Mike Bonanni | Official Website | Living the Dream...

If you’ve been following my blog for a while you will remember that earlier this year I was overwhelmed in preparations for the Modified Magazine Tuner Shootout, an annual multi-format competition focused on JDM street cars. It was an honor to have myself and my 370Z invited to compete, but it was a lot of work to get ready for such an epic event. In part 1 of this blog series I discussed some of what it took to get my car prepared for this event and in this part of my little blog mini-series surrounding this event I will get into detail about my thoughts on the event as well as how it went. Although this blog entry is a re-cap of the event through my perspective you’ll notice that I don’t discuss results. There’s a reason for that; all competitors had to take a mandatory blood oath of secrecy, but have no fear, the results will be published soon in an upcoming issue of Modified Magazine.

The event kicked off on Friday at UMS Tuning in Mesa, AZ for the three off-track competitions which included a dyno test, exhaust sound level test, and emissions test. My 370Z was one of the first to get strapped to the UMS Tuning Dynapak and Tony from UMS Tuning began with the sound level test. When planning the exhaust setup with Fast Intentions just weeks prior to the event, we took this sound level test into consideration. From experience, Fast Intentions knew that their full header/exhaust setup is normally quite loud and although we knew that the addition of high flow cats into the exhaust would quiet it down some, we weren’t sure if it would be enough so we opted to also add in a pair of 18” resonators to the exhaust. The exhaust sound level was measured under load at high rpm using a hand-held decibel meter. I will be the first to admit the sound level reading technique probably wasn’t the most accurate as the car was inside the shop on the dyno while the microphone was fairly far away outside the shop. Although I can’t spill the beans on specific results, I can say that my exhaust system came in quieter than expected on the dB meter, as did most every other competitor which I will go ahead and attribute to the less than ideal testing conditions.

Immediately following the sound level test was the dyno pulls. Just a week prior I was down at Specialty Z in Southern California getting my UpRev ECU tune after my exhaust installation and my 370Z ran consistent and healthy 318whp on their DynoJet. Traditionally, Dynapak dynos like the ones used by UMS Tuning read quite a bit higher than DynoJets but for whatever reasons, this was not the case for the Modified Tuner Shootout dyno competition and my 370Z. I went into the dyno competition hoping to read somewhere around the 330whp mark and again, I cannot say the results just yet but let’s just say it wasn’t 330whp, it was much lower. I don’t have any educated guesses as to why this occurred other than speculating that ~20° hotter ambient air temperatures probably weren’t helping. Fortunately for me, peak horsepower numbers were not the primary focus of the judging on the dyno competition. The judging was based on power under the curve which means that the judges would be looking at the average horsepower over a certain rpm range instead of just the peak number. This benefits a broad powerband, something my 370Z is blessed with thanks to AEM, Fast Intentions, NonStopTuning, and UpRev! The method of judging on power under the curve actually ended up giving me the same score as another competitor whose peak dyno numbers were nearly 60whp more.

With the dyno runs complete, the 370Z had one more test to complete before its day was done and that was the emissions test. The rules of the competition mandated that each car be equipped with high flow cats, and mine was equipped with two of them. Favoring horsepower over fuel emissions (sorry environmentalists) we opted to go with the minimum requirement for high flow cats and installed two 100-cell metallic high flow cats. The lower the cell counts the freer flowing the catalytic converter is, but it is still very efficient on cancelling out emissions. Being naturally aspirated instead of turbocharged or supercharged like the majority of the competitors, it was expected by most that my 370Z would be really good on emissions, but I knew that with the minimalist catalytic converters that I would probably surprise a few. With the emissions test done I was free to go back to the hotel and relax before day two.

Day two was the day that I was waiting for; I was finally going to get to do some driving! Day two would feature the last three areas of competition, the autocross, the time attack, and the drag race. We started out the day with the autocross which was held on the back section of the Firebird Raceway Main circuit. The course consisted of a hybrid of a traditional cone course and part of the road course. The course itself was pretty fun and pretty quick compared to autocrosses I have been to in the past. It started off with a short straight followed by a quick left hander that immediately led to a set of offset cone gates that you had to navigate through. After the gates were a series of fairly quick flowing switchbacks and at the top end of the course a sharp right hander into a decreasing radius 360° turn. Once turned around you drove back through the entire course in the opposite direction. We were allowed a few practice runs on the course before our timed competition runs began, but without any time to make any major setup changes in between runs I had to guess on the setup prior to the event. I started with a setup that I guessed would be fairly loose which would be good for the slower sharper turns that autocross courses feature. My setup worked pretty well and my practice runs were feeling good and I ended up only making small air pressure adjustments prior to the competition runs. Pushing a bit harder in the competition runs, I ran into the dreaded ABS system ice mode which is a phenomenon with the 370Zs. In a nutshell what happens is your ABS system becomes hyper sensitive and you essentially lose 70% of your braking power not allowing you to slow down very well. Fortunately, the autocross course was not very braking intensive and I probably was only a few tenths of a second off of what I speculate I could have run with fully functioning brakes. The problem was hardest to manage when trying to come to a stop after crossing the finish line. Despite the small setback I was very happy with the end results and times from the autocross competition.

Because of the dreaded ABS system glitches rearing their ugly head in the autocross, I was a bit nervous heading into the time attack. The time attack portion of the event was run on the Firebird West road course, a track that I had never driven on before. The track itself was very bumpy and featured mostly low speed corners and one decently long straight away. We were given just one practice session prior to the time attack competition and for that practice session, my goals were simple: learn the track, test the brakes, and try and get a decent feel for the car’s handling balance. I went out and took the first few laps very easy as every turn was new to me. Gradually I started pushing harder and it wasn’t long before the ABS ice mode started kicking in every time I went to the brake pedal. The more I hit ice mode, the more sensitive the ABS system became and the easier and easier it started to get triggered. With the problem only getting worse, I decided to pull off the track early. When trying to troubleshoot possible fixes for this problem, we came up with multiple possible solutions or causes but unfortunately none of those were things that I could diagnose or fix at the track so I knew I just had to go back out there and do the best I could. On the positive side, I was able to get some feedback, albeit minimal, on the setup of the rest of the car and the new splitter I built was working really well, almost too well without the aid of a rear wing to balance out the downforce. I made some sway bar and damper adjustments to help dial in the handling a bit better and headed out for the time attack. For some reason I was really hoping that the motorsports gods would be smiling down on me and I would miraculously have my brakes back, but that wasn’t the case. I set out and did the best I could, but the results were less than desirable. Fortunately, you don’t need brakes to drag race and that’s what was coming up next.

As night began to fall over Firebird Raceway, the drag race portion of the event got under way. Ambient air temperatures were still in the low 90s and the drag strip was not prepped in any way, but at least all of the competitors had to deal with the same conditions. Again, we were given two practice runs before being allowed four more runs that would count toward the competition. I used the practice runs to get used to launching the 370Z and get a feel for the track conditions. Once the competition started I began to make my runs saving my last run until as late as possible to hope that ambient temperatures would be down a little from where we started. My strategy proved to do nothing as over the course of all six runs, practice and competition, my ¼ mile times were all within a tenth of a second of each other, most within mere hundredths. I ended the night being fairly confident that my car was just not going to go any faster than it did down the drag strip.

With the competition over I let out a sigh of relief. All of the hard work to prepare the car and the ups and downs of the competition no longer mattered, it was in the books. Coming into the competition with high hopes of doing well on the road course, I was admittedly bummed that my car just wouldn’t cooperate, but regardless I had an awesome time competing in such a cool event. Everyone that was competing with me, and the fine folks who put the event on were all incredibly friendly fun people to be around and I am keeping my fingers crossed that I will be invited back next year to redeem myself.

The results of the competition are scheduled to be published in the August 2012 issue of Modified Magazine so be sure to renew those subscriptions and be the first to read how it all went down! After the results are released to the public check back to my website and I will post part 3 of this blog series where we will analyze and put some perspective on the results!

Link Love:
www.Modified.com
www.OSGiken.net
www.Conti-Online.com

Project 370Z Partners:
BC Racing North America
Hard-Driving Motorsports
Paladin Advanced Automotive
Fast Intentions
UpRev
Whiteline
Hawk Performance
NonStopTuning
Odyssey Batteries
Mishimoto

Like This Page:
Facebook.com/BonanniMotorsports
Facebook.com/OSGiken
Facebook.com/ModifiedMagazine
Facebook.com/BCRacingNA
Facebook.com/FastIntentions
Facebook.com/ContinentalTire
Facebook.com/HardDrivingMotorsports
Facebook.com/UpRev
Facebook.com/WhitelineFlatout
Facebook.com/HawkPerformance
Facebook.com/NonStopTuningUSA
Facebook.com/GoMishimoto

----




Fast Intentions 370Z Dyno Pulls	Modified Magazine Tuner Shootout \| Part 2 - Show Time	Global Time Attack Round 1 \| 2012
	If you’ve been following my blog for a while you will remember that earlier this year I was overwhelmed in preparations for the Modified Magazine Tuner Shootout, an annual multi-format competition focused on JDM street cars. It was an honor to have myself and my 370Z invited to compete, but it was a lot of work to get ready for such an epic event. In part 1 of this blog series I discussed some of what it took to get my car prepared for this event and in this part of my little blog mini-series surrounding this event I will get into detail about my thoughts on the event as well as how it went. Although this blog entry is a re-cap of the event through my perspective you’ll notice that I don’t discuss results. There’s a reason for that; all competitors had to take a mandatory blood oath of secrecy, but have no fear, the results will be published soon in an upcoming issue of Modified Magazine. The event kicked off on Friday at UMS Tuning in Mesa, AZ for the three off-track competitions which included a dyno test, exhaust sound level test, and emissions test. My 370Z was one of the first to get strapped to the UMS Tuning Dynapak and Tony from UMS Tuning began with the sound level test. When planning the exhaust setup with Fast Intentions just weeks prior to the event, we took this sound level test into consideration. From experience, Fast Intentions knew that their full header/exhaust setup is normally quite loud and although we knew that the addition of high flow cats into the exhaust would quiet it down some, we weren’t sure if it would be enough so we opted to also add in a pair of 18” resonators to the exhaust. The exhaust sound level was measured under load at high rpm using a hand-held decibel meter. I will be the first to admit the sound level reading technique probably wasn’t the most accurate as the car was inside the shop on the dyno while the microphone was fairly far away outside the shop. Although I can’t spill the beans on specific results, I can say that my exhaust system came in quieter than expected on the dB meter, as did most every other competitor which I will go ahead and attribute to the less than ideal testing conditions. Immediately following the sound level test was the dyno pulls. Just a week prior I was down at Specialty Z in Southern California getting my UpRev ECU tune after my exhaust installation and my 370Z ran consistent and healthy 318whp on their DynoJet. Traditionally, Dynapak dynos like the ones used by UMS Tuning read quite a bit higher than DynoJets but for whatever reasons, this was not the case for the Modified Tuner Shootout dyno competition and my 370Z. I went into the dyno competition hoping to read somewhere around the 330whp mark and again, I cannot say the results just yet but let’s just say it wasn’t 330whp, it was much lower. I don’t have any educated guesses as to why this occurred other than speculating that ~20° hotter ambient air temperatures probably weren’t helping. Fortunately for me, peak horsepower numbers were not the primary focus of the judging on the dyno competition. The judging was based on power under the curve which means that the judges would be looking at the average horsepower over a certain rpm range instead of just the peak number. This benefits a broad powerband, something my 370Z is blessed with thanks to AEM, Fast Intentions, NonStopTuning, and UpRev! The method of judging on power under the curve actually ended up giving me the same score as another competitor whose peak dyno numbers were nearly 60whp more. With the dyno runs complete, the 370Z had one more test to complete before its day was done and that was the emissions test. The rules of the competition mandated that each car be equipped with high flow cats, and mine was equipped with two of them. Favoring horsepower over fuel emissions (sorry environmentalists) we opted to go with the minimum requirement for high flow cats and installed two 100-cell metallic high flow cats. The lower the cell counts the freer flowing the catalytic converter is, but it is still very efficient on cancelling out emissions. Being naturally aspirated instead of turbocharged or supercharged like the majority of the competitors, it was expected by most that my 370Z would be really good on emissions, but I knew that with the minimalist catalytic converters that I would probably surprise a few. With the emissions test done I was free to go back to the hotel and relax before day two. Day two was the day that I was waiting for; I was finally going to get to do some driving! Day two would feature the last three areas of competition, the autocross, the time attack, and the drag race. We started out the day with the autocross which was held on the back section of the Firebird Raceway Main circuit. The course consisted of a hybrid of a traditional cone course and part of the road course. The course itself was pretty fun and pretty quick compared to autocrosses I have been to in the past. It started off with a short straight followed by a quick left hander that immediately led to a set of offset cone gates that you had to navigate through. After the gates were a series of fairly quick flowing switchbacks and at the top end of the course a sharp right hander into a decreasing radius 360° turn. Once turned around you drove back through the entire course in the opposite direction. We were allowed a few practice runs on the course before our timed competition runs began, but without any time to make any major setup changes in between runs I had to guess on the setup prior to the event. I started with a setup that I guessed would be fairly loose which would be good for the slower sharper turns that autocross courses feature. My setup worked pretty well and my practice runs were feeling good and I ended up only making small air pressure adjustments prior to the competition runs. Pushing a bit harder in the competition runs, I ran into the dreaded ABS system ice mode which is a phenomenon with the 370Zs. In a nutshell what happens is your ABS system becomes hyper sensitive and you essentially lose 70% of your braking power not allowing you to slow down very well. Fortunately, the autocross course was not very braking intensive and I probably was only a few tenths of a second off of what I speculate I could have run with fully functioning brakes. The problem was hardest to manage when trying to come to a stop after crossing the finish line. Despite the small setback I was very happy with the end results and times from the autocross competition. Because of the dreaded ABS system glitches rearing their ugly head in the autocross, I was a bit nervous heading into the time attack. The time attack portion of the event was run on the Firebird West road course, a track that I had never driven on before. The track itself was very bumpy and featured mostly low speed corners and one decently long straight away. We were given just one practice session prior to the time attack competition and for that practice session, my goals were simple: learn the track, test the brakes, and try and get a decent feel for the car’s handling balance. I went out and took the first few laps very easy as every turn was new to me. Gradually I started pushing harder and it wasn’t long before the ABS ice mode started kicking in every time I went to the brake pedal. The more I hit ice mode, the more sensitive the ABS system became and the easier and easier it started to get triggered. With the problem only getting worse, I decided to pull off the track early. When trying to troubleshoot possible fixes for this problem, we came up with multiple possible solutions or causes but unfortunately none of those were things that I could diagnose or fix at the track so I knew I just had to go back out there and do the best I could. On the positive side, I was able to get some feedback, albeit minimal, on the setup of the rest of the car and the new splitter I built was working really well, almost too well without the aid of a rear wing to balance out the downforce. I made some sway bar and damper adjustments to help dial in the handling a bit better and headed out for the time attack. For some reason I was really hoping that the motorsports gods would be smiling down on me and I would miraculously have my brakes back, but that wasn’t the case. I set out and did the best I could, but the results were less than desirable. Fortunately, you don’t need brakes to drag race and that’s what was coming up next. As night began to fall over Firebird Raceway, the drag race portion of the event got under way. Ambient air temperatures were still in the low 90s and the drag strip was not prepped in any way, but at least all of the competitors had to deal with the same conditions. Again, we were given two practice runs before being allowed four more runs that would count toward the competition. I used the practice runs to get used to launching the 370Z and get a feel for the track conditions. Once the competition started I began to make my runs saving my last run until as late as possible to hope that ambient temperatures would be down a little from where we started. My strategy proved to do nothing as over the course of all six runs, practice and competition, my ¼ mile times were all within a tenth of a second of each other, most within mere hundredths. I ended the night being fairly confident that my car was just not going to go any faster than it did down the drag strip. With the competition over I let out a sigh of relief. All of the hard work to prepare the car and the ups and downs of the competition no longer mattered, it was in the books. Coming into the competition with high hopes of doing well on the road course, I was admittedly bummed that my car just wouldn’t cooperate, but regardless I had an awesome time competing in such a cool event. Everyone that was competing with me, and the fine folks who put the event on were all incredibly friendly fun people to be around and I am keeping my fingers crossed that I will be invited back next year to redeem myself. The results of the competition are scheduled to be published in the August 2012 issue of Modified Magazine so be sure to renew those subscriptions and be the first to read how it all went down! After the results are released to the public check back to my website and I will post part 3 of this blog series where we will analyze and put some perspective on the results! Link Love: www.Modified.com www.OSGiken.net www.Conti-Online.com Project 370Z Partners: BC Racing North America Hard-Driving Motorsports Paladin Advanced Automotive Fast Intentions UpRev Whiteline Hawk Performance NonStopTuning Odyssey Batteries Mishimoto Like This Page: Facebook.com/BonanniMotorsports Facebook.com/OSGiken Facebook.com/ModifiedMagazine Facebook.com/BCRacingNA Facebook.com/FastIntentions Facebook.com/ContinentalTire Facebook.com/HardDrivingMotorsports Facebook.com/UpRev Facebook.com/WhitelineFlatout Facebook.com/HawkPerformance Facebook.com/NonStopTuningUSA Facebook.com/GoMishimoto ----