I had reached out to Uwe (pronounced oovay) Gemballa recently and he returned my call today. We talked for almost an hour and discussed a multitude of things. What a pleasure!!
We talked bodyparts, engine power, engine cooling, suspension, design philosophy, etc., etc.
I felt honored in a way that he took the time out of his busy schedule to talk to me. When I say busy schedule, I am not kidding!! He arrives at work at 7:30am and it was 11:00pm when he just called me. He has constant communication with his worldwide distribution network.
One of the most interesting discussions was with regard to his intercooler. Here is a picture:



Essentially, this is the reason for his patented rear opening shown here on my car:



The stock intercoolers are left in place but instead of the cooled intake air going directly into the intake, it goes through a third top mounted intercooler. According to his tests and ultimately, his philosophy, the cooled air from the stock setup has a chance to heat up again as it passes by the engine in the hot engine compartment. This air is supplementally cooled by the Gemballa IC to get the intake charge air temperature as low as possible. The rear vent is the escape path for closed engine compartment heated air.

Another discussion concerned the oil cooling capacity of the engine. He said the stock setup uses a relatively small heat exchanger. He further recommended that any HP increases above 550 should be accompanied by a supplementary oil cooler. He, arguably, said the reason the car does not have a oil temp gage is because it is pretty high and Porsche didn't want to alarm customers. I guess this is in comparison to the air cooled cars???

The wide body kit adds 4 inches to the rear track. New wheels with new wheel offsets in combination with spacers are required to accommodate it. It can only be done in Germany to their specs.

He was very well spoken with excellent English considering he is of German heritage.

All in all, I was very happy to talk to him and understand some of their design philosophies more thoroughly.

 

Ken,

Reminds me of a few years ago when I had my 97 993 turbo and I was considering a RUF upgrade. I decided to call Germany to speak to RUF directly. The company not the man, well guess who answered the phone. Alois Ruf himself, I was a bit floored and we talked for quite a while. He is like a celebrity to me and I was very impressed with him as I have been with his cars.

 

Poll: Who is getting that big phat red intercooler???

 

I knew if you could surpass the "heinz" mistique there would be something good there !

 

Darren,
Heinz is a very nice guy. He is friendly, helpful, courteous and a pleasure to talk to. I just thought it was really cool to talk to the man (Uwe) himself and in my opinion, he knows his stuff.

BTW, that little red intercooler is a "COOL" $4K