I am new to this forum and am new to aftermarket upgrades. I have a 997.1 C2 and am looking at the following....can anyone give me a hand in doing the right steps and building a plan. All websites say increase in horsepower etc etc etc but I want real tried tested advice.

ECU upgrade already done
1. OEM Short Shift Kit - purchased and going in this weekend.
2. Fabspeed Maxflo CAI - next purchase
3. Fabspeed x-pipe cats - next purchase with CAI
4. 3rd Rad - after 2-3
5. IDP Plenum - spring time
6. ECU FLash

I drive the car a lot on the street but also track the vehicle....I have 19" OEM porsche rims staggered from an S that I will put track tires on...any suggestions.

Thanks for all the help and suggestions to come!

 

I'm not sure that you need the the third radiator. I thought that you only needed to add the third radiator when you were adding a turbo or a supercharger. I never had problems with my thermostat or temperature, but when I added racing headers, they had to remove the thermostat to get at it, so I replaced the OEM thermostat with a the LN Engineering low temperature (160) degree thermostat. Don't know that I needed it other than for track days and it dos keep the engine cooler. I'm curious in what others think.

LNE Low Temp Thermostat

 

Do 'S' rims fit non 'S' cars? I thought that the rear end was fatter on the 'S', and results in a different size wheel and offset.

 

Same "narrowbody" on the 2wd cars C2, C2S, GT3. Widebody cars are C4, C4S, Turbo.

X...

 

Ahhh... thank you. I stand corrected.

 

before u come up with a plan, u should have a goal in your mind.

what is the purpose of the upgrades ?

for track or for street ? do u want power or handling or just something shiny ? or maybe all of the above ? what is your budget ? hope u have deep pocket.. =)

for track, i would perhaps go with better brake pads and lines.. add a 18in lightweight wheels.. and look into improving the handling with aftermarket suspension parts.

for street, u can spend lotta dough to gain minimal improvement in power with headers, cats, mufflers, intake, ecu tune and plenum... if u want to make the car sound better (matter of opinion) just change the muffler or do a gundo/Dfister hack. But if u really want to improve power on a already fast NA car, only wise choice would be to get an turbo/SC upgrade or trade in your car for a turbo 911 or a GT3

BTW, i do have the oem SSK which feels better than the stock. Other aftermarket parts on my car: RSS plenum, Cargraphics exhaust, HRE comp wheels, Eibach springs, Escort 9500CI, Dension, and few other cosmetic parts.

this is all just my opinion, so BOL and keep us up-to-date

 

I'm also a relatively new owner and have been doing a ton of research on mods. My conclusion so far is that many of the mods available for our cars are total snake oil.

Dynos: There are a ton of factors on the numbers that our cars will put down even in back to back runs, so it's easy to produce a chart that is highly misleading.
Cold air intake: The factory unit is so good you'd be hard pressed to get any real gains. Factory unit pulls hot cold from outside into a big airbox with a large filter. Many of the aftermarket units don't do anything to prevent you from pulling hot air from the engine bay and may result in heat soak.
Plenum: Third party dynos from reputable companies have shown that they don't do anything.
200 cell cats: Some good gains to be had in higher rev range, but reduced exhaust velocity at low RPMs can cause hestitation and power loss down low.

If you want to get some good power gains it seems you really need to do a full exhaust (headers, cats, mufflers, tips) and you can expect decent gains in high RPMs.

edit: factory unit gets COLD air from outside.. not hot

 

Very good points. I would like to add a few things-

On the topic of Dynos- The most effective way to utilize a dyno is to do before and after runs on the same day with the same conditions in terms of temp, humidity, etc. It is extremely important to get baseline numbers so you can see a tangible gain. We do not alter any of our results, as the graphs come directly from the Dyno computer to mine. False advertisement is not a good business practice.

Intakes- For the 997.2 NA cars we offer the S-Flo Filter which we found to give very solid gains, but as you said, the stock airbox was found to be efficient.


In terms of exhaust, like you said the best way is to get a full system. Headers, however, are not optimal for all applications as the stock ones are efficient enough for most applications.

 

As long as u ordered SSK why not go next with :
1. LWFW , u will have better acceleration that u can feel it and complete trans upgrade
2 . Fabspeed Cold air intake with BMC flitter (so in the future if u want u can fit GT3 TB)
3. AWE cats , u will feel great improvement (power & sound )
4. Muffler & headers
5. plenum.

It's just a suggestion and good luck with your upgrade

 

Will thanks for chiming in. As someone who has followed AWE Tuning for a long time (despite never buying the S4 2.7T or Cayman S that I intended to years ago..) you're definitely one of the respectable tuners that I follow.

Do you have any suggestions for best bang/buck mods for 997.1? I have a really hard time sifting through all the snake oil products for our cars, and I'm not willing to sacrifice any day drivability (sounds like 200 cell cats hurt low end grunt). Is there anything like the S-FLO filters for 997.1?

 

200 cell cats reduce the resistance to flow in the exhaust system. Mufflers with larger pipes and perhaps better headers will further reduce the resistance and potentially improve the flow. Power gains might be realized at high RPMs when the volume of exhaust flow is highest. And torque and HP might be reduced at low RPMs because the backpressure in the exhaust system could be lower due the lower resistance.

More noticeable torque and HP improvements can be had by also reducing the resistance in the air intake system (in addition to the 200 cell cats). Adding a GT3/X51 throttle body, plenum, and filter can reduce the resistance of the intake system and allow more fresh air to be sucked into the engine. This is an expensive route to getting 10 to 30 more HP.

A less resistive air intake system and a less resistive exhaust system will enable your engine to suck more air in and blow more exhaust out. If you only do one or the other, you'll only realize a small portion of the HP improvement.

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