GIAC Solves 997.2 Fuel System
 

Hey guys. Our 997.2's have been very limited on power upgrades as most of you know as the new 3.8 direct injection motor fuel system has been a challenge to crack. It has been 5 years since the introduction of the new 3.8 motor and there have been a few motor builds and upgraded turbos but no matter, we have been limited to around 600-650 wheel HP since the fuel system will not flow beyond this point and while many very competent builders/shops/tuners have tried, no one has cracked it until now.

The credit goes to a particular GIAC retailer working in conjunction with GIAC on this issue. GIAC as you know is the innovator on any new Porsche platform and so I'm sure no one is surprised by this.

As we speak my 997.2 is at GIAC getting this fuel system upgrade which consists of some new hardware and tuning. When the system is ready for sale to GIAC customers, GIAC will release more information. It will benefit built motor / built PDK cars, which the particular GIAC retailer is doing right now on their 997.2. A 600+ wheel 997.2 is absurdly fast....beats many cars will far more horsepower...imagine how fast a well sorted 800-900 wheel 997.2 will be.

While my 997.2 will be the first to have a working fuel system upgrade, GIAC will be looking to add some, but not much power to my car. While turning up the boost and gaining a lot more power would be easy (even on the stock turbos since they have a lot of room left) it would likely be very short lived since I understand the 997.2 rods are even thinner/weaker than the rods from the 3.6 Mezger. My motor is still in the safe zone and we are not comfortable pushing the motor much further. So again to take advantage of the extra fueling, one would need a stronger motor and likely a stronger PDK as well.

GIAC will monitor the reliability of the system as I attend the next half-mile event at the end of February. Upgrading the motor and PDK would be fun, but I'll let other GIAC customers do that. While I don't plan to keep my 997.2 for much longer, the technology will benefit my 991.

I will have updates when the install is complete and of course as I attend the February half-mile event.

Cheers.


EDIT - UPDATE #1:

There is a number of safeties build into the stock fuel system. GIAC told me what these safeties were in engineers-speak and I was lost. lol. But in lay terms, once the fuel system is upgraded, those safeties are gone and instead of fuel cutting when too much fuel/power is requested, now the motor keeps making power beyond previous levels with the stock fuel system in place. Some prelim testing showed that with the GIAC "9-second file", my car would produce so much power the trans would not hold and the motor would blow quickly. The motor and trans needs to be built which I might do, but for now I don't want to blow my motor. At the end of the month I will attend a half mile event where I can do some data logging in real world conditions for GIAC. Right now it's just load dyno testing. My sense is that GIAC will not give me a lot more power than what I was already making...although I have asked them to reduce torque in the mid-range and give me a few more top end ponies. After data is collected from the half mile event, maybe power will be turned up in small incremental amounts.


EDIT - UPDATE #2:


Half mile event attended and the performance was night and day faster than before. Performance was incredible and trapped less than 4mph off the Bugatti Veyron in the half mile. Despite density altitude over 2,500 feet, the car produced a quarter mile speed of nearly 140mph on the vBox and 60-130 in 6.1 flat slope smack in the middle of the day. I have been up to a full second quicker 60-130 on a cool evening. Read more here:


https://www.6speedonline.com/forums/...ft-sector.html

Exciting times ahead for sure!

I'm glad to see this finally coming together, and even more excited that you get to be the pioneer! From what I've seen of the power results after the upgrade, this is going to be a game-changer for sure!!

Wow !!! Cant say more than this ...

Congrats Adam! I am looking forward to seeing the results. We know quite a few big names in the industry that are independently working towards a reliable modern solution for the 991 and 997.2 Turbos. I.E. Not simply just adding an injector at the throttle body. I'm sure they will post up when they have empirical data showing it works.

This has been a common misconception over the years, not sure how it got started, but the 997.2 rods are near identical to the 991 rods which have been shown to take 800+ ft/lbs of torque to the wheels. We have conducted quite a bit of R&D on the 991 rod to ensure things stay safe.

https://www.6speedonline.com/forums/...cting-rod.html


https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.6sp...fa6b9742b7.jpg
Left: 997.1 Mezger 3.6L, Middle: 997.2 3.8L, Right: 991.1 3.8L

Stoked to see what your car can do with the new setup!

-Jon

I wish I could say exactly what the system consists of. Part of it is that I don't exactly know. Part of it is that since GIAC is the first to release a lot of stuff on this platform, there is some theft of their intellectual property from what I understand. Naturally they are just trying to protect this IP for now.

I think if it was as simple as an inline fuel pump, the bigger shops with built motor 997.2's would have figure it out by now. Look I'm not an engineer or mechanic...I can barely change a light bulb on my own. So even if I did know what it is I would probably mess us explaining it hilarious so I'll let GIAC do that when they are ready.

Hi Jon, good to hear from you hope all is well!

Great to hear the rods are about the same. Thx for the pic. I don't know where I heard the info about the rods but maybe I can push my car a little more. I was literally asking for only like 5-10 more HP on the top end just so it's more stabilized since I was right at the fueling limit. Maybe I can go a little higher on the power still with plenty of headroom on both the fueling and then of course the motor and PDK.

Part of why I frankly don't want to push it is because I don't need two of these cars and looking to the near future when I part out and sell this car, I want it to be in good working order and I don't want to bend a rod to have a slipping PDK to deal with. If I had unlimited funds then maybe it would be fun to see where the motor or PDK busts but that's for someone else.

longboarder, that's great news and I'm looking forward to hearing what it is hardware wise they're doing.

We have mentioned solving direct injection fuel limitations on the BMW DFI platform before but unfortunately haven't had a chance to try it on the 997.2 or 991 just yet.

First in line of fuel upgrades there is to pull the OEM in-tank fuel bucket and upgrade the LPFP (low pressure fuel pump, aka, in-tank fuel pump) side with better flowing pumps (455 Walbro) such as this (reuses the OEM fuel bucket):

http://www.protuningfreaks.com/colle...pgrade-fuel-it

Next we add a Y into the main fuel line going into the HPFP (high pressure fuel pump) and split so one side goes to the HPFP like it used to and the other side goes to a fuel rail to run a fuel rail with 6 additional port fuel injectors. Rail mounts to a machined spacer that sits in between the intake manifold and the cylinder head/intake ports and has bungs for fuel injectors. Here's what we have for that:

http://www.protuningfreaks.com/colle...injectors-cp-e

With just the low pressure fuel pump upgrade the BMW N54 3L motor can be taken from about 500whp to 550whp on race gas, considerably less with E85. To go past that, especially if using E85, you have to add this secondary fueling.

The kit above comes with a boost/rpm referencing fuel controller that runs the show. A little more elaborate setup involves running a standalone such as a Haltech that can run an external wastegate, secondary fueling and add other features not available in the factory BMW ECU (boost by gear/rpm/speed, 2step, NLS, etc).

One simpler alternative to the above fuel rail setup is simply adding a single injector in a machined spacer at the throttle body (aka Throttle Body Injection). Same idea as the above, less costly but it doesn't guarantee equal fuel distribution across all cylinders and proper atomization of fuel entering the intake port as the spacer above.

Solving the fuel limitation isn't really a big deal. The problem is not many people are ready to be the first trying things like this upgrade on a given platform. Once a couple cars are running around with this sort of upgrade though I'm sure it'll become pretty much the norm like it pretty much has for all DFI BMWs.

Dzenno@PTF

Legitimate question...NOT trying to start a debate. But did I miss something...who's running a 991 Turbo with 800+ ft/lbs of torque at the wheels?

I mean...I know I was out for a couple days around New Years...but I'm sure I would have seen that lol. :)

Although similar in concept, the Porsche system has a few key differences from the DFi fuel systems in other makes, like BMW for example (as I'm sure you know). The solution is quite simple to be honest, but the implementation is definitely not. It's quite complicated actually..which is why so many others (including ourselves) have not been able to find a way to reliably make it work, until now. :)

I've been hearing rumors for years about other shops and tuners working on upgrades and even testing them, but I have yet to see anything usable up to this point.

Credit to GIAC for being the first to become really proactive and making it work. Trust me, you'll all be pleasantly surprised with the results.

To be honest, outside of dissasembling the 997.2 HPFP or flow testing the OEM injectors (no means of upgrading either of them or equipment to test them) I have looked at the fuel system hardware on the 997.2 very closely including sending the OEM LPFP bucket for flow testing. Results were provided on here last summer I believe.

In a nutshell, in any direct injection system you have the low pressure side and the high pressure (direct injection) side. Both sides of the system have to be tested and made to flow accordingly.

LPFP must be upgraded first to ensure adequate volume/pressure are always supplied to the HPFP and then secondary fueling is provided bypassing, or rather supplementing, the fuel already provided by the HPFP. You can think of the HPFP as a multiplier pump. A small drop in pressure on the LPFP side will result in a much larger drop on the HPFP side.

LPFP upgrades (drop in larger pumps or inline pumps) work well only to a point though and soon you run out of fuel again but this time not due to drops in LPFP pressure but due to volume required to make more power.

Porsches don't like HPFP dropouts and the software will even induce misfires if pressure drops beyond certain thresholds as sort of a safety measure. Earlier DFI BMWs didn't have this sort of safety in the software but everything 2012+ including M3/M4/M5/M6 have it built in as well.

Looking forward to it. If we had a working/proven solution for the PDK fueling would never be very big issue :)

Dzenno@PTF

Congrats Longboarder, looking forward to the results (and videos) from your 12 mile event. Fantastic stuff and definitely groundbreaking for sure.

Thats great news Adam hope this works really well keep us tuned in on how its working. You know you have to get back out to Red List with the Beast and see what kind of time you can get.

Awesome news Adam!

"Solves" the fuel sytem? That's stretching it for the title. You're saying they've already solved it when they have not.

Not sure what the hang up here. It's already solved. It was solved using another 997.2 owned by a GIAC retailer. The system works perfectly. That car is now getting a built motor and PDK as we speak to take full advantage of the additional fueling. In the mean time, my car is at GIAC getting the system installed and going for dyno tuning. So it will be the first car with a working system although I won't be anywhere near the new fueling limit because I have stock motor, PDK and turbos.

Any news for E85? Anyway I can't wait for the results.