. And my responses weren't directed at you... they are very open and I'd like a response from anyone.

I'd just like some further direction to the information regarding the GReddy kit... so some of the information floating around can be de-mystified and actually brought to light.

no lots of things can blow motors - not just detonation.

heat can. Running low on oil, oil starvation, a problem with the coolant system. The greddy system using the stock oil pan has no oil baffles can have problems. If you're going thru a bunch of corners hard you might get some slight oil starvation and heat up the engine and thus gradually weakening parts over time.

Yeah or maybe you got a bad tank of gas.

Or maybe the ECU started trying to pull gas and timing on it's own because some of the older piggybacks did not have a target A/F feature that forces the A/F to be what you say.

It can also happen by doing lots of top speed runs because of how much heat that builds up

Most people that just have the base greddy kit arnt into it enough to have full datalogging systems, etc..

So the most we can do it speculate. Most people arnt going to say "i went 7000 miles before changing my oil" or anything that will incriminate themselves.

For the most part people that have blown their motors have heard detonation or at least think they have. Otherwise who knows, it could be lots of things, but why risk running on a "bad" tune for your car when for $200-$500 you can have that much more insurence against having to spend $10k-$15k for a new built motor.

And i dont doubt that the base greddy map will run any G35/350z that you put it on, but your right the emanage is a piggy back and doesnt have the control that systems like the Fcon Vpro have or even the factory ECU's on vehicles that came turbocharged from the factory.

heat causes detonation sir. ;)

crap tuning causes detonation...

detonation destroys motors.

Do you guys have any dataloggers available?

that's true, but then why do a lot of greddy owners who have blown up motors blown them up when they're not even driving them hard?

Hell even Sharif from Forged Internals blew his engine up around 4000 rpms with out any real load on the car at the time when he was going thru some twisty mountain roads - he was getting on the throttle here and there, but when the engine gave out he wasn't giving it any real hard throttle

lots of people who really know cars and what detonation sounds like say they don't hear any detonation - some run half racing gas in their car too. Just saying you can blow up an engine for reasons other than detonation. You can get a part to seize which in turn breaks/bends a rod, then the engine is toast and will blow a hole in the block just due to the force of how fast the engine is moving