The fall is almost here and as the heat waves that plague our summer begin to descend, the track schedule here in the Southeast begins to open up. We headed up to Roebling Road Raceway in Savannah once again for PCA Florida Crowns fall DE. With great weather on the forecast for the weekend, a caravan from our shop formed on Friday afternoon. We brought along Joe Rekucki, one of our talented technicians to help with setup changes and small issues during the weekend. Kory Gellinger and Jarrett Desmond from our sales department also decided to join and got a full taste of the track as participates in the green run group. We also had a few great customers and friends participating in the event, and were fortunate to have great students interested in learning as much as they could throughout the weekend. Overall the weekend was a huge success with no major incidents at the track, and everyone who chose to make the 4 hour trek with us had a great time.
This also marked the second test session in the camo 996tt since we brought it out being mothballed. Tony at European Performance Labs for providing us with a great new flash for our Bolt on K24/18G with phenomenal mid range for the track. The car performed flawlessly the entire weekend, and provided for many great thrill rides for those attendees brave enough to get in the passenger seat for a session. Jon Miller was able to get a 1:17 out of the car on 3 year old R888s which made keeping the the 550+ horsepower Porsche stuck to the track a handful. I managed to get the car out for a session myself and was amazed at the performance the car has, with some fresh tires and a few setup changes this car has some great potential as we move forward with testing. We’re anxious to get back out to the track in the coming weeks for more great driving, and have a full schedule lined up for the fall. If you’re interested in joining us, or want to know more about learning how to get out to the road course yourself, please email us.
Evolution Motorsport’s Summer Tour makes it’s Orlando stop at Titan Motorsports on June 28th. EvoMS will be showing off their 2010 PDK Turbo with 650hp on tap, 2007 Turbo with over 1200hp and the Gumpert Apollo supercar. Todd Z will also be on hand to answer any technical questions and discuss the entire line of Evolution Motorsports products and their EVOMSit computer upgrades available for Porsches and many other premium marques. We hope you can find a few moments out of your day to come check out the shop and meet the gang from Evo.
Quite frequently we get emails and calls from potential customers looking to research a car they do not own yet. Matt Powell contacted us about a month back while investigating the purchase of a Porsche turbo to receive our K24/18G upgrade. About a week later Matt called to let me know that he located a car in Tampa and was having it delivered to us to be upgraded prior to him taking delivery. The dealership performed a PPI inspection prior to delivering the car to us, however we took some extra time to check the car out and baseline the car on our dyno, discovering the car already has a ECU flash to optimize the factory turbos. Over the next few days we installed our popular K24/18G kit featuring EPL Tuning with ECU controlled boost control. The car also also received a set of our Standard Issue diverter valves and a Clutch Master Stage 3 clutch upgrade with a new Porsche dual mass flywheel to be sure the driveline was able to handle the extra torque produced by the upgrades.
After finalizing the upgrades we again put the car on our DynoJet and the car spun the rollers to 565whp/556tq picking up an impressive 113whp and 79tq all on 93 octane. Again these numbers where in addition to the factory ECU already having a performance flash optimized for the factory turbos, making the gain even more impressive. Matt now has one screamer of a Porsche, I’m sure the extra power made the 12 hour drive back to Mississippi much easier and quicker!
Titan Motorsports offers a vehicle locating service for those looking to have the sports car of their dreams delivered to their door turnkey with the modifications of their choice already installed, email wes@titanmotorsports.com for more information.
712rwhp @ 1.48 bar ……In 94 degree heat.
We’ll be Shipping the car to Puerto Rico for a drag race on May 30th and needed to get a good tune-up in the car before she ships off Thursday. Darin has been working hard to get the Motec and factory ECU to co-operate with each other and get the car tuned. After a few hours on the ECU the car was running excellent and manged to make 712rwhp @ 1.48bar in the 97 degree heat we where blessed with today. The car is running on VP C16 fuel, and still has quite a bit left, however with the shipping deadline looming we where simply out of time to do anymore tuning. I want to thank Tony@EPL for helping us remove some fail safes in the factory ECU and his great advice along the way. I’m still impressed that the old girl is running so well with over 66k miles on the odometer and a completly factory engine. If all goes as planned we expect to hit the local test and tune tomorrow before loading the car up.
Setup :
Stock Engine, never been opened up, 66k miles
-K24/18G
-Second Bosch 044 inline in Fuel Filter spot
-Motec M800 / EPL Motronic ECU
-Tial BOV
-AWE Straightpipes
-Injector dynamics 1,000cc Injectors
-USP Intercoolers
-Titan Motorsports Intake Fenderwell intakes
We’ve been working on a Motec PNP solution for the Porsche 996tt since we purchased our car. Starting off with a base jump harness Darin was able to wire the Motec into the jump harness without cutting a wire on the factory harness. If we even wanted to go back to a factory Motronic setup we can unplug the jumper harness and plug the factory ECU back in. I want to be the first to say this is not a replacement for a ECU reflash, and should not be considered as such. While the harness is plug and play, the setup and tuning of a standalone is anything but and should be left to only the most qualified of tuners. It’s not intended for a full daily driver or basic bolt-on turbo car, we’re looking to race the car heavily at both the drag strip and road course, and went with the Motec for on the spot control of the ECU, as well as the additional data that can be recorded and reviewed between runs during testing. We’ve had to do quite a bit to get the factory ECU to continue to control the vehicle while allowing the Motec to take control of the engines functions, but after a few days or troubleshooting we have made huge grounds and have the car running and driving quite smoothly, now it’s just a matter of turning the car up and making the extra power we hope for with the K24/18G setup.
As a result of converting the car to speed density we where able to remove some factory parts that are known to be restrictive. Here you can see the very restrictive plastic intake ducting that connects the airbox to the turbocharger inlet. Anyone who thinks that new shiny airbox or filter is getting them a ton of performance, remember it has to flow through this restriction before it ever meets the turbos.
Since we removed the MAF sensor and went to a speed density setup when installing the Motec we where able to use a standard air filter setup, our Fabricator John did a great job of routing the pipe through the fenderwell to the new filter location.
This image should show you how tight a fit the 2.5″ pipe is inside the wheel well. It took many test fits but John was able to make the pipe work while providing adequate clearance for our R888s to fit. We modified the intake ducting for the intercooler to provide fresh air to the filter as well, providing a true ram air effect that not only provides the filter with fresh air, but still maintains proper intercooling as well.
Since the Motec operates off a MAP sensor rather than a closed loop MAF sensor, we where able to remove the factory diverter valve setup and install a standard blow off valve onto the existing Y Pipe. We opted for a Tial BOV mounted at the front of the y-pipe for easy vacuum line routing and venting to atmosphere.
We’ve got a bit more fabricating and tuning to do, but hope to have the car on the dyno on Friday and if all goes as planned the car on the track that evening.
After years of development and testing, Tial has released their GT series bolt-on upgrades for the Porsche Turbo. Starting with a garret based core, Tial uses their lightweight custom stainless steel exhaust housings to adapt to the Porsche’s factory exhaust manifolds. Using custom CNC’d brackets they also incorporate factory style waste gate actuators and adapters for the oil lines to allow for easy adaption of the factory hardware. Tial offers these turbos come in 4 configurations tailored for you specific vehicles use and power goals.
These kits come with everything you need to bolt-on and adapt the turbochargers to the factory Porsche exhaust manifolds and hardware. This package includes only the turbo chargers, additional fuel and supporting modifications will be required. We have plenty of fuel solutions available tailored to your goals, and have enlisted EPL’s service to allow the factory Motronic ECU to compensate for the additional airflow these turbos will provide.
Today I felt like a kid waiting for Christmas as the UPS man arrived for our daily drop off. Our new Status Racing Ring GT seats arrived for our Porsche, and I must admit I was highly impressed with them. We opted for the Ring GT seat in a black carbon fiber with black alcantara covering for this application to tie in with the black carbon interior package in our car. The attention to detail on these seats is unbelievable, the weave is perfect, the covering has no wrinkles, and they even include a billet etched serial plate on the seats. These seats are available in a FRP, Carbon, or Carbon Kevlar finish and have covering options available in cloth,suede, and leather in a wide variety of colors. Most seats can be turned around in 2 weeks of less, a very impressive feat given the high standards of quality Status strives to achieve. Like many of their products, these seats meat FIA safety requirements and are acceptable in most racing organizations.
The factory Porsche seats with hardware weighed in at a hefty 60lbs each including hardware. Our new Ring GT’s without hardware weighed in at 21lbs! Even with the brackets and sliders mounted on the seat we still should be looking at a 65-70lb savings for the pair. It’s hard to argue with a great looking, comfortable seat made from quality products that saves so much weight. We’ve been in talks with Status since we first saw their high quality products at SEMA, and are proud to be one of their main East coast distribution points. If you’re in the market for a custom seat or set of quality harnesses, give one of our sales reps a call or email and they’ll make sure you’re covered.
After our last trip to the drag strip it was requested we add a rollbar due to our low 11 second time slip. Fortunately we already had a GMG rollbar waiting or the car, just needed to find time to install it. Our Status racing seats are due to arrive Monday as well so we felt what better time than now than to prep the interior for the rollbar an seat install early next week. First off we weighed the factory seats, I was amazed to find they way almost 63lbs EACH. Our carbon fiber Status racing seats are likely to shave a considerable amount of weight off (probably 55-65lbs for the pair). That’s all find and dandy but we figured it would be best to get as much weight as possible out of the interior while we had the seats out. We stripped all the carpet out so that we could skim the sound deadening foam off before reinstalling the carpet.
This should give you an idea of the process and end result. It’s tedious but well worth it in an effort to make the car quicker.
Heres a better idea of the end result, a hefty bag full of heavy foam, about 35-40lbs worth and we still have a bit more foam to skim off (my hands need some time to rest and heal).
We’ll continue the process early next week, and install our matte Black GMG Rollbar, Status Seats, and Status racing harnesses. While were installing the interior we’ll have the transmission out of the car getting a Guard 40/60 LSD which should help our short times at the track. These improvements should put us well into the 10s in a streetable 996tt, I’m anxious to get her back out to the track!
After a few busy weeks we finally got a chance to get Project 996tt on the dyno for some initial tuning with our new K24/18G+ kit. After a few busy weeks in the shop working on customers cars and a short weight for a few final missing parts we strapped her on our in-house dynojet in RWD format to begin tuning and get some power to the ground.
We’ve slowly been turning up the boost on the car and dialing in the tune with the help of Tony Chick from EPL’s using their new dealer flash tool. The flashing has been flawless and the process of uploading a new file to the car takes mere minutes. We’ve seen great results so far at lower boost levels and will be turning the boost up a couple ticks in the next week or two to get even more power out of the setup. Using our new fuel system is working great and ad 1.31 bar we where only at 55% duty cycle on the injectors, so we have plenty of room to go for more boost, we’ll likely stop at 1.4-1.5bar on race fuel as this should be a good point for hard usage on the stock engine.
First Pass on low boost (1.15 bar):
60′ 1.729
330 4.889
1/8 7.404
MPH 100.83
1000 9.535
1/4 11.293
MPH 126.79
Second Pass with a bit more boost (1.31 bar)
60′ 1.882
330 4.957
1/8 7.306
MPH 105.99
1000 9.344
1/4 11.051
MPH 130.34
We’ll be doing a bit more tuning this week, hopefully turning the wick up for a bit more power. Chris Green @ USP Motorsports is sending a set of his intercoolers for us to use on the car, that should help keep the intake temperatures down as the boost gets turned up. Now that we’ve gone quicker than 11.5X twice, the track has also requested we install a roll bar. We’re going to take some time to install our GMG cage and new Status seats and try to get rid of some more dead weight in the interior. Progress is always a good thing and with a near 10 second pass on only our 2nd pass, I’m quite happy with where we’re heading.
As project 996 evolves, we’re finding that with more power, we need more grip. This applies to both street and track, as the 600+ HP we anticipate to make will overpower our 19″ PS2s with ease. This car will be used for highway racing, drag racing, road racing, and still needs to be streetable enough to drive to local shows and select events. We decided it was time to get a track wheel setup for the car in a 18″ sizing that offered a much wider tire selection.
We’re fortunate to have CCW Wheels located less than an hour from us in Daytona. We’ve used CCW wheels on many of our personal and customer Supras in the past as they offer very aggressive fitments in a lightweight reasonably priced package. We’re trying to get the car ready for a track day at Roebling Road this weekend and wanted some wheels quick, we gave John @ CCW a call on Monday and had our new wheels here on Wednesday. The wheels are the CCW C2K, the latest in the forged Corsair line which is machined from a single 6061-T6 aluminum forging. This wheel takes some inspiration from the original CCW Classics and applies it to the forged track wheel lineup available in a 18″ size allowing for plenty of tire choices. We needed a sticky tire for this application and gave our good friends at Toyo a call, they supplied their latest R Compound tires the R888s in 235/40zr18 and 315/30ZR18 sizing. I’m anxious to get the car tunes and put our new track wheel and tire setup to the test, results to follow.
