A little of the topic but the pics on page 3 are amazing! Really nice photos man, did you take them yourself?

 

Thanks! Yes I took them myself. I am quite amateur in taking photos, but I know it always helps to have good lighting conditions.

 

The clarity of the camera is great. Also the background looks amazing!

 

Dave,

Yes, sorry to get my dander up. I did not mean to suggest you were doubting us.

We are practically religious in preaching about dyno testing standard in this industry. The published results out there from typical mods are jaw dropping in their exaggeration.

Without perspective, our results look absolutely anemic, but I suppose the fact that our results are so much "lower" than typical claims should raise a flag in the readers' minds and get them to dig deeper into that contradiction.

Either way, thanks for the kind words from everyone in this thread. We love what we do and feedback like this means the world to us.

 

I wish AWE did dynos with just the 200 cell cats changed and then AWE headers and cats keeping the PSE. I like having the PSE button personally, so I would not want to change that part of the exhaust.

 

How about a set of AWE headers on a 997.1 with the factory cats and mufflers? Would that be the best bang for the buck?

 

No the cats are the restriction here...

Dave

 

That bad huh? Will aftermarket cats pass the CA smog test (sniffer)?

 

It's 50/50..the 200cpi cats are just a little too free flowing. Although on high octane fuel and the car is fully up to temp it may pass. The good news is I installed the whole exhaust system (remove and replace with aftermarket) in under 3.5hrs. This was with the car on telephone books to get underneath there. My buddy had my ramps and I didn't want to wait.

If you have to return to stock its not that big of a deal. The improvement in performance along with the sound was worth it for me. You can see my sig for my setup...

Keep in mind you don't have to smog a new car for 6 years I believe here in Cali.

Dave

 

Hi Todd

This statement really intrigues me - I'd be very interested to discover what it is about the new ECUs on the Gen-II cars that prevents significant performance gains being achieved.

Going off topic for a minute, I thought I'd also let you know your full system on my Gen-I 7S is still doing everything claimed of it. It's done about 27000 miles now including around 3000 miles of incredibly hard driving around Europe on a locally-organised, car-enthusiasts tour. That trip broke a lot of other bits on my car (and several other people's cars too) but your exhaust survived perfectly and is sounding better and better with more miles.

That tour also proved the claimed performance gains too - there was guy on the tour with a Ferrari 360 who was really unhappy when he discovered my 997S could consistently pull away from him time after time - it was just plain quicker from a rolling start through second and third and fourth (to the red line in each gear). I know from previous experience that a stock 997S can't do this and as the only mods on my car currently are your exhaust and a BMC-F1 filter panel, then that's definitely where the extra power is coming from.

Thanks again for a great product.

 

I have the X51 headers with 200 cell cats and a fabspeed maxflo muffler and I can tell you my car has no low end torque loss. If you want better sound just do it, the power gains one way our the other are not a factor.

 

The whole power strategy has changed in the 997.2 ECU firmware. It is heavily "torque monitored", meaning that if there is an increase in the MAF signal over what is considered normal for the operating condition, the ECU will pull ignition advance (and throttle in extreme cases) to bring power output back in line. This has been present in many cars for a while, but the tolerances are very small on the newer Porsches and Audis. The 997.2 ECU is also sourced from Siemens, not Bosch, so lots has changed with the new car.

An aftermarket ECU recalibration (performance flash) addresses this limit and allows power to be unlocked. However, that begs the question of the validity of large power gain claims from tuners using stock software with their hardware.


That's great to read! Thanks for sharing.

I wish the new 997.2 was as easy to tune on. We gave up on releasing a cat/header combo for the new 997S if stock software is being used. We simply could not make any power gains, and actually lost a bit down low.

We are now working with GIAC on a recalibration customized to our cats and headers and are making steady horsepower gains and are chipping away at the low end torque losses via some pretty tricky programming!

 

Who develops that actual software/hardware for the aftermarket chip tuners in order to hack these ECU's? The Chip makers themselves? Does Siemens offer support in this area (I highly doubt it)?

-Eric

 

Great question and one that kind of separates the "men from the boys".

GIAC is one of very, very few software tuners who actually writes their own software decryption, reading, and writing tools.

The majority of current software sellers are using tools available to anyone for a price. You can even see these tools in the posts the sellers do on various forums. Tools with the name WinOLS, Byteshooter, Dimsport, etc. are all generic cracking/reading/writing tools, but they come with big limitations as they are all basically "translators" for less adept specialists. For example, in the 997TT forum you can read development threads on the new 997TT 3.8l DFI and GIAC is currently the only company that can flash these ECUs via the OBD port as they are masters of their own domain, while others are limited to what their calibration hardware suppliers have gotten around to selling them.

The OE suppliers, such as Siemens and Bosch, do not officially support any aftermarket efforts, except for their own Motorsports programs.

 

I finally put the AWE 200 cell cats on my car and honestly, the jury is out. BR Racing in Los Gatos did a great job and I highly recommend their work. However, at WOT it's loud with the top down and although it's not really that bad, I don't think I like the sound. I will obviously give it more time. At this point, I don't know yet if I would do it again. I think it sounded more like a Porsche with the original PSE only. To each his own I guess. Of course, I plan to give it a while before I change anything. I want to hear it in all situations first and get used to it a bit.