It's go time. Have been looking for this picture, found it in SMS and hadn't saved it. How things sat before the engine went back in.


Soon...

 

Great thread man!

Aside from having this awesome thread, Rix goes out of his way to help members on this forum. I remember running into issues with my ID1300s, reaching out to Rix (I also installed my ID1300s while engine in, also thank you prodigymb for install guidance) and before I knew it, Tony shipped out the connectors I needed. Again can't thank you enough for helping me out with that!

 

If you intend to get over 1000whp I would drop the grin smile and take things seriously you can kill this baby in a heart beat...

 

I'm pretty sure I'm taking it seriously. I've got MAP/eMAP, both banks are monitored for IAT pre turbo and post turbo, oil temp, oil pressure, fuel temp, fuel pressure, etc. I'm also retaining the factory EGT (or tube sensors as Porsche calls them) which don't react as fast as an un-shielded thermocouple but provide another data point. The Syvecs is configured to go to limp mode if things get outside of nominal ranges.

I was just teasing Mark that I thought individual runner EGTs was overkill.

 

Thanks man! I'm glad you got that sorted out!

 

Frinken outstanding, very nice work.

 

Game of Thrones much? Next update bro!

 

It's not intentional, but I made a conscious decision to not post a big long drawn out build thread when I started this project. We all know that half of them never get finished, or just disappear. Now that it's done I'm finding out the downside of that decision, which is remembering what the hell it was that I did and writing about it.

I'm still working on it. I've pulled a bunch of photos for the next post and am working on writing it.

 

These teases are brutal.

Every time someone posts anything at all in this thread, I get a notification and think,... "WHO-HOO !" and I open up 6-speed and this thread,... only to find it's someone asking when the next installment will be.

Brutal.

Need more plz.

 

Lol I just did that

 

Meenie

 

After months of overthinking every single detail -- head packages, cam profiles, valve setups, turbo sizing, headers, internal wastegate setups, standalone ECU state inspection repercussions, trying to convince everyone that an 82mm OEM throttle body was big enough, agonizing clutch choices (Seriously, I'm glad that manual transmissions are on the way out because even today there is NO perfect clutch choice for these cars), analyzing power to weight ratio vs. gearing vs. tire size, and ultimately deciding how fast I wanted the car to be.... I was in a place where the project felt like more of a burden than a benefit. You can decide to make 500hp, 1000hp, or even 2000hp. But when you evaluate it against all of your requirements you end up having to engineer a solution. Sometimes you can spend your way out of it, sometimes you can't. It's one big game of trade offs. You can have good quiet brakes, or you can have great loud brakes. You can also have exceptional brakes that are loud, but only work when they are hot. Turbo lag? Now we're into brake lag. You can also get amazing carbon brakes that only work when they aren't wet. It's all trade offs.

I'm trying to make the right decisions based on trade offs, cost, and what I want to do with the car. I've talked about it off and on in this thread, but the main goals are -

• Well behaved street car that I will want to take grocery shopping. This includes AC, and a reasonable clutch pedal that you don't need to worry about operating if you skip leg day.
• Future capacity when the sickness goes further without ruining it for where it is now.
• Drivability at lower RPMs, enough torque to get the car out of its own way and for "normal" maneuvering. On stock turbos these cars feel like they just want to explode at the smallest touch of the throttle. I'm not trying to maintain that (you can't at 1000whp+) but I'm aware of it and am trying to factor it in.
• As a side note Ignition was important to me. I went with an M&W ignition box and stock coils. People say that you need fancy coils, or you need fancy plugs, or you need nothing at all. You just need more power. I wanted to extend spark plug life because replacing them is awful, and I'm not running cheap plugs. NGK Racing Spark Plugs R7433-9/4660, there's actually a great deal on Amazon for them right now. I paid $40/plug, they are $20/plug now. Go figure.

Something's not right here. I can't quite put my finger on it, but there doesn't look like there's much room in the engine bay. That's because there's a damn engine in there! Steve sent me this photo without a whole lot of warning and when I saw it I just sat down, looked at it and smiled. Take the wins where you can get them. It also got me thinking about the project in a different way. Truth be told these engines are ugly. I'm used to seeing bling bling aluminum intakes, carbon fiber intakes, shiny piping, clutter deletion, high tech ignition coils, awesome billet fuel rails, you name it. We just have a rectangular brick that you can barely see due to the small decklid. It's almost as if Porsche wants to torture us with engine out necessity for routine maintenance, and since the engine is in the back it doesn't need to be pretty anyway. I knew I wanted to do something about that.



Here's a great shot of the driver side turbo, modified hanger bracket (welded to the turbine housing), and general fitment of the Xona turbos.



Here's a shot of the underside, really showing off the headers.


Here's the aforementioned M&W Ignition amplifier. It wasn't cheap, but misfire and ignition problems suck. I've had enough experience with this across enough cars that I chose to spend my way out of this problem. It also extends plug life dramatically, which is important considering how awful plug changes are in these cars.


Wastegate actuator (black, on the upper/right of the compressor housing) and the custom actuator arm that Steve constructed for this setup. Work in progress, he shaved the excess on the flapper arm (left) for the final install. Let me again praise the attention to detail Steve has.

One of the biggest problems on these cars is compressor inlets. The packaging of the turbos behind the rear wheels, rear fender intercooler inlets, and ultimately the factory airbox pulling in air off the rear decklid is one of the more complicated things to handle when trying to substantially raise power output. If you just put air filters on the compressor housings of the turbos you'll find you're in a low pressure area and are not feeding the turbos adequately, and you can't run large enough pipes to the airbox to be useful. In fact, the factory turbo compressor inlet pipes are ly bad. Do88 has a very nice upgraded set, as does EVOMS but it's unreasonably priced. AMS also has a solution to the problem for their Alpha 9 kit. But none of those solutions are where I was trying to go for ~1200-1500whp. Once you get into those numbers, the standard solution is to put the air filters in above the intercoolers in the fenderwells.

Protomotive offers a 3D printed fenderwell intake kit. I didn't want to use them, in fact I'm completely against fenderwell intakes in general but it's a packaging problem without a good solution. So, I went ahead and bought two pieces of printed plastic for $1400 from Protomotive. Yup, I almost had to take a shower afterwards. To be fair, I have no problem buying expensive things but I have a big problem buying $8 of material for $1400.

As fate would have it, the internal wastegate actuators were not compatible with the Protomotive intake pipes.


Steve with his expert hand modeling service, showing that the IWG actuator conflicts with the Protomotive 3d printed intake pipes. I was actually sort of happy about this because I don't like this solution.

This is one of those areas where I never really found a sufficient solution, it feels to me like we should be maintaining a factory style airbox solution, but the packaging is so tight that you can't run large enough pipes back to the airbox to allow it to breath correctly. Combined with the trade offs of the low pressure area under the car - direct turbo mounted filters are a bad idea. Putting the filters in the wheel well above the intercoolers is also a trade off because you're blocking intercooler flow. It doesn't seem that there is a good answer to this. Emre from ESMotor says he has a modified factory airbox solution with intake pipes but it doesn't entirely pass my sniff test. This is one of the areas I'm most open to change, if anyone has a well thought out solution I'm all ears.


Intake pipe fitment from another angle. Those pesky internal wastegate actuators which add so much OEM style convenience and noise reduction are starting to be a giant pain in the ***.


I was actually happy for Phase 1 to just put the filter on the turbo and go with it. Thankfully Steve continued to work on the idea. He really came through for me on this one. He sent me this photo and said this isn't acceptable, we're going to find a better way. When he says "we", it's really the "Royal We". I give him full marks for creativity on this one. This is the guy you want working on your car. If you're in the Southwest region you're doing something wrong if you're not working with Driversource at some level.

Switching gears back to the Y-Pipe situation I had some problems. This is another solution that I really don't think has been addressed well with these cars. For one thing, the engine is ugly. For another, I would prefer to maintain a factory air box. That really isn't practical, but it's a novel goal. I have the custom ES Motor intake manifold, dual injector lowers, GT3 RS 4.0 plenums, etc. The 82mm Porsche throttle body isn't really in the same location as it was from the factory. We did some test fittings of different Y-Pipe solutions to see how it worked.


Protomotive Y-Pipe test fit. Not what I was looking for. If I'm going to give up the factory airbox I'm at least going to have fun with it. Also, let's be honest... This is not exactly visual poetry when it comes to fabrication. Can't argue with function, but since we have such ugly engines I wanted some form AND function for this.

Coming back to the intake pipes, the 3D printed ones wouldn't fit because of the wastegate actuators. Given that I didn't have any better ideas, Steve set upon making a custom set that would fit.


Intake pipe early stages.

Steve took things to a new level, I was really happy with where he went with this. The mounts were modified, and he setup the Protomotive Intercoolers (they're big and bad) with some block offs.


Modified fenderwell setup to support the intercoolers, air filters, and SPL dog bones. I haven't mentioned this yet, but we setup the dog bones to get a more appropriate suspension setup to dial some camber out of it. When the car is in full squat mode the tires are flat on the ground, maximizing straight line traction. Pretty important for my setup. Between the combination of torque delivery being very linear with these turbos, and camber settings the thing hooks on S-04 pole positions in 3rd.


Showing the transition off the silicone coupler, and custom intake pipes with appropriate mounting points, and clearing the internal wastegate actuators! Score!



Here's the final product with the filter installed, piping finished, and coated black with a similar coating to what we used for the intake manifold parts. It's kind of hard to see the piping at this stage, but all the work that went into it makes up for it.


Transitioning back up into the engine bay, I had seen some of the builds that were coming out -- a number of "mid" 1,000s HP cars. One thing that Robert @ Xona Rotor was vocal about was the need for appropriate crankcase breathing capacity, and catch can provisions. This was something I didn't really spend a whole lot of time overthinking (for once) because Steve just took care of it.


Catch can setup solidly mounted complete with breather filter.

Back to the Y-Pipe situation we test fit an SRM Y-Pipe. I do have the SRM Brushless fuel system in the car and can report that it operates as expected. I like Sean, he makes good parts. He does disappear every now and then though. His message resonates with me well, after seeing $1400 Protomotive Intake pipes that are composed of $8 worth of material. His business model of providing high quality parts without P$ tax is commendable.


SRM Y-Pipe fitment. Has potential, but not quite what I'm looking for.



More coming, thanks for reading.

 

Lot's of good points. I have seen inlet pipes done in full 3" to the airbox, but involved cutting two 3.5" holes for them to pass through into the engine bay.


I have same struggle with air filters etc and having the AMS carbon upper shrouds, I just left the filters on the turbos. It sucks. They get dirty immediately, just not a good solution for something you want to drive around a lot.

 

Great thread Rix. Congrats on an epic build. I haven't been around here much but it's nice to come back and read a thread like this. If you obsess with this level of detail at work you are probably the best employee EVER!

 

At this point the majority of everything was ready to go. The one big hole was the Y-Pipe fabrication. Steve got the car up and running without the Y-Pipe for some testing. We can do this since the MAFs are deleted and it is running on the MAP/eMAP sensor combination.

It's alive! It's alive!

I was really happy to see the car living again. There were a couple of errors in the factory dash computer, but once configured properly in the Syvecs everything is normal with no error messages, CELs, etc. That is one of the great things about the Syvecs. It really integrates with the factory electronics well. Steve also sent me the video of the dyno break-in/initial tuning pulls.

Just some break in and tuning adjustments. We couldn't do any power runs yet as I still need a Y-Pipe. I think it sounds pretty good if I do say so myself, this is only about 5000rpm.

I had been begging Chris @ Unobtainium for a while now to make me a Titanium Y-Pipe for the car. I thought this could solve my desire to put some bling on top of the project, so I worked out a deal with Steve @ Driversource to make a mock up aluminum pipe to work out the positioning of the intercooler outlets, and throttle body inlets. Another thing that had to be considered was the AC / fuel cooler setup was modified to account for the ES Motor billet intake manifold setup. I guess now I'm going to have to give up the photos of the Pièce De Résistance.



Here you can see the modified fuel cooler/AC setup to maintain factory fuel cooling, while making it compatible with the ESMotor intake.



Chris at Unobtainium works fast. A couple of days after receiving the mock up from Steve he sent me some photos of what he was working on. Still in the early stages but I was really excited to see this coming to life.



Starting to take shape.



More shots on the bench. The blow off valve flanges are on now.



Another view on the bench. It is starting to look pretty serious I think.



Finished product. The welding Chris does on the Titanium is really something.



Here's the business end with the Unobtainium logo heat treated for some color .