hi guys. ive got a ca18det and im looking at mounting a z32 air flow meter, since i dont have much room i was wondering if i could remove the probe thingy from the tube and just mount it in a piece of straight pipe in my intake. any opnions and comments would be very helpful.scdato@yahoo.com

I've never seen anyone pull apart an airflow meter. AFMs are very sensitive devices, and probably wouldn't take well to being pulled apart. I guess you are running an aftermarket computer? Becuase the Z32 AFM on the standard computer will required the computer get remapped.

If you really don't have a lot of space, then I recommend that you go an aftermarket computer, where a map sensor is used in place of the AFM.

Every change you make to something from the factory is another potential problem down the track. And if you are the only person with a certain modification...it'll be you that has to figure out any problems.

Good luck with the project.

As chris said, you need to be aware of the need to retune your ECU, but having said that, the nissan computer is a very good unit. requiring only a small socket to be soldered in the car becomes tunable to a fairly high state. and you still get to keep all the lovely features like cold start, idle control, knock sensor etc.

the Z32 requires a re-wiring of the AFM plug and has a much better resolution for reading the airflow, but only really is worth doing if you have done other mods (turbo especially, but injectors, exhaust, intercooler etc.) it will not run without a retune... which can be done by some places over the phone...sort of. whats your current setup and what are you wanting to achieve?

Like chris said, they are very sensitive and probably wouldn't take to kindly to being hacked apart. If you decide to give it a go, make sure it is in a peice of pipe of the exact same diameter as the original pipe as well as being mounted in the same position with respect to the pipe.

I don't know exactly how they work but I can imagine that air speed has a fair bit to do with it. If you use a smaller pipe you will get greater air speed and vice versa. The air speed also decreases the closer you get to the pipe walls.

I think it might be possible but you might find that the regular chip used to run a z32 afm may not be right for yours. You would be pioneering!