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.

What makes you think they haven't solved it?

As long as it moves enough fuel (which it sounds like), no reason why not. Plus the DFI motor will love the cooler burn of ethanol.

Not just yet. But that is in the future. Part of the reason I think they picked my car is because I run meth and they (GIAC) can get to a point with no timing correction on race gas plus meth without introducing the limitation of e85 of a 30% greater fuel requirement.

I think e85 blends will better on the 991 since it already has a much larger capacity fuel system to begin with than the 997.2. By also adding the GIAC fuel system on the 991 running an e85 blend (maybe e40 to e50) will still allow for headroom in the fueling system with no timing correction. Not sure there will be headroom in the 997.2 on e50 even with the fuel system upgrade but that's for GIAC to figure out.

I have offered to donate my 991 if GIAC wants to do e85 testing next. $2 a gallon blended with 91 octane is so much more palatable than $20 a gallon MS109.

The increase in performance with E85 on a DI engine is far less than what it does or a port injected engine. Pump and meth on DI will permit almost the same ignition timing as E85.

Was thinking the same :)

Meth is fantastic but I still get timing corrections on pump. Race gas eliminates the timing corrections but at $20/gallon I'd rather do e85 blend.

Can you explain why you are thinking this please. I re-read my posts. Nothing contradicting here.

Rob Harper of RobTuned, It was done quite some time ago. This isn't anything recent.

More info is here -> http://www.cobbtuning.com/porsche-99...g-rod-testing/

unless you can run an e85 analyzer your going to hate the requirements for running e85. calculations how much fuel is in the tank, determining how much ethanol is actually coming out of the pump by testing, adding whatever you have to the full mix and pray it comes out right. run maybe 120 miles per tank and do it all over again. my buddy does this on his bmws its a major pia!

Yeah I would just run the stuff at race events. There are a few stations my buddy's with GTRs go to *they have analyzers) that are very consistent e84-e85. While e85 is cheap it's not widely available like conventional gas and I couldn't see myself driving extra mileage just to fill up with an ethanol blend unless I was going to be racing.

I ran E85 blends for at least 2years on my BMW (N54 DI), it was really simple, just fill 50% E85 and 50% 94oct it is close to E40. Sure topping up the tank to full wasn't easy but adding 20l of one fuel and then 20l of the other at the pump didn't require calculations, measurements or logging. Super simple....

And to make sure the ECU is happy with the fuel one need to log, and this is where Cobb shines, just press a button, no need for a Duramteric cable and a laptop.

i have seen e50 and e98 come out of the same pump at a single gas station. its wildly inaccurate and the regulations on ethanol content seem very lax. its available everywhere by me and the content is very unpredictable. fill it with e50 make a huge pull and you could blow the engine on a e85 file. just saying...

lowest measured ethanol content I heard of is down towards E75 but fuel quality in the US seems to be crappy, happy to live in the EU (only with regards to fuel quality though...)

Subscribed!!!

Nice. Good luck Adam. Curious to see what you guys come up with and how it works. When is it going to be done?

No doubt you and GIAC are doing great things, but until I see a 1000whp+ 997.2 dyno sheet I don't consider it solved. No offense intended :).

Fair enough. I can't provide proof because I'm not doing a motor build that could even manage to take advantage of the excess fueling capacity this system is expected to provide. Plus I can't take pics of the hardware and couldn't even begin to explain the software changes.

I'm simply a paying GIAC customer (get nothing for free) but very happy and honored that they asked me to use one of my cars to test out a working version. I'm in fact delaying the selling of my 997 just to see what kind of a difference it can make on a stock bolt on car and I will get that chance at the next airstrip event end of February.

I think I have built up enough goodwill on this site that you guys know I'm not making something up but perhaps think maybe I should have waited to use the word "solves" until after dyno results and/or my February Airstrip event results and after I posted pictures and schematics and other details of the system. But frankly this has been a huge impediment for this platform for many years and I was excited to share the news as this is coming for commercial use but just hold tight for a couple more months.

What makes you think they have? I don't see any .2 cars using full E85 + bolt on's trapping high 130's maybe 140 yet. If pure 93 octane really traps 133 consistently then E85 should pickup 5-6mph and 100whp.

Solves to me means fully tested, proven, and backed up many times by many cars.

Fastest stock turbo .2 or 991 TTS is trapping what, low 130's?

Absolutely nothing against Longboarder. I can tell you are a true enthusiast and are very gung ho about making more performance. You are also very proud of your shop and tuner, which is fantastic. Kudos to that. I'm also just a consumer but I've been around long enough to know what gets posted and what is real life often are two different worlds. Also I've seen so many shops play the "oh this is our secret sauce" and that just tells me you got stuff to hide. I think shops that post what they did and their findings get actually more respect from consumers... and consumers will actually spend more money with that shop. The secret sauce stuff to me is super lame. Making more power is not rocket science.

Just to show I'm not purely picking on GIAC/Champion, I bought a Cobb and installed their stage 1 map on my bone stock .2 TTS. It ran pretty bad. Partial throttle was breaking up, drivability sucked, blah blah blah. Normally it's best to do some datalogging and send it to tech support at Cobb or something, but I don't wanna even bother. I flashed it right back to OEM. I'll wait to just get my exhaust and AMS IC installed in a couple weeks and then get a custom tune from Rob. Then I'll do datalogging etc and get it sorted. I'll do a lot of vbox runs and see what the average times are and how consistent it is... because that's what it's about.

Adam had his new car ready in the gate like a PDK shift!

Hey Chris! That's a good question. The system itself flows really well. They don't know how well because as soon as it was hooked up it and programmed, it flowed well beyond the limits of the stock motor. To see the real benefits someone needs to build a motor/pdk. There isn't much room for more power on my car with the stock motor but will give GIAC some time to refine a tune with a more stable fuel system which is a plus as I was always teetering on (and sometimes beyond) the stock system limit.


My original post headline is entirely accurate. The fueling system limitation is solved. I never said anything about a working tune for e85, dramatic increased in power, etc. That is will be worked on next. Things don't happen overnight. This is a big deal (whether you want to acknowledge this or not) as people have been trying this for year without success.


Thanks! Same with you...love watching your videos. Over the years this car has really surprised me (and many others!) at how fast it can be with such little mods. Porsche gives us such an awesome car.


And yes I will definitely miss it. Ultimately I like to track on road courses more than the straight line events. And I just could never get comfortable with the 997 on the track. It's fast as snot, but I decided that it would be a lot cheaper and safer to track my M3. In fact I just returned from the track yesterday and the M3 did great. I picked up the 991 because it is very comfortable and can be a terrific daily driver. I don't think the 997 can be anywhere near as good of a daily.


But I have at least one more Airstrip event with the 997. And then it will be time to pass on the torch. I'm sure someone will pick up where I left off.


Haha best analogy in a while! Still don't know what I want to do with the 991. But since I like doing things different, I may just try to see what I can do with e85 blends on the 991. This is where the fuel system will help. Maybe start with just a tune + e85. I like the idea of $2 a gallon race fuel. Sure it will be slower than the other 991's but it will be interesting just to do comparisons. See you next month!

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.

Thanks for the update Adam, I was wondering how this was coming out. Unless I misunderstood, doesn't sound too promising though since your car was already performing well in it's previous state. If the fueling fix only yields basically the same power but does so at the cost of removing safeties then I guess it's back to the drawing board. Hopefully they or someone can find a workaround because it was starting to get interesting for us DFI guys. Both the 997.2 and 991 platforms perform highly with only bolt-ons already so I could only imagine what is possible with more headroom.
At any point, will someone be allowed to actually say what the "fix" is or is it something that we will just have to wait until it comes to the market at some point?

We are doing before/after dynos so I may gain a little power for Shift Sector, but my point that I was trying to make is that GIAC will increase the power but in very small increments since the fuel system safeties are gone. Also because nobody really knows how much power these motors can handle.

To address your question in the other thread, the GIAC dyno reads much lower than say Cobb SoCal's dyno. I made 501/526 AWHP/TQ stock at Cobb which would have been around 450/475 on the GIAC dyno. I just wanted to make that distinction because sometimes I say I have 600 wheel and sometimes 650. It's just an estimate but it's also dyno dependent. So making 600 baseline at GIAC before the fuel system, maybe afterwards GIAC lets it go a bit higher to 610-615 for Shift Sector. GIAC will be leaving headroom for now because Shift Sector will be good for data collection. If it does well at Shift Sector, maybe they turn it up again to 620-625.

In terms of the fix, it's a combination of hardware and software. I don't think they are going to give up the tech yet because if anyone was FBO tuned and simply installed the hardware, the motor would blow very quickly. GIAC has data on that already. It's basically like handing someone a loaded gun. Bad stuff can happen quickly so GIAC is implementing a number of OEM-like safety features back into it and basically starting tuning from scratch. It's a lot of work and why it has taken a bit of time so far. But I'm glad to lend them my car to help with the development.

Cool, that certainly adds a little clarity now. Good info for sure and still has potential. Best of luck at Shift Sector bro

Thx bro. Yeah it definitely has potential...but to achieve the full potential one needs to build the motor and likely the PDK too.

I think it will show a bit of benefits that we may realize at Shift Sector. Since we were at the fueling limits before, my car's performance above say 150mph was not consistent with it's performance from 0-150mph. It's because at 150 the demands on the fuel system are causing some of the safeties that are actually reducing power. Those safeties are no longer needed since the fuel system isn't maxing out so the car will be free to perform at 100% for the full 1/2 mile distance. GIAC thinks we could pick up a couple mph in the 1/2 mile with a stable fuel system with otherwise no increase in power.

Great news Adam FYI let me know your gonna do a motorbuild Ill have mine done to and maybe we can get a quantity discount lol