Knackered old Porsche with loads of natural light - Boxster!
Discussion
As my ex HMS Cumberland, Principle Warfare Officer friend and neighbour once said to his 5 year old daughter when she was being harassed by a bee in the garden....."it's important to be brave, you never know when you'll be faced with a bayonet charge "! 
Drive it there! You know you want to.
Drive it there! You know you want to.
Edited by Heaveho on Sunday 5th May 23:31
OK Chaps, message recieved I'll drive it down. YOLO as the kids say
I've finished the dyno prep today and am very excited to see what it makes and more importantly how it drives once I can lay into it a little. All I really want to achieve from the dyno is a calibration that drives nice and a list of performance limiters identified and understood - at that point I can decide what the first EVO of this car looks like
I'll drive it down. YOLO as the kids say I've finished the dyno prep today and am very excited to see what it makes and more importantly how it drives once I can lay into it a little. All I really want to achieve from the dyno is a calibration that drives nice and a list of performance limiters identified and understood - at that point I can decide what the first EVO of this car looks like
poppopbangbang said:
OK Chaps, message recieved I'll drive it down. YOLO as the kids say
I've finished the dyno prep today and am very excited to see what it makes and more importantly how it drives once I can lay into it a little. All I really want to achieve from the dyno is a calibration that drives nice and a list of performance limiters identified and understood - at that point I can decide what the first EVO of this car looks like
Good luck, hope it gives all you're expecting from it. I'll drive it down. YOLO as the kids say I've finished the dyno prep today and am very excited to see what it makes and more importantly how it drives once I can lay into it a little. All I really want to achieve from the dyno is a calibration that drives nice and a list of performance limiters identified and understood - at that point I can decide what the first EVO of this car looks like
jeremyc said:
Megaflow said:
At the risk of laying the ground rules for a divorce, i go on much would this kit cost?
I'd suggest emailing PPBB directly through his profile rather than turning this excellent thread into an advertisement. 
Well I'm back from the dyno..... and I drove the car home too!
Super succesful day today, well aside from the run down to Badger 5 which took three hours rather than two due to traffic - but good chance to test the idle drive, cooling etc. out!
The key things I wanted to achieve were to run the car at gate pressure, ensure all was healthy and doing what it should with regards strategies, actuators and general engine bits and if it made the circa 300bhp I thought it should with a 1bar spring in the gate push on and see what stopped it. Along the way testing how well the boost control worked, if we had good mechanical function etc. etc.
Very happy that it nailed 296bhp at 1bar so that showed we were pretty much in the ballpark with regards the expected engine efficiency etc. The engine responded very well to 1.2bar picking up another 40bhp or so (and hitting the 300ftlb self imposed limit for gearbox happiness/survivability) but made very little additional power at 1.4bar and took a load of gate duty cycle to get it there. What that showed was the exhaust flow was insufficient to go much further, which isn't too surprising as the silencer on the car was designed for 200bhp and I hacked it up and welded some bigger tube into it.... it wasn't exactly meant to be on the back of this engine
Charge temps were as expected, i.e. pretty sporty at mid 50's at 1.4bar. Some of that is due to my terrible placement of the air filter, some is due to the coolant aleady being fairly warm and some is due to being on a dyno where everything is minging hot even with massive fans.
It's also pretty clear it will need some sportier cams to make 500bhp as it's over the top of the standard ones at 6K RPM and the torque curve is only really being held up by the boost at that point. We're only running a 7250RPM rev limit in the video as there's just no point using all 8K available.
But regardless of all that I'm over the moon . The big thing was nailing 300bhp at a bar (because if it does that then all the powers are there with some fairly basic additions/component changes) and getting a proper systems test done (especially on things like boost and knock control). It was also very nice that the car behaved absolutely impeccably, no misfires or system dramas, no boost pipes popping off, sensible engine coolant temps, good fuel pressure, great oil pressure, drove on and drove off and didn't even drop any fluids.
With all that said I need to have a bit of a think now about next steps. I could leave it as it is and have a bombproof car with similar power to weight as a 997 Turbo and just use and abuse it. I could make a new exhaust system, fit the proper PWR chargecooler rad with a larger resoirvoir to up the system thermal mass along with some water/meth and have a probably as bombproof car at a sniff over 400bhp or absolutely go bonkers - chuck some cams in it, go massive on the chargecooler core or build an inlet manifold with an integrated one, even more water/meth and send it to 8250RPM (or a bit more) with all the boost the turbo will make...... somewhere in the middle of that is probably the right option, but the right options power figure doesn't start with a 5 and I have a reputation to uphold
Huge thanks to the guys at Badger 5 too, they've been a great help on the engine build supplying various bits (coils, injectors, ECU, engine bearings etc.) and doing the calibration work today. They're also bloody nice chaps and a pleasure to spend some time chatting cars with
Super succesful day today, well aside from the run down to Badger 5 which took three hours rather than two due to traffic - but good chance to test the idle drive, cooling etc. out!
The key things I wanted to achieve were to run the car at gate pressure, ensure all was healthy and doing what it should with regards strategies, actuators and general engine bits and if it made the circa 300bhp I thought it should with a 1bar spring in the gate push on and see what stopped it. Along the way testing how well the boost control worked, if we had good mechanical function etc. etc.
Very happy that it nailed 296bhp at 1bar so that showed we were pretty much in the ballpark with regards the expected engine efficiency etc. The engine responded very well to 1.2bar picking up another 40bhp or so (and hitting the 300ftlb self imposed limit for gearbox happiness/survivability) but made very little additional power at 1.4bar and took a load of gate duty cycle to get it there. What that showed was the exhaust flow was insufficient to go much further, which isn't too surprising as the silencer on the car was designed for 200bhp and I hacked it up and welded some bigger tube into it.... it wasn't exactly meant to be on the back of this engine
Charge temps were as expected, i.e. pretty sporty at mid 50's at 1.4bar. Some of that is due to my terrible placement of the air filter, some is due to the coolant aleady being fairly warm and some is due to being on a dyno where everything is minging hot even with massive fans.
It's also pretty clear it will need some sportier cams to make 500bhp as it's over the top of the standard ones at 6K RPM and the torque curve is only really being held up by the boost at that point. We're only running a 7250RPM rev limit in the video as there's just no point using all 8K available.
But regardless of all that I'm over the moon
. The big thing was nailing 300bhp at a bar (because if it does that then all the powers are there with some fairly basic additions/component changes) and getting a proper systems test done (especially on things like boost and knock control). It was also very nice that the car behaved absolutely impeccably, no misfires or system dramas, no boost pipes popping off, sensible engine coolant temps, good fuel pressure, great oil pressure, drove on and drove off and didn't even drop any fluids.With all that said I need to have a bit of a think now about next steps. I could leave it as it is and have a bombproof car with similar power to weight as a 997 Turbo and just use and abuse it. I could make a new exhaust system, fit the proper PWR chargecooler rad with a larger resoirvoir to up the system thermal mass along with some water/meth and have a probably as bombproof car at a sniff over 400bhp or absolutely go bonkers - chuck some cams in it, go massive on the chargecooler core or build an inlet manifold with an integrated one, even more water/meth and send it to 8250RPM (or a bit more) with all the boost the turbo will make...... somewhere in the middle of that is probably the right option, but the right options power figure doesn't start with a 5 and I have a reputation to uphold
Huge thanks to the guys at Badger 5 too, they've been a great help on the engine build supplying various bits (coils, injectors, ECU, engine bearings etc.) and doing the calibration work today. They're also bloody nice chaps and a pleasure to spend some time chatting cars with
In my limited experience, torque is what makes for a nice road car. If you hit the limits of the gearbox at 300 ft/lbs, which in itself is a nice number, and you're already making 340 brake, and it drives well and reliably, is there much point in chasing numbers at the potential expense of reliability? Or would you make changes to the box specifically to allow it to handle more torque? I get the impression the engine itself is good for a fair bit more as is? Genuine question, interested to know where you see this finishing.
Edited by Heaveho on Wednesday 8th May 21:21
Followed from the start and very pleased it’s all worked well on the dyno. Never in doubt given the quality of your other projects.
If this is to be a road car then I think you’ve reached the goal - a reliable, fast car you can enjoy. There are plenty of other areas you can focus on if you want to keep tinkering it including the interior, brakes, suspension set up. Personally I’d enjoy it over the summer as it is and then decide whether to take if further rather than make changes to the engine and spend the summer chasing problems.
Great idea to sell a conversion kit as plenty of cheap Boxsters out there.
If this is to be a road car then I think you’ve reached the goal - a reliable, fast car you can enjoy. There are plenty of other areas you can focus on if you want to keep tinkering it including the interior, brakes, suspension set up. Personally I’d enjoy it over the summer as it is and then decide whether to take if further rather than make changes to the engine and spend the summer chasing problems.
Great idea to sell a conversion kit as plenty of cheap Boxsters out there.
Heaveho said:
In my limited experience, torque is what makes for a nice road car. If you hit the limits of the gearbox at 300 ft/lbs, which in itself is a nice number, and you're already making 340 brake, and it drives well and reliably, is there much point in chasing numbers at the potential expense of reliability? Or would you make changes to the box specifically to allow it to handle more torque? I get the impression the engine itself is good for a fair bit more as is? Genuine question, interested to know where you see this finishing.
Power = Torque X RPM / 5252 - essentially you can make more power at the same torque if there is more opportunity (RPM) to do work, as power is a just a measure of work done. At the moment it makes 300ftlbs but drops off above 6200RPM, the engine will rev to 8250RPM quite happily so by adding some cam suitable for higher RPM use we can pick this up massively, even at the same boost pressure, without increasing the torque.... we just hold it up longer in the rev range. Ideally this will make 300ftlbs all the way past 8K RPM at which point it's making 500'ish or so near it doesn't matter. To support that we'll need an exhaust that flows much better so the extra gas from that extra work can exit and a way to keep the charge air cool as the pressure rise at more boost will result in more heat.
The engine was built with bits that have done 650bhp+ in other peoples engines with the aim of 500bhp reliably, as I'm not making big torque I don't need to worry too much about the main caps as the rod loadings are pretty low, they're just going round faster.
The gearbox should be okay at 8000RPM for short periods, it's only splash lubricated and not pressure fed bearings etc. so it won't like much more than that, but 8K is enough and I have a spare box on the way.
At the moment I'm feeling like a plan is fit the proper chargecooling bits and some W/MI and see what it makes at that (likely to pick up 15bhp or so from the lower charge temps), then make a nicer exhaust and test again before finally fitting some cams. Somewhere along the way I may decide the turbo is too big and more response / lower boost threshold is more important but we'll burn that bridge when we come to it
poppopbangbang said:
Heaveho said:
In my limited experience, torque is what makes for a nice road car. If you hit the limits of the gearbox at 300 ft/lbs, which in itself is a nice number, and you're already making 340 brake, and it drives well and reliably, is there much point in chasing numbers at the potential expense of reliability? Or would you make changes to the box specifically to allow it to handle more torque? I get the impression the engine itself is good for a fair bit more as is? Genuine question, interested to know where you see this finishing.
Power = Torque X RPM / 5252 - essentially you can make more power at the same torque if there is more opportunity (RPM) to do work, as power is a just a measure of work done. At the moment it makes 300ftlbs but drops off above 6200RPM, the engine will rev to 8250RPM quite happily so by adding some cam suitable for higher RPM use we can pick this up massively, even at the same boost pressure, without increasing the torque.... we just hold it up longer in the rev range. Ideally this will make 300ftlbs all the way past 8K RPM at which point it's making 500'ish or so near it doesn't matter. To support that we'll need an exhaust that flows much better so the extra gas from that extra work can exit and a way to keep the charge air cool as the pressure rise at more boost will result in more heat.
The engine was built with bits that have done 650bhp+ in other peoples engines with the aim of 500bhp reliably, as I'm not making big torque I don't need to worry too much about the main caps as the rod loadings are pretty low, they're just going round faster.
The gearbox should be okay at 8000RPM for short periods, it's only splash lubricated and not pressure fed bearings etc. so it won't like much more than that, but 8K is enough and I have a spare box on the way.
At the moment I'm feeling like a plan is fit the proper chargecooling bits and some W/MI and see what it makes at that (likely to pick up 15bhp or so from the lower charge temps), then make a nicer exhaust and test again before finally fitting some cams. Somewhere along the way I may decide the turbo is too big and more response / lower boost threshold is more important but we'll burn that bridge when we come to it
Escy said:
It looks good on the dyno.
I think the very well presented dyno cell helps too! Escy said:
What's the plan on the cams, can you run n/a ones or will you go aftermarket?
What are your IAT's like on the road?
I've left it with the guys at Badgers to come up with some options for cams, my engine is none VVT (because it won't package) and I think most of the cam profiles out there are designed around VVT. They've got so much experience with the 20V it's foolish not to try and benefit from it. What are your IAT's like on the road?
IAT's on the road are just about acceptable, at a bar they're high 40's/low 50's, at 1.4bar mid 50's. Pretty amazing given the charge cooler core is only 150mm long! It's pretty clear that I need to improve this for higher boost levels but package space is pretty tight, I only have about 400mm total length to fit something into but I'm not that limited on width so could do something short and wide.
There's nothing OTS that looks like it would be an improvement bar the Hanon coolers that are on the Mclaren P13 which are a pretty compatible shape, these seem to be decent on the tuned 570S cars I've seen that are doing about 320bhp a side at very sensible charge temps. That still might not be enough though as we get up towards the top of the turbos efficiency island though. Really it wants a big core in the intake manifold as that would package really nicely and provide a load of performance but to do that nicely is quite a bit of work, next best is to design something bespoke and get PWR to make it.
Does no VVT have much impact on the boost threshold?
Are you wanting to develop a solution to offer with the kit or just a one off for yourself?
As a one off, I wonder if something like this would be the answer? It would need a water jacket making for it but apparently Secan is as good as it gets. I'm sure you'll know better than me from your day job. Just thought I'd post it as it might be a bargain for the right person.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/305301915262?itmmeta=01...
Are you wanting to develop a solution to offer with the kit or just a one off for yourself?
As a one off, I wonder if something like this would be the answer? It would need a water jacket making for it but apparently Secan is as good as it gets. I'm sure you'll know better than me from your day job. Just thought I'd post it as it might be a bargain for the right person.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/305301915262?itmmeta=01...
poppopbangbang said:
Well I'm back from the dyno..... and I drove the car home too!
Super succesful day today, well aside from the run down to Badger 5 which took three hours rather than two due to traffic - but good chance to test the idle drive, cooling etc. out!
The key things I wanted to achieve were to run the car at gate pressure, ensure all was healthy and doing what it should with regards strategies, actuators and general engine bits and if it made the circa 300bhp I thought it should with a 1bar spring in the gate push on and see what stopped it. Along the way testing how well the boost control worked, if we had good mechanical function etc. etc.
Very happy that it nailed 296bhp at 1bar so that showed we were pretty much in the ballpark with regards the expected engine efficiency etc. The engine responded very well to 1.2bar picking up another 40bhp or so (and hitting the 300ftlb self imposed limit for gearbox happiness/survivability) but made very little additional power at 1.4bar and took a load of gate duty cycle to get it there. What that showed was the exhaust flow was insufficient to go much further, which isn't too surprising as the silencer on the car was designed for 200bhp and I hacked it up and welded some bigger tube into it.... it wasn't exactly meant to be on the back of this engine
Charge temps were as expected, i.e. pretty sporty at mid 50's at 1.4bar. Some of that is due to my terrible placement of the air filter, some is due to the coolant aleady being fairly warm and some is due to being on a dyno where everything is minging hot even with massive fans.
It's also pretty clear it will need some sportier cams to make 500bhp as it's over the top of the standard ones at 6K RPM and the torque curve is only really being held up by the boost at that point. We're only running a 7250RPM rev limit in the video as there's just no point using all 8K available.
But regardless of all that I'm over the moon . The big thing was nailing 300bhp at a bar (because if it does that then all the powers are there with some fairly basic additions/component changes) and getting a proper systems test done (especially on things like boost and knock control). It was also very nice that the car behaved absolutely impeccably, no misfires or system dramas, no boost pipes popping off, sensible engine coolant temps, good fuel pressure, great oil pressure, drove on and drove off and didn't even drop any fluids.
With all that said I need to have a bit of a think now about next steps. I could leave it as it is and have a bombproof car with similar power to weight as a 997 Turbo and just use and abuse it. I could make a new exhaust system, fit the proper PWR chargecooler rad with a larger resoirvoir to up the system thermal mass along with some water/meth and have a probably as bombproof car at a sniff over 400bhp or absolutely go bonkers - chuck some cams in it, go massive on the chargecooler core or build an inlet manifold with an integrated one, even more water/meth and send it to 8250RPM (or a bit more) with all the boost the turbo will make...... somewhere in the middle of that is probably the right option, but the right options power figure doesn't start with a 5 and I have a reputation to uphold
Huge thanks to the guys at Badger 5 too, they've been a great help on the engine build supplying various bits (coils, injectors, ECU, engine bearings etc.) and doing the calibration work today. They're also bloody nice chaps and a pleasure to spend some time chatting cars with
I’m normally in the ‘’you can’t have too much power category’. But on this occasion, at double the original power, I’d be inclined to leave it as for a bit, to work out if there is anything else that could be improved at the same time as making it good for 500bhp.Super succesful day today, well aside from the run down to Badger 5 which took three hours rather than two due to traffic - but good chance to test the idle drive, cooling etc. out!
The key things I wanted to achieve were to run the car at gate pressure, ensure all was healthy and doing what it should with regards strategies, actuators and general engine bits and if it made the circa 300bhp I thought it should with a 1bar spring in the gate push on and see what stopped it. Along the way testing how well the boost control worked, if we had good mechanical function etc. etc.
Very happy that it nailed 296bhp at 1bar so that showed we were pretty much in the ballpark with regards the expected engine efficiency etc. The engine responded very well to 1.2bar picking up another 40bhp or so (and hitting the 300ftlb self imposed limit for gearbox happiness/survivability) but made very little additional power at 1.4bar and took a load of gate duty cycle to get it there. What that showed was the exhaust flow was insufficient to go much further, which isn't too surprising as the silencer on the car was designed for 200bhp and I hacked it up and welded some bigger tube into it.... it wasn't exactly meant to be on the back of this engine
Charge temps were as expected, i.e. pretty sporty at mid 50's at 1.4bar. Some of that is due to my terrible placement of the air filter, some is due to the coolant aleady being fairly warm and some is due to being on a dyno where everything is minging hot even with massive fans.
It's also pretty clear it will need some sportier cams to make 500bhp as it's over the top of the standard ones at 6K RPM and the torque curve is only really being held up by the boost at that point. We're only running a 7250RPM rev limit in the video as there's just no point using all 8K available.
But regardless of all that I'm over the moon
. The big thing was nailing 300bhp at a bar (because if it does that then all the powers are there with some fairly basic additions/component changes) and getting a proper systems test done (especially on things like boost and knock control). It was also very nice that the car behaved absolutely impeccably, no misfires or system dramas, no boost pipes popping off, sensible engine coolant temps, good fuel pressure, great oil pressure, drove on and drove off and didn't even drop any fluids.With all that said I need to have a bit of a think now about next steps. I could leave it as it is and have a bombproof car with similar power to weight as a 997 Turbo and just use and abuse it. I could make a new exhaust system, fit the proper PWR chargecooler rad with a larger resoirvoir to up the system thermal mass along with some water/meth and have a probably as bombproof car at a sniff over 400bhp or absolutely go bonkers - chuck some cams in it, go massive on the chargecooler core or build an inlet manifold with an integrated one, even more water/meth and send it to 8250RPM (or a bit more) with all the boost the turbo will make...... somewhere in the middle of that is probably the right option, but the right options power figure doesn't start with a 5 and I have a reputation to uphold
Huge thanks to the guys at Badger 5 too, they've been a great help on the engine build supplying various bits (coils, injectors, ECU, engine bearings etc.) and doing the calibration work today. They're also bloody nice chaps and a pleasure to spend some time chatting cars with
Escy said:
Does no VVT have much impact on the boost threshold?
Are you wanting to develop a solution to offer with the kit or just a one off for yourself?
As a one off, I wonder if something like this would be the answer? It would need a water jacket making for it but apparently Secan is as good as it gets. I'm sure you'll know better than me from your day job. Just thought I'd post it as it might be a bargain for the right person.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/305301915262?itmmeta=01...
Yes it's about 500RPM down on where a VVT car could spool the turbo to a useful RPM, however I somewhat compensated for this in the engine build by putting all the valvetrain bits in there for a reliable 8K RPM so even with the higher boost threshold I would still have a very similar width of powerband.Are you wanting to develop a solution to offer with the kit or just a one off for yourself?
As a one off, I wonder if something like this would be the answer? It would need a water jacket making for it but apparently Secan is as good as it gets. I'm sure you'll know better than me from your day job. Just thought I'd post it as it might be a bargain for the right person.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/305301915262?itmmeta=01...
I'd like to do something which could be documented at the least and ideally supplied by a third party for those wanting to do this, PWR are keen to support so all I need to do is sort fit and volumetric etc. and they'll keep the drawings on file to make another should anyone want one. I'm tempted to acquire a P13 LH charge cooler assembly as the core is pretty much perfect and the end tank dimms are close enough to work well, it's a cheap way of testing the core size and I know the availability of a very similar performing core so a quick and dirty validation on that may be the order of the day.
Secan stuff is very, very good however. They supplied an awful lot of F1 teams over the years. These days a lot have gone to Microtube stuff like this - https://reactionengines.co.uk/products/charge-air-... the performance of this stuff is unreal but is far beyond the cost that one could justify for modified road cars. It's actual rocker scientist stuff
Megaflow said:
I’m normally in the ‘’you can’t have too much power category’. But on this occasion, at double the original power, I’d be inclined to leave it as for a bit, to work out if there is anything else that could be improved at the same time as making it good for 500bhp.
I'm occupying myself at the moment by tidying up all the bits that were done "to get it on the dyno" but it does seem a bit rude not to at least turn it up to 400 - especially as with the bits required to do that the engine will likely be in a more comfortable place than it is at the moment with regards post turbine back pressure, EGT etc. This evening I have clearanced the original engine cover ready to 3D scan so I can draw up some bond on blisters:
It doesn't actually need a lot, with the FPR being the main culprit of clash so a fairly easy job to make nice.
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