1993 Nissan 300ZX Turbo - Rising Star

Thanks to the success of Kyle Puckett's awesome street Z, SGP Racing has emerged as one of the rising stars in the Lone Star State, which is no easy feat, considering the competition is as intense as a Texas heat wave. From rather humble beginnings, Kyle and SGP have powered their way into the record books. The Z car has been a regular on the Texas drag circuit for some time and has recently gone national as a "PR vehicle" that works 1,320 feet at a time. Its current best effort of 10.64 at 129 mph is the benchmark for street Zs. However, being the world's quickest street Z does not exile the Nissan to trailer queen status. Kyle flexes the Z on the street with surprising regularity. During its transformation, the Z has made the pilgrimage from Deer Park to Dallas up to 10 times to battle the quarter mile. During the developmental stages, Kyle racked up victories at ID Drag Wars and was both the Quick Class winner and RWD Class runner-up at the 1999 IDRC Lone Star Nationals.

Unlike many other cars, making power is not the key to low e.t.s for a 300ZX. And unlike Hondas, it's not front-drive suspension tricks. When it comes to Nissan's high-tech supercar, it's all in the tranny. For Zs, a manual gearbox is not the preferred option. An automatic is the key to 10-second performance. We have driven many wicked street Zs, only to see them granulate the rear rubber trying to bag a good quarter-mile time. The problem is, in order to get a clutch capable of handling the power, one ends up with an on/off switch that makes it impossible to feather the clutch off the line. An automatic transmission bypasses this shortcoming and allows the engine to build big-time boost on the line. Level 10, the leader in upgrades for import-application automatics, provided the power transfer needed to net 10-second timeslips. Level 10 hit the import scene via the Toyota Supra gearbox (March 1998 Turbo) and has expanded its lineup to include the twin-boosted Z-car. For the Nissan, Level 10 upgrades the R01 transmission's internals with Raybestos Blue Plate Special clutches and Kolene steel retention plates. Since this combination increases the unit's coefficient of friction threefold, an accompanying increase in line pressure is made to ensure that it can handle a great deal of power and add snap to the Z's shifting characteristics. The tranny runs a 4000-rpm stall speed Level 10 converter, B&M oil cooler and spins an SGP one-piece driveshaft.

The Level 10 gearbox is fed thrust by a fully built engine. Since preparation equals power, the block was meticulously machined to ensure a stable foundation for performance. The cylinders were bored and honed with a torque plate to ensure optimal piston ring sealing and the block was magnaflux stress relieved. Inside, the VG30DETT V6 sports a grip of JUN products. The powerplant's reciprocating mass is made up of JUN forged pistons and JUN forged billet rods that swing on a shotpeened and magnafluxed stock crank. The pistons are 2mm overbore units which push bore to 89mm. Atop the short block, we find a set of SGP performance-ported heads tightly sealed via GReddy metal head gaskets and secured by battle-ready ARP fasteners. The gaskets are thicker than stock and serve to further lower compression to boost-friendly 8.0:1. In addition to the porting and polishing, the heads have received a five-angle valve job and have been fitted with stock-spec valves which are ceramic coated to better withstand the rigors of boost. Valvetrain orchestration is handled by a set of JUN cams with fine tuning coming from JUN adjustable cam sprockets. All four bumpsticks sport .374 inches of lift and 256 degrees duration at .050 inches of valve lift. JUN valve springs, retainers and guides round out the cylinder head mods. SGP port-matched the upper and lower intake manifolds to smooth the flow of air from the bored-out SGP throttle body into the powerplant's custom-carved combustion chambers.