2003 Porsche 911 Turb-OOOOH

The rotors are sided and they're marked, which makes it nice.  Really hard to mess that up.

I've looked into the studs but since Porsche uses a hard line into the caliper, there's really not enough slack to pull the caliper up off the studs unless I remove that hard line.  I'd like to just replace it with SS lines but I need to find a kit that specifically replaces those hard lines.  I don't want to buy a kit and then discover it replaces all the other lines but those...

Picked these up from another enthusiast today.  He has a 991 and sadly the front girodiscs from that car don't fit mine.  The rears, however, do, so I bought them.

Don't need them yet, so they'll sit in their boxes for awhile.  Hopefully by the time I need them I'll have found a decent set of girodiscs for the front too.

just read this from start to finish , love the car and the details. keep up the great work 

In reply to orangecruz :

Thanks!  Turbos going on it soon, I've ordered the wastegate kit to convert them to 1 bar ones...

1 bar wastegate kit from Ultimate Motorwerks showed up, as did my stock wastegate.  Threw the wastegate on and tested it, it's working and cracking open when it should.  However the threaded end of it and one of the nuts is looking crusty.  I'll need to chase the threads and remove the partially stripped nut and replace both of them before I put it on for good. 

Any suggestions on how to clean the rust off?  I have brass brush heads I can put in my drill, what about the liquid rust removers?  Those actually work?

For rust removal I have wire brushes that I use on die-grinders.  Hand-brush for sensitive or small parts.

Or I sandblast which is awesome, but that might not be what you're going for on a sensitive turbo part.

I've never tried liquid removers but I'd be interested in your findings.  Once I messed around with electrolysis, and that was pretty cool but ultimately not very efficient at the job.

So happily all it took was some PB Blaster and working that nut back and forth with a 10mm wrench.  It spins easily now, the wastegate shaft looks fine, I'll just replace the two nuts and I should be good.  Next step is to install the 1 bar wastegate springs, reinstall the wastegates, then sync their opening.  After that, install the turbos!

Haven't really driven the car but have moved it on/off the lift some.  Heard some rubbing up front still, so got the front end in the air and moved the front wheels through their arc of motion.  Turns out the top of the wheel/tire is hitting the upper corner of the GT2 air deflectors.  A little work with some wire clippers and a utility knife and everything is clear now. 

Weather finally warmed up today, close to 50F!  While I can work in the garage with the heater one, I prefer to have the doors up so I can see better.  I wanted to install the 1 bar wastegate kit and need to slice the wastegates open.  Want as much light as possible while I do that, so the last few days were spent chilling (haha!) inside the house.  Today was the day! 

First I marked where the wastegate nut should be, 30.40mm, then I marked where the vacuum/pressue line goes so I have it clocked right when I put it all back together again

Now I grabbed my Dremel with a sanding barrel on it and went to town.  See the seam starting to open?

The sanding barrels weren't working all that well, so I put a grinding stone on the Dremel and that worked out pretty well.  I clamped the wastegate rod in the vice to keep it from springing all apart

After splitting it totally apart, this is what you end up with

Pull the nuts off the rod, remove the spring seat and old spring.  Put the new spring in place with the seat and bottom part.  I put new nuts on, since the old ones were rusty.  You can see the red mark I made on the rod for length

Ok, time to put the clamshell together.  This was a lot harder than I expected, I ended up having to sorta squeeze it together in the vice.  Put a few bolts in, then put the rest in with loctite and did all of them.  Marked them with a paint pen to make sure I tightened them all

Then made sure I had the length of the wastegate rod set properly

I'll do this to the other wastegate, then check them to make sure they're synced in opening.  Then the turbos will be ready to install!

Did the other wastegate just now.  Installed it on the turbo, then pressure checked both of them.  The one I did yesterday wouldn't hold pressure at all!  WTF?!  Man, I must've taken that thing apart and put it back together at least 4 more times before I got it sealed up.  I'd deburred it when I first split it open, but the last time I very carefully went over both sides with a file and chamfered the edges.  Then I made sure the diaphragm was properly in place.  Then put it together and was giddy when it finally held pressure.

Then I started to sync the wastegates.  UMW says to you should be able to just start to rotate the wastegate disc at 8.5-8.75psi.  Since my gauge doesn't have that kind of resolution, I set them to do that at 9psi.  Took a little bit of work on the right turbo to get it there, initially I was spinning the rod the wrong way.  Got it all set though.  As much of a pita it was to keep redoing the work, I'm really happy I checked them.  It would've truly sucked to have installed everything and then had a wastegate that wasn't opening at all...

Looking forward to the test drive

In reply to jfryjfry :

Yeah, me too!  Still need to install the 5 bar fpr, flash the tune back to stock and then install the turbos.  I'll install new spark plugs at the same time because they're basically right there.  Then I'll boost leak check it and take it to get tuned.

Finally got off my ass today.  Turned out to be a beautiful day and was able to work with my friend with the doors up almost the entire time.  Super happy to see my buddy Randy again, plus have another set of hands was extremely useful when dealing with the Europipe exhaust, since it weighs what feels like a metric ton.

Anyways, not a whole lot of pics today as we were really grinding away.  Randy was coming over at 10, I was at it at 8, as I wanted everything off and to swap out the spark plugs before he showed up.  I almost got it done, but was a little too slow.  So tail lights out, bumper off, intercoolers out, heat shields off, coil packs out, yada, yada, yada.  Anyways, spark plugs replaced because, well, they were right in front of my face at that point and they had 10,000 miles on them.

After that it was get going on removing the turbos.  That meant remove the boat anchor Europipe exhaust (but I love the way it sounds so much!), then the intake piping to the turbos, wastegate line (surprisingly hard to remove!!!), oil tank, oil lines to the oil tanks, nuts from the turbos to exhaust manifold, then the one bracket bolt.  Then lift the turbo out, put "new" turbo back in, reverse the process.

Sticking parts.  Hmm, well the wastegate lines were *really* on there.  No need for zip ties.  At all.  Not even a little bit.  Next hard part was getting the upper oil line to thread properly into the oil tank on the passenger side.  The drivers side one went in by hand easily, passenger side one took us 15 minutes to get in properly without cross threading it.  Other than that, mostly straight forward stuff.

I pulled the fuel pump fuse and cranked the car over a few times to build oil pressure, then popped the fuse back in and fired it up.  Happily there weren't any oil leaks, the turbos sound great and all is well!  Super happy!  The turbos didn't seem to have any shaft play and spun freely on the bench, but still.  Need to put the rear bumper cover/tail lights back on.

Then need to swap in the 5 bar fuel pressure regulator, flash back to stock and boost leak check it.  After that it's ready for the tune.  I also scored a whole bunch of endlinks, which might be useful for my next suspension project.  Stay tuned!

Put the bumper cover back on it, flashed it back to stock.  Started it up, runs fine.  What's interesting is the flash back to stock took 20 seconds.  Which makes me wonder how much was really changed on the tune.  Still burning off all the PB Blaster we used, might have a small oil leak on the drivers side turbo.  Hopefully it's not from the upper feed line, because if it is, I jumped the gun on putting the bumper cover back on.

Thought I'd found a set of MCS 2 way coilovers locally.  Shop owner told me about one of his customers that was taking his car back to stock to sell it.  I confirmed with the shop owner what the guy had and the price.  I was good with that.  Shop owner put me in touch with the owner of the gear and we finally met up yesterday at my sons soccer practice.  Here's where I screwed up, I should've confirmed with the owner of the gear what he had.

Turns out he had the single adjustables, not the doubles.  At that point, while they're "better" than my PSS9's, I don't think they're enough better to warrant his asking price.  Even with selling my PSS9's, I'd be out around $3k with a new alignment/corner balance.  For the 2 ways, I'd do it, but not for these.  He's firm on his price, which is at least $700 more than I'd be willing to pay for them.  So I'll stick with what I have and go from there.

This Friday I'll install the 5 bar fpr and make sure I don't have an oil leak on that drivers side turbo and boost leak check it.  Then it's off for the dyno tune.

Well it's Friday, so I was out in the garage this morning working on the 996.  First up, the oil leak on the drivers side turbo.  Here's what it looked like

Seems like it's coming from the rubber gasket that's holding the oil tank onto the turbo itself.  Sigh.  Ok, well, there are two bolts holding the tank onto the turbo, the one you see outside and another one that's actually inside the oil tank.  So you have to remove the oil tank drain plug to access it.  When I remove the oil tank drain plug I stare at it for a bit.  Then look at the oil tank, then back to the oil drain plug a few times.  Umm, there's supposed to be a metal crush washer here on the drain plug, but there isn't.  And it's not stuck to the oil tank.  Is it really going to be that easy?  Put a new drain plug washer on it, torque it to spec.  I'll check it again after I'm done with the 5 bar fpr.

Ok, time to install the 5 bar fpr.  It's located on the passenger side of the motor, on the top, near the back.  Access is really poor, when a dentist says that, listen!  This is one of those jobs that while it's not technically difficult, it's totally worth paying someone else to do!  Let's put it this way, I hope I never have to do it again!!  Start out by removing the airbox, then disconnect the boost hose going to the Y pipe.  Now you have to remove 5 10mm bolts, two that hold the SAI pump bracket to the car and 3 that hold the SAI pump to the bracket.  Unclip the two harnesses from the SAI pump and undo the hose from the SAI pump itself.

Now push the oil filler tube toward the drivers side of the car and push the SAI pump into the rear right corner of the engine bay.  You can now just see the fpr.  The clip holding it on is on the bottom from the factory.  Using a long set of 90 degree needle nose pliers, grab it and pull down on it to remove it.  Do NOT drop it!  Now attempt to remove the stock fpr.  I ended up grabbing it gently with a set of channel lock pliers and rocking it out.  Get ready to board the struggle bus as the new fpr won't want to just pop into place.  I lubed the O rings on it several times, didn't matter.  I pushed, I twisted, I cursed, nothing.  I tried to lever it on with the rubber part of a jack handle, a pry bar, a big screwdriver, a piece of 2x4, nothing.  Cursed some more.  I then used a combination of the 2x4 and the rubber coated end of my bmw water pump wrench to lever the living heck out of it. 

I then stared at it for a bit.  Is it really in place?  It looks like it is.  Will the clip seat?  Let's try.  This time I put the clip in from the top.  First try I didn't get the clip lined up correctly, but the second time I did and it made an extremely satisfying "click" when it dropped into place.  O.  M.  G.  Words do not describe my relief at this point.  Ok, get the vacuum feed back onto it and snake a few zip ties onto the vacuum feed so it won't pop off.

Now you get to have all sorts of fun getting the SAI pump back into place, bolted onto its bracket and then bolting the bracket to the motor.  Make sure to drop the bolt holding the oil feed tube in place down into the depths of the engine bay.  Luckily I found it wedged between the exhaust heat shield and the rear firewall.  Tighten everything up, go start the car.  Happily the car still runs fine and doesn't make any new strange noises.  Oil leak seems to have been solved!  No more smoke coming off either turbo, so all the PB Blaster etc has burned off.

Looks like the car is ready to get tuned.  The local tuner will inspect it and boost leak check it before he puts it on the dyno.  He's going to make 3 maps for me, low boost, high boost and valet, I'm going with 91 octane for all of them.  E85 is too much of a PITA, I just don't want to deal with it. 

I still need to do an oil change, fix the hvac blend doors and then do a brake fluid flush in the Spring.  Done with the car for today tho, that was far more work than I expected....

So installing that fpr was more painful than expected.  My knuckles are all barked up and my hands are sore.  Doesn't help that I have extra large hands.  Think I'm done with garage work for the weekend, need a few days for my hands to recover before work on Monday.

I did snug up the oil drain line from the passenger side turbo oil tank, it was a little loose.  Tuner has requested that I pull the front driveshaft to make the car 2wd for his dyno.  I'll probably do that next Friday.  I've made the tuning appointment for mid-March, I'd love to do it sooner but scheduling it getting in the way since it's the middle of ski season for me.

That's all you have to do to make it rwd??

In reply to jfryjfry :

Yes, the quick and dirty way.  The next way is to pull the front driveshaft, pull the front diff, pull the front axles and then put in another set of front stub axles that you've taken from a spare set of front axles.  That way you've deleted all the front diff stuff and saved around 75lbs.  Then the baller way to do it is pull the front driveshaft, axles, diff and then swap out the front knuckles with either GT3/2 ones.  Those give a better alignment curve but aren't sold new anymore and cost a ton of money.

I've actually got the stub axles sitting in a box in my basement, my thoughts are if I need to replace a front axle on my car I'll just pull everything off and run it rwd for awhile.  Apparently since I've added the Guards rear lsd the front drive unit doesn't do a whole lot...

In reply to docwyte :

Is there an AWD computer that will get confused by never seeing front wheel spin?

In reply to AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) :

Nope, the awd system on the 996 isn't computer controlled, it's actually a fairly simple system. 

In other news, since I didn't buy that suspension setup I don't need this pile of suspension links I bought.  Turns out the links weren't the right ones for that suspension anyways.  A local friend had an Evoms airbox for sale and since the tuner is going to make me a MAFless tune, I figured maybe he'd want to trade me the airbox for the suspension links.  Of course someone had beaten me to it, doh!  However my friend does want the links and is just going to buy them from me, so at least I'll recoup my $$ there, which will pay for the caliper stud kit I bought from the front of the car...

Another Friday, so more work done to the car.  Tuner requested I pull the front driveshaft to make the car rwd for his dyno.

this is supposed to be really easy, remove the belly pans, remove three bolts and it pops out.

Start here and remove all the 10mm plastic nuts and t25 torx.  There are a ton of them

now remove the 2 15mm nuts and loosen the two 15mm bolts on the side so you can pull the black U frame piece down and expose the end of the driveshaft

ok, see those three hex head bolts?  Here's where I got tripped up, as those go thru the guibo but not the driveshaft.  I removed them but the driveshaft didn't pop right out.

so then I thought I needed to remove the three Allen head bolts that go thru the driveshaft from the other direction, which would be a huge pita.

I called a few friends and everyone was confused and it seemed like when the shop installed the rear lsd maybe they put all those bolts in 180 degrees out from where they should be.  I called the shop, sent them pics and they told me it was put together correctly.  Hmmm

finally I figured out that the guibo does come off with the driveshaft and there's a locating "pin" that you need to pop the driveshaft off.  So I removed those hex head bolts again, gave the driveshaft a little tug towards the nose of the car and it popped free.

the other end is just splined and all you have to do is pull it out.

after that I reinstalled the belly pan covers, did an oil change and swapped out the front caliper bolts for the Tarret caliper studs I bought.

Last thing I want to do is a boost leak test, then it'll go get tuned.

Had the car picked up by a tow truck and taken to the tuner yesterday.  They're going to boost leak check it and then start tuning it.  Because it's me, the tow wasn't without drama.  First the tow truck didn't have enough wood to build ramps to get the car up on the flat bed, so we had to use the ramps for my lift.  Then on the way it had a blow out and it took something like 5 hours before they were able to drop it off. 

It did get there though, so that's good.  The tuner doesn't use a dynojet, which is what I'm most familiar with, plus I didn't get a baseline with the car on the smaller turbos, so, yeah.  He said most tuned k16 cars put down 420-430 on his dyno whereas on a dynojet they probably put down more like 450-460.  Tuned k24 cars generally put down around 500 on a dynojet and I've seen dynos with my combo at 530-540.  I figure if the car does 470+ on his dyno then I'll be happy.  I may take the car to a dynojet sometime later and just see what it does...

What kind of Dyno does the tuner use? 

In reply to DrMikeCSI :

Dyno Dynamics, which some research shows seems to read 10-14% lower than a dynojet.  So a 470hp reading on it would be a low 500 reading on a dynojet, which would make sense with my combo.  So hoping to get a 460+ reading on it....

Shop told me they'd give me a call after the boost leak inspection.  I never heard from them but it must've been in good shape as I received an email from them last night with dyno charts!  

So, again, this is a dyno dynamics, which seems to read anywhere from 10-15% lower than the more typical dynojet.  Shop said a 996 turbo with the smaller k16 turbos, (like I had before) generally puts out 420rwhp or so.  I was hoping to see 460-470rwhp on the larger k24's.  Turns out I was pretty damn close, and this is only at 1 bar of boost.  Street map will be 1.2 bar, so maybe add another 20rwhp to the dyno?

What I find interesting is the lower chart where they estimate the dynojet hp.  It's showing ~550rwhp!  So even more at 1.2 bar of boost?  Man I really hope my clutch holds up this season.  I can drop just the transmission to do the clutch but it would make a whole lot more sense to drop the entire motor/transmission at the same time.  That way I can handle the clutch, coolant lines, replacing all the plastic and rubber bits, etc.  Which I don't want to do until October/November....

Anyways, I think this is a smashing success!  OEM+ upgrade as the k24 turbos were part of the x50 package and also came on the GT2, fitment was factory perfect.  They gave me a solid +50rwhp over the k16's, or more even.  Cost wasn't too bad, I can still run the stock tune to pass emissions.  The next step would be a set of hybrid k16/24 turbos to help spool, larger fuel injectors, definitely a different clutch and cost thousands and thousands of dollars.

So, super happy with this!  Can't wait to drive it, hopefully pick it up this Friday/Saturday.  Depends on the weather, it's supposed to snow Wednesday/Thursday and if the roads aren't dry, I won't go get it.  Falken RT615k+ don't play well in snow...