Excited to read the rest of your thread!



As for BBI - I agree, they are maddening to deal with. I have purchased an exhaust and the BBI slave cylinder from them and had similar experiences to a smaller degree - not 10 months but a long time 6+ months... Not to mention i am a HUGE fan of their work. While they build great cars - their customer service and timeliness are not the reasons they've had the success they've had that is for sure.

 

Yeah we're not the only ones. I know things have gotten better since they hired on Jerry and some others, I wish them the best. They make great stuff, it's just getting their attention for us "little guys" that seems to be the hard part.

I'm really happy with the exhaust. I tried to buy headers for my car from them but was told they "don't make headers for 997.1". .

It worked out for the best on that front, you'll see when I get there in the build story .

 

Since I was a little off my rocker to start, I decided that I'd break up the 1,000 mile drive from DFW to Phoenix into two days. I discovered that Roswell, NM was almost exactly in the middle. That's great! I love aliens.

So the goal of the first day was to get to Roswell.



I'm not saying it was aliens... But it was aliens.

Somewhere in Eastern New Mexico a woman pulled out in front of me on a 2 lane highway. It was pretty intense really, I didn't think I had enough time to stop. There was oncoming traffic, the ditches were way too deep, and I had a giant Porsche engine behind me... What could possibly go wrong?

I did the only thing I could do, which was ease onto the brakes and shoot for the middle of her and the oncoming car. I saw the engine start sliding towards me in the rear view mirror but stayed on the brakes. In the end, I split them without taking the side view mirrors of the Terminator but it was not a fun driving experience. I don't think she even ever saw me, and by the time I stopped to collect my wits and survey the situation she was long gone anyway. Probably for the best, because I had that nagging feeling in the back of my mind that I wanted to kill her.

Once I got into Roswell I decided to find my hotel and then grab some food. I'm a Marriott guy, and they were sponsoring my trip on points, so I had booked the (only?) Marriott property in Roswell. When I arrived my parking spot was pretty clearly defined for me.



I'll bet the owner of this 911 had no idea there was a Turbo Mezger in the back of the van.

Really the only thing that was open was Buffalo Wild Wings, so I went there. Boy does that place suck. I don't understand how it's so popular. The next day I set about figuring out what to do about the engine. During my panic braking exercise it had slid partway off of the pallet. In the last few miles coming down into Roswell I had to reach back with one arm to hold it because it was tipping.

I went to the local lumberyard and bought a couple 2x4s and built a little platform to keep the engine from tipping, and a lever to lift the engine back up onto the pallet. Yes, you can't make this stuff up. It was way too heavy to lift for one person in the confines of the van, so I had to do something. I have been digging today for pictures of this excursion, but was unable to find any. I guess the magic of my genius engine lifting & re-positioning lever will have to be left to the imagination.

I was off to Phoenix at this point, and the majority of that was uneventful. I did get some cool pictures though. At one point I was nearing the White Sands missile testing range and saw some cool stuff. My favorite was a sign that essentially said - "If this light is flashing and you keep going, we're not responsible if you get blown up by a bomb/missile."



They aren't kidding, there really are white sands... It's beautiful really.

So now we should probably talk a little about the engine.

I had an otherwise stock engine in the car, and was using EVOMS Coils, 5 bar FPR, Injector Dynamics ID1300s, Cobb Access port, and E85 tuning. Car ran pretty darn well. I had seen a best of 5.99 60-130 with some issues. I think it probably had 5.30s or so in it, but we'll never know.

The new setup called for a complete rebuild.

• EvoSpec 3.8L CP Piston and Darton Cylinder kit for 997TT. Forged Piston 9:0.1 Compression, Ductile Iron Wet Sleeves, AP Stainless Ring Package.
• EvoSpec H-Beam Connecting Rod Set. Carrillo, Porsche 997TT
• EvoSpec High Flow Cylinder Head. CnC Matched Port. 40MM Intake and 35MM Exhaust valves.
• EvoSpec Intake Camshaft set for 997TT. Retains Vario Lift. Upgraded Springs Required.
• EvoSpec Exhaust Camshaft set for 997TT.Upgraded Springs Required.
• EvoSpec 97TT H-11 12MM Head Stud Kit.
• Hellfire Headgaskets, Porsche 997TT 3.8L 12mm Studs.
• EvoSpec 3.8L Long Block build procedure. Includes tear down, Inspection, Blueprint, Prep, Balance, Hone and pattern, Ring fit, Clearance Check, Machine for 12MM studs and install Inserts.

Here are some pictures from John Bray @ EvoSpec during the build process.



Cam & Carillo Rod



Top of the cylinder head showing Ferrea valvesprings/hardware.



Great shot of just how big the valves are.



One of my favorite photos. It's a shame to even put this on an engine and get it dirty.

So there is quite a bit going on that this point. I know that the longblock is only a small piece of the puzzle. I am going to need;

• Turbochargers - at this point I know they will be Xona turbos, but still working out the specs.
• Wheels/tires - I picked up a set of HRE P40SC in GT2 fitment (19x12 & 12x85) with the intention of using the as of yet unreleased Toyo R888R
• Clutch - this delayed the build substantially, I was waiting for months and months for the "fixed" revision of the RPS triple disc carbon clutch before finally giving up.
• Fuel system - I wanted enough fuel for as much as I could possibly throw at this thing, and wanted to be able to do it with E98 which is a tall order. I bought a set of ID1700s from Tony Palo @ Injector Dynamics/T1 and started talking to Wayne @ ISC Tuning about his intake manifold setup.
• Intercoolers, Y-Pipe and throttle body I thought I had figured out early on, but this didn't go as I expected.
• Headers and Exhaust - I knew that I needed some turbo outlet pipes to connect to my (badass in my estimation) BBi exhaust, and headers to mount the turbos. My first choice on this didn't work out either, as after multiple months of waiting things weren't getting done.
• Intake manifold - I knew that in order to run the kind of boost I wanted to run, that I wasn't going to be able to stick with the stock intake manifold. As time dragged on I had additional funding and I started investigating the ESMotor GT3RS 4.0 Intake manifold setup, with the ISC Tuning dual injector per cylinder intake manifolds. They also come with dual fuel rails, and wiring harness for Syvecs use so it's a great package.
• ECU - I knew I wanted to be able to run it on a stock ECU for emissions testing purposes, but the plan all along had been to use a Syvecs standalone from the incomparable Wayne Potts (Waynieac).
• Sensor package - I was also starting to explore the additional sensors required to run the standalone, and keep tabs on how things are performing. This includes a fuel pressure sensor, map sensor, charge air temp sensor (1 per bank), tubine outlet temp sensor (1 per bank), turbo shaft speed sensor (1 per turbo), exhaust map sensor (eMap), flex fuel sensor, and a MAC valve for boost control since I would be using traditional wastegate based turbos instead of VTGs.

More coming.

 

A couple more shots from John @ Evospec of the rotating assembly parts, and my toolbox.



Darton sleeves, CP Pistons, and pins.



Carrillo rods.



My toolbox.

 

 

this is a great build and thread.

I don't want to get into the details because its no value add, but I also didn't have a great customer experience with BBI. In the end they made it right but it wasn't very fun. Same comments as everyone else, great product needs a ton of help in customer service & caring for us little guys.

 

Great content here. Looking forward to the progress.

 

I need more.

 

Great thread ..

In for more details ...

 

This is fantastic. +1 for the Town & Country. We have one of those too. My 997TT is nothing like yours is going to be though, good Lord. This will be fun to watch.

 

Well done bro this is an awesome project. Looking forward to the outcome.

You picked the right fella for the build.

 

Great build!!! sub'd

 

Glad its running again man!! let's line our ****boxes up soon

 

Hope you got all those burrs out of the heads/valve area.

 

I went through a lot of different ideas with the engine build. Everyone who has been modifying cars for a while knows that it's really easy to "improve" a great car to the point where it's no fun. I really wanted to avoid that with this project.

There's a few things that I wanted to maintain -

1. Stock like drivability
2. Noise levels need to be reasonable. I wanted it to sound like the business, but not be obnoxiously loud. On one occasion with my Speedtech 3" X-Pipe I nearly scared a woman in a minivan off the road. While some may consider this a feature (Bobby!) I'm getting a little more conservative in recent years.
3. The best boost response possible, including the lowest boost threshold possible - or what I call driving boost, defined as having some torque available at 2,000-2,500rpm so the car can get out of it's own way.
4. Flexfuel capability so that I could mix 93 octane, E85, etc. and not have to worry about reflashing or messing with the ECU.
5. The clutch was very important to me as well. I wanted to make sure that I would want to hop in the car and take it to the grocery store. I maintained the 'factory' 82mm GT3 throttle body as opposed to using a GM throttle body like some of the other big power builds for this purpose.
6. Must retain low/high lift cam setup in the 997 Turbo so it drives as smoothly as possible. I would have liked to have gone with the EvoSpec billet cams and solid lifters, but this deletes the low/high lift cam settings. It also requires valve clearances to be manually adjusted periodically. Totally fine for a racecar but didn't meet my criteria.
7. Stock ECU compatibility - the car needs to be able to run on the factory ECU and 'pass' emissions testing.
   

The rotating assembly was a pretty simple decision, Darton iron sleeves, CP Pistons, Carillo rods, and John Bray doing the assembly. The factory 3.6 is great, but going to 3.8L is free in the process. As a number of people who have recently been doing engine builds have done, the extra cost of billet crankshafts to get the extra .2L and go to 4.0L just didn't seem worth it to me given the significant costs involved. From there it gets a little more complicated.

The heads/cam selection is somewhere I was very careful, as is the intake manifold/fuel setup. It isn't obvious at first glance, but there's a few problems here. Firstly, there's only a couple of different directions you can go on the heads. You can keep factory turbo heads and Variocam/lift setup. You can also ditch the variable cam lift, and run custom billet cams with a solid lifter for 9000rpm. This is a lot more cost effective than switching over to a GT3 head combination, but I really wanted to keep the variable lift. I also didn't want to add the possibility I would have to drop the engine to set valve clearances with the solid lifters on an undetermined schedule to keep things running healthily.

Here's a shot of the stock hydraulic lifter vs the solid:


Here's a comparison between the factory hydraulic lifter (left), and solid lifter (right).



Just as a quick aside, I may be skipping some things. I've been working on this for ~1.5 years and trying to be quiet about it. As I mentioned in my first post, I hate build threads that drag on for years. What I've found is that it's difficult to remember some of the details, but as I scan through old emails and pictures (I love pictures, beware) it really jogs my memory. If some of this comes out a little out of order, I apologize.

After months of clutch selection delay (John wanted to balance the flywheel with the entire rotating assembly), parts delays, etc. I actually had a mostly complete engine show up.



John shipped the engine in a fantastic custom-built crate.



Very pleased with the attention to detail here in getting it back to me safe.

At this point it had stock intake manifolds, etc. Due to the extra time this was taking, I had accrued some additional budget to direct into the project due to the (previously dangerous) statements from Mrs. Rix. Originally I had planned on doing this in two phases. Phase I - Make engine great again, Phase II - New turbos, intake manifold, fueling, etc. Since things took longer than anticipated I went ahead and tried to combine this into a single phase.

If you want to run E85 and make 1200whp+ you have some injector limitations. I'm uninterested in running anything other than Injector Dynamics injectors, and the ID1700 maxes out around that power level on E85. The factory intake manifold is also plastic, which eventually will have a failure at higher boost levels. Even a factory GT3 intake manifold can have issues, as a local Texan literally had his explode Fast & Furious style (Warning: Danger to Manifold) and almost caused him to lose the entire car.

Most everyone does a hybrid GT3/custom manifold, but I took it an extra step further and utilized the ESMotor billet CNC center plenum, and GT3RS 4.0 end tanks. These were combined with ISC Tuning billet CNC lower manifolds that permit dual injectors per cylinder. It also uses a single fuel rail per side, which is a big deal in terms of packaging and serviceability.

Here are some pictures of the parts:



ESMotor billet CNC center section straight out of the box. I cleaned it up a bit later for some sexier photos.



Here you can see the plenum design & throttle body flange.



This gives an idea of the path through the center section from the side.



GT3RS 4.0 end tank. A little extra volume, and good thickness to prevent Fast & Furious incidents.



This gives an idea of how the parts are intended to fit together.

After getting the ES Motor center section home I thought it deserved to be cleaned up a bit and take some more photos.



Cool shot showing the countours.



This one is optioned for use with the factory style 82mm throttle body. You can also get it setup for larger GM throttle bodies.



I got a little carried away taking pictures.

With this setup I'm able to run the ISC Tuning dual injector CNC lower manifolds.


These use two injectors per cylinder, utilizing a single fuel rail. This simplifies packaging, serviceability, and requires less overall complication in the fuel system.


These are setup for use with heads that utilize a 997 GT3 intake manifold at the mouth.

I'm running ID1300 primary injectors, and ID1700 secondary injectors. These are blended together utilizing the Syvecs standalone ECU from Wayne P. @ ISC Tuning.


Syvecs S6 Plus Porsche kit and new set of ID1700cc injectors in the bags.

So now I have an engine, induction pretty much figured out, fueling setup on the engine etc. I still need to work out the fuel pumps, lines, etc. I also am starting to think more about turbo selection, headers, and related fabrication.

More coming.