Hello all,

Newbie here so well met!!

I have a 997 Carrera 2S (Tiptronic) with about 19.000km on it. I've been looking into performace upgrades (power kits). What's everyones opinions on this? My main concern is on the topic of reliability in the long run. I know that Porsche even offers a power kit of their own so it would seem that there shouldn't really be any issues but I would like to know peoples experience with this.Another (albeit secondary) concern is will the carstolerance for everydaydriving be hampered. I live in Athens Greece and we get some very hot summers here...plus downtown Athens can get very congested!

Any opinions on the speedart stuff? I know they have a kit that can boost hp to 405! Sounds sweet!

Cheers,

Mike

 

Porsche's power kit costs a lot but works well, and it has some sort of warranty attached, so that is a plus. But it is a lot of money for not a whole lot of additional power and most of that at higher RPMs.

Low end torque is what makes a car more powerful in day to day driving, and supercharger kits provide that in abundance (plus added power at the top). These tend to increase the stress on all components but I've had good luck with reasonable (15-20%) increases on a variety of cars. That said, I'm keeping my 996 3.6 liter Carrera stock (I want to have one completely stock, daily driver car around here) even though it is not really very powerful. You probably have roughly the same performance as mine (the added power of the base 997 cancelled out by the slightly greater weight). A Scr will change the whole character of the car and if not overdone will probably be pretty reliability.

 

Thank you Lee! Just one more question me not being technically knowledgable. When you say superchargers stress components more is that as opposed to power kits that don't go the supercharger route?

Cheers,

 

My point is this: what twists or tears apart an engine is not horsepower, per see, but torque -- greater twisting force inside the engine. Most head-and-cam kits like Porsche's own performance upgrade increase the engines torque only modestly. They produce additional HP mostly through moving the torque peak up higher but still within the stock permissible rev range or only a bit higher. Remember, HP = torque times RPM, so keeping torque at the same level but raising the RPM it's at by 10% adds 10% HP but no added stress on components. This is what most heads and can kits do. Thus, kits like that really don't put that much added stress on rods and pistons.
by contrast a SCR adds lots of additional torque across the entire torque range, turbos add torque up top. Either way the engine gains HP and torque (and feels much better to drive than a heads-and-can modified car) but the rods, crank, gears, etc., have more stress (twisting force) going through them, and thus are more likely to fail.

 

Thanks again Lee,

It looks like it's a choice between power that is more evenly spread out and thus more easily/frequently accesible but with added stress in the case of the supercharger and power that is consentrated in a higher rev range but with less stress in the case of head and cam kits. I'll have to give that some thought. On the one hand I love driving at high rpm's. Even if I could be in 3rd gear on a bend I'd rather be in 2nd because it's more exciting and I also feel like I have more controll over the car that way. On the other hand I see your point that day to day driving is more about low end torque. Compromises...Maybe I should just sell it and get the GT3 or the Turbo :-))) Anyway, thanks again for the input. Much appreciated!

Cheers,

Mike