After putting the borla on, I could not get the smile off my face for about an hour, I LOVE the exhaust note from it. Very deep sounding at low rpms compared to stock. The tips are awesome looking too. As for performance, I definatelly felt improvement in my butt dyno. They claim 15-20hp from it, I dont know about that, if so great, but I'll give it about 10hp. The Borla had a hole in the weilding on the right exchaust tip !! About a half an inch wide. I will be calling them on monday to get a replacement for that part of it. Except for that the quality seemed pretty got for a 750 dollar exhaust system and I have no complaints. The weight felt like about half of the stock system.

Then I did the Plenum. What a piece of $hit. The welding was terrible and the metal they uses looked to be about 1/4 of the stock thickness. But anyway, I figured it will probably be ok. So I put it on. Well as soon as I turned the car on it ren like crap. It would stall after about 15 seconds tops. At low rpm, idling and up to 1000 it would be very unstable. Driving with it was ok at higer rpms 2k and up, but as soon as I would come to a stop the engine would stall after 10-15 seconds, sometimes quicker. It seemed like the engine was getting too much air and not enough fuel. The plenum also produced a loud hissing sound coming from the front of it, probably from the air turbulance caused by the crappy weilding job on the inside of it and low thikness of the metal used. I also have the z tube and the stillen hi-flow box installed. So I tried running the plenum with the stock tube and filer. It was better but not much. So after a while of getting truelly irritated I took it off. As soon as I put the stock plenum on, it ren beautifully. The Plenum is currently waiting in a box to be shipped back to crawford z car on monday. After looking under the plenum where the 6 holer are that suck the air into the cylinders(I put a pic of it in my profile it looks pretty cool), I am a bit sceptical as of the performance claims it has. This was strange for me since I read only good things about this mod. Maybe I had a bad one. But anyway I probably wont try a replacement if they try to send me one. That money is now going towards the Technosquare ecu

I also put a pic of the crawford plenum I got in my profile so you peepz can judge the quality for yourselves.

 

My guess is that you have a leak in or around the plenum. It might be sucking in some air, possibly from a poor fit around the gasket area. I would have said it's a bad or torn gasket that the plenum sits on top of, but you put the stock one back on and things were fine. Sounds like you got a warped or poorly machined plenum.

When you lay the Crawford on a very flat surface, is the unit flat and level? Any holes in the plenum?

I hate to hear of this kind of thing--but maybe Crawford can do an exchange and then try another one!

jjellyneck

 

cool about the borla system, i love mine as well [img]/w3timages/icons/smile.gif[/img]

The plenum looks shotty from that angle that you took the picture... it must be defective. It seems as if Crawford is selling these things like hotcakes, so they are probably trying to speed up processing and not as much time for QA (quality assurance)

My advice would be to talk to them and maybe have them send you a replacement for free.
Best of luck.

<font color=green>-Rambo</font color=green>
G35c 6MT DG/Willow/HyperGround/BorlaExhaust

 

Yea, I really looked foward to having the crawford plenum. Maybe I will try a replacement. It only takes about 45 minutes to put it on. And btw I am not trying to bash crawford z car or the plenum, just not happy with the perticular one they sent me.

 

I urge you to try again, and also replace the gasket, just to make sure there is no leak. Your's is the first negative post I've read about. I have the plenum, been on about a month now, and I can't say enough good things about it. No change in low speed running, but above 3.5K watch out, it's awesome. This mod made the most difference of any that I have done. The car now pulls strongly right up to redline with no flat spots. BTW I also have the Z tube, a K&N filter, grounding kit, and a full dual exhaust that uses a Magnaflow X pipe muffler.

 

No offense, but are you sure you put the plenum on right?

I absolutely and positively guarantee you that you have a leak in the plenum. Did you install those two short bolts in place of the OEM plenum mounting bolts that are no longer used with the Crawford Plenum? How about the plastic washer on top of the plenum under the long bolt?

I guarantee you that you have a severe leak if your car stalls. There is no way that the plenum can be that warped from welding. As it was said above, does it lie flat on a flat surface. Even if it doesn't (to a slight extent), it will when you tighten the bolts.

Gurgen

2003.0 G35 5AT Sedan Aero/Sport
<font color=blue>TechoSquare ECU</font color=blue>
Injen CAI
Crawford Plenum
Crawford High-Flow Cats
22" Magnaflow Resonator
Eibach Pro Kit
Cusco Sway Bars (soon)

 

g35gnome, Sorry to hear about the Crawford P. Having just installed my Borla pipes (I too love them) , I am looking forward to installing my Crawford which should arrive this week.
Your's is the first negative post I've read, and no doubt there is a problem, but there must be a leak in the plenum as you said or at the gasket. The gasket may still be suspect even tho the stock plenum functions ok with it, because the Crawford may not sit in exactly the same place as the Stock.
I asked for extra gaskets (2) with mine just to be sure, and will post with an installed evaluation for you this week (hopefully).
As you saw with the Borla, sometimes flaws get 'thru the cracks' and I'm sure Crawford will replace with another and pay the shipping of course.
From what I've seen and read, the Crawford Plenum and the Techno ECU upgrades are about the best mods you can make short of FI. Someone said the Crawford is good for 15 to 20 hp. (I still haven't seen a dyno on this mod).

On the Borla--- So you'll have to ship the whole muffler and tailpipe assembly back to Borla then? I would hope they'd ship a new one b4 you sent back the faulty one.

I've read that the Borla only increased hp by about 8 to the wheels, and about 3 or 4 ft lbs. Like you, I feel it's more hp than 8 or 10, but more significantly the torque feels more noticeable under 4k. Which would indicate more torque increase than 3 or 4!!!!!!.
Hard to say using the Butt dyno, but I'd wager dollars to doughnuts that I gained more than 8 hp and 4 ft lbs to the rear wheels. Whatever it is, I like it along with it's 'sweet tune'.


PS.- I saw that you had attained Enthusiast (over 200 posts) and upgraded your status. Congrats and happy posting.

<font color=red>GSM</font color=red> <font color=black>Silverstone Coupe</font color=black>

 

Gsedanman,
You reach Enthusiast at 200? Then Why am I still a Member at 235? I know you guys are busy.........

NismoCPV-35

 

I just looked over the pdf that crawford has on their website. I did everything exactly right except i skipped the installation of the 2 short 10mm bolts in the two front corner holes not being used by new plenum. I guess I should have read that before hand, Duhhh. Do you guys think that would have created the loud hissing sound ? Even so it shouldnt explain the leakage. Also like I wrote previously I did put the orginal plenum on afterwards and everything was fine, normal. So maybe like you said I should replace the gaskets anyway even though it seems fine(the shop manual says to replace the gaskets at every dissasembly). I will try that but, did u guys look at the pic I put in my profile of the inside of the crawford plenum? Did yours look so poorly done also ? The welding inside just didnt look good at all to me. I can attach better pics if need be. I just also put the plenum on the best flat surface I could find around my house (glass table) and it seemed quite uneven. Now it might be the table thats at foult but i arranget the plenum different ways in different locations on the table and I got the same uneven result. I really want this mod to work on my car since everybody only had great things to say about it. My plan was to put it on before the ecu upgrade.

 

On the Borla crack, I will not ship them anything back until I get a new one first, no way will I be without my car for a week!, or more that it would take to ship back and forth. Its going to be hard enough 3 days for the ecu. But during that time I will accomplish 3 things though. That is the ecu, fix my front 2 rims that are damaged and install the Stillen Crossdrilled/Slotted rotors and EBC Greenstuff pads front and back. And thanx for updating my status I feel much better now

 

Too bad it's just not more attractive or better yet that the engine cover could fit PROPERLY. Oh well, I guess you can't have your cake and eat it too.

"Use the Forced Induction Luke!"
-Jedi
2003 G35C, 6MT, Navi, Black Obsidian/Graphite

 

NismoV35, The auto updater is broken for now, so we are updating manually when peeps ask. We catch some in our travels, but with about 6k members, we need to hear from most to know you need updating.
One of our team has already updated you. Congrats and happy posting. Next stop for you is 'Addict' at 400 posts.

Our updating issue is posted in it's own thread in Off topic., but if anyone has not come accross that yet and needs an update, our mods and admins can make the changes for you until the auto-updater is repaired.
You can p/m us or you can leave a message in that Off Topic thread for me to get to later.
GSM.

<font color=red>GSM</font color=red> <font color=black>Silverstone Coupe</font color=black>