What would you do?
You have one of four 350Zs in the country. You have it for one week. And no, Mexico is not an option.
You would test it, take it apart, try to make it faster, test it again, take it apart again, and put it back together so nobody could tell you had been there.
And you would jam pack every one of those tasks into a single week so you would only have six hours to actually tune the thing.
We know you would, because that's exactly what we did.
With such limited time, we set out to answer one simple question. Will the Z be easy to improve, or will it be one of those rare cars so carefully parked on its sweet spot that any changes just make it worse? Here's what we found.
With no idea how much tire we could fit in the wheel well, we tried to be slightly conserv
Wheels And Tires
Picking a wheel and tire should be simple, but having never seen a Z wheel well, we had very little to go on. With some digging, we learned the stock tire sizes (225/50R-17 front and 235/50R-17 rear) and the stock wheel sizes (17 x 7.5 inch, 30mm offset front, and 17 x 8 inch, 30mm offset rear) but we still had no idea how much more room there would be.
Wanting to guarantee better performance with our new wheels and tires, we decided to make a conservative step up in size, a massive step in stickiness, and keep the wheel diameter the same. Oh sure, it feels unnatural not doing at least a plus one, especially when we knew Nissan would offer 18-inch wheels on some models, but 17s are lighter and have less rotational inertia.
Finding wheels that come in 8 and 9 inch widths, with a 30mm offset is easy, but finding those wheels without chrome, polished lips, fake bolts or dozens of extra pounds turned out to be nearly impossible. We eventually slightly compromised on offset, choosing Black Racing Pro-N1 wheels in 17 x 8 for the front and 17 x 9 in the rear, both with a 38mm offset. This would push the wheels inboard 8mm, but we brought along a set of 5mm spacers to push them back out if necessary.
The Pro-N1s are cast aluminum, but are still reasonably light for their size, at 20 lbs for the 17 x 8 and 21 lbs for the 17 x 9. The deeply contoured spokes appeared to give plenty of clearance for big brakes, and the bronze finish made it look like we drove the snot out of the car, covering the wheels with brake dust.
Black Racing wheels are available from Bozz performance or, perhaps, 5Zigen. We're not really sure. When we called Bozz, it said the wheels were on their way, but then 5Zigen dropped them off. Very mysterious.
For tires, we chose an old favorite, the Toyo Proxes RA1. The RA1 is a no-BS road-racing tire that happens to be street legal. These tires have impressed us in the past with their exceptional grip and comfortable demeanor. Breakaway is always smooth and predictable, and the RA1 gives you a good degree of control at high slip angles.
Neither the RA1, nor any of the R-compound tires we considered, came in any sizes that match the 350Z's very tall stock rolling diameter. The stock tires are 25.9 (front) and 26.3 inches (rear) tall. Looking for front tires between 235 and 245 section width, and rears between 255 and 265, there simply aren't any R-compound tires any taller than a 40 aspect ratio. Ending up with 235/40R-17 and 255/40R-17 tires meant dropping the tire height to 24.4 and 25.0 inches, more than an inch shorter on both ends. The shorter tires may not look quite right in the Z's massive wheel wells, but the payoff is an effectively shorter final drive that will ultimately make the car faster.
So did they fit? Hah! Turns out the Z's wheel wells are bigger than we ever could have imagined. We ran the front wheels without the 5mm spacers simply because the wheel studs were not long enough. It's always wise to have at least one stud's width of thread engagement. In the case of a Nissan 12mm x 1.25 wheel stud, that means 12mm of thread engagement, or 15 turns of the lug nut. We only got about 7 turns with a spacer in place. The rear studs were longer, so we used the spacers there.
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The rear tires were both wider and significantly shorter than stock, offering more grip a
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Our new Ground Control suspension consisted of Advance Design coil-overs up front with 600
By Josh Jacquot
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