boost feen

Looks extremely clean, not too many 968's out there can claim this low of miles. Especially M030 turbo conversions. I love the painted to match 993 sport seats with lower grey centers. If you dont agree with someone elses post you should bite your tongue and laugh, not act like an idiot and open your mouth?

V2Rocket

that car looks fabulous. i think i may have seen it around before. do you live near the tennis club at LJ shores?

Porsche Fan

Indeed, the software development was done by Neil of Apex Speed Technologies, using a Vi-PEC ECU.

The result is flawless operation from cold start to any and all road conditions.

The idle quality is rock steady and flawless (even with the AC cycling on/off).

Wonderful, refined and deeply satisfying performance.

Startlingly fast!!!

Fox944

rader's 968's have all been awesome/pristine/low mileage example. Some of the finest 968's have been in your Hands. two thumbs up.

Neel Apex

My company did the electronics side of the conversion, with Marc Norris at Bavarian Workshop doing the mechanical. It was the basis for the 944/968 plug & play ECU kits we now do. We did the dyno work at 911 Design in Montclaire, CA. I haven't driven any other 968 turbos, but I think anyone who drives this car will find it nearly flawless.

A lot of work went into it. When we first got involved, it had a lot of problems and a reflashed stock ECU. We built a "plug & play" engine management system using a Vi-PEC V88 ECU. Our lead technician Alex Weissinger spent many, many hours working out how to package the various electrical components in the stock location using all the stock harnessing. You could conceivably plug a stock ECU back into it. The car also features a wideband lambda kit and some power control relays all packaged on where the stock ECU resided.

Dozens of hours went into the tuning and setup for this car and the results show. I believe the car runs better than if Porsche had done it from the factory, simply because we are using an ECU far more capable than what was available when the car was built. The system includes:

• Fully Sequntial Fuel & Spark Control.
• Wideband Closed-Loop Lambda mixture control.
• Closed-loop knock control.
• Closed-loop boost control.
• Closed-loop idle air control with A/C compensation.
• 2MB of data logging continuously recording critical functions.
• Comprehensive diagnostics of all sensors and actuators using the stock "check engine" light with trouble codes decodable by number of flashes.
• Fuel, Spark and boost compensations for ambient and running conditions.

The turbo is quick to spool, which actually made the boost control a challenge as it wanted to overboost when spooling up around 3500RPM. Some careful feed-forward boost tables fixed this. The car is very strong and linear for a turbo car. I don't keep dyno charts but remember we tuned it for around 320hp/340tq at the rear wheels on a Dynapak. This was on a 104 degree day using pump gas and only 1 bar of boost. The car could be tuned for more but our goal was drive-ability and reliability. If an eventual buyer is interested in power we can raise the boost target. It would be easy to remap it for higher octane fuel, and we could add a map switch so the owner can turn up the wick when they want. Still, considering the factory Turbo RS was rated at 337 crank, I think this is pretty stout.

As probably the only person who has driven this car more than its owner, I can tell you that the experience is brilliant. Part of our final shakedown was for me to drive the car for 3 days in Southern California this summer. The very last day I took it from the Valley to Montclair for some final dyno numbers, then down to Temecula where we were testing with Yamaha's Supercross team. From there we drove to Orange County to visit with some BMW customers then back to Santa Monica. All in all, we did over 300 miles around So Cal in and out of the mountains. Temps were consistently over 100. There was a lot of sitting in traffic jams. I took many opportunities to floor it - the way this car pulled from around 3k to redline will put a smile on anyone's face. There's no lag, just great turbo noises and forward thrust. The car is comfortable, easy to drive and has no compromises. Fuel economy was in the mid-twenties on the highway. The A/C worked great. The stereo sounded brilliant. The car was tight, rattle free and a joy to drive in ways that you don't get from today's heavy, overstuffed cars. I would choose this over a modern E92 M3 or similar small GT any day.

I'll tell you what it isn't - Its not a track car. You could use it to get groceries every day. Its not tempermental - it starts perfectly and drives easily. Its not a kit car - you would be hard pressed to realize it didn't come from the factory like this. If there's one giveaway, its an 1100 RPM idle. It can idle around 700 if one wants it that way, but 1100 is just a sweet spot. The car launches easily, doesn't creep to fast in gear and just seems happy there. If someone is really a stickler for a lower idle it could be reprogrammed but I think its a mistake. There's something about the cams and exhaust back pressure at idle that make 1100 just work.

I have not been compensated in any way for this post; I don't even know the seller except for a brief conversation where I told him the brand of ECU and he told me to search Rennlist for this thread. I just really like this car. If you want to look us up, google "apex speed technology" to see the kind of work we do. In 2010, our work was featured in European Car, Eurotuner, Performance BMW, Street Rodder, and on the Discovery Channel. We rarely do street cars like this but I really fell for this one. I'd buy it if I could convince myself and the wife that what I really need is a bright red Porsche. Not likely though; we've got a 7 week old baby; for some reason I can't even fit all my crap in our A4 Avant right now!

Here are links to some facebook posts I made about the car:

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fb...2.109569965801

http://www.facebook.com/apexspeedtec...d=109569965801

Feel free to contact us with any questions you have about this or any other projects we've done.

Kind Regards,

Neel Vasavada
President, Apex Speed Technology

JDS968

Neel -

Thanks for sharing your first-hand information about the car! It looks beautiful. It's not exactly the way I'd build a 968, but it looks and sounds like it IS exactly the way Porsche would build a turbocharged 968 if they had today's technology available 15 years ago.

I'm curious about two components, if you don't mind sharing.

First, which turbocharger did you choose?

Second, what led you to choose the Vi-PEC as compared to other standalone ECU options, such as Link or MoTeC?

Again, thank you!

Neel Apex

I didn't. The turbo was on the car when it came to me.

We're dealers for more brands of ECUs than anyone in the US including Cosworth/Pectel, MOTEC, AEM, Vi-PEC, GET and more. Some of the reason we chose the V88 was:

1. Flexibility. Their software allows us to do a lot with I/O configurability which is needed for a seemless stock replacement.

2. Value - the Vi-PEC has features equal to ECU's twice its price.

3. Power - the Vi-PEC has excellent processing, logging and control strategies that, in practice, are very noticable compared to some other ECUs.

The Link and Vi-PEC share hardware, but there are software differences and support that make the Vi-PEC a better ECU. We've done some development work for them, which allows us to get top level support and service.

Kind Regards,

Neel

RajDatta

Thanks Neel for sharing. Sounds like you guys did the tuning while someone else built the engine. To be honest, it is an apples to oranges, when comparing this to a turboRS. 968 turboRS was a homologation special, limited in how much HP it made. If you still want to compare, how does your torque compare to the RS? RS used an 8 valve head, very low compression pistons (for today's standards) and used everything from their parts bin to build them. I am sure, given the same spec's, Porsche would have done very well.
Also, for comparisons, I also own a 968 turbo, but it is a replica, so it uses a 2 valve head. I am using a factory ECU (from a 951), my car idles at 1100rpm and it makes 365rwhp/360ft/lb of torque on 1.1 bar boost on a Dynapack. I spent some serious $$ tuning and the results show. Most 16 valve engines in our cars see close to, if not atleast 400rwhp.
Regards.
Raj

Porsche Fan

took fresh pics today :]

Neel Apex

I pulled up my notes so I have some more detals:

The car recorded a 412hp run at 1.4bar boost at an earlier dyno session with race fuel (didn't note what it was, guessing it was grand-am spec Sonoco 100) when the ambient temps were in the 70's and we had cooling straight to the intercooler. We had issues with boost pluming popping off then.

The car made 384 at 1.4 bar on the day we dynoed it, when ambient air temp was 104F. The dyno did not have an intercooler fan so there was no forced air. The dyno was not in a cell with air extraction, it was at the end of a garage with the back of the car poking out the door. This is a typical loss for these kinds of ambient conditions.

With 91 octane and the high intake air temps, the detonation sensors were picking up lots of activity on back to back runs. Since the owner lived in The Valley where traffic and high-temps are common, we brought the boost down to where it would do multiple pulls without detecting any detonation. This was especially important since the turbo has a tendancy to spool quicker than the wastegate can react. The benefit of this is that the car has impressive drivability with quick turbo response.

We are always conservative with street cars when we see this kind of turbo behavior; it started when we did some Nobels. In trying to get quick spool up, they would overboost quite a bit on transient operation. In order to prevent that, careful boost control setup, knock detection and ignition correction for wastegate error was required. In the case of the Nobel M400's, they were great on the street and on the dyno, but would blow up after only a few sessions on the track. Data logging revealed this overboost problem; part of the solution was to have some feed-forward in the boost control strategy and also to run conservative boost targets. We saw signs of this on the 968 and applied some of the same lessons. This 968 is much better than those M400's - overboost was limited to 0.3bar, but with street cars in the hands of non-technical owners, you can't leave these sorts of things to chance.

So what I'm saying is if I've got a customer who knows their tuning, is guaranteed to run the right fuel and be mindful of dangerous situations (don't wood it at 3000 RPM the row through 3 gears to redline on a 100 degree day when you've been sitting in traffic for an hour with the AC on) then we can tune this thing to the moon. In this situation, that wasn't the goal - ultimate drivability and reliability was.

So that's another thing for a buyer to consider - this car is EXCELLENT as it is, and if you want to build it into a 450+hp beast, you'll likely be able to get there easily!

-Neel

Porsche Fan

more pics:

Porsche Fan

wheel pics:

boost feen

Thats a pristine CA car if I say so myself! Nothing needed there.

Darwantae951

I could see it commanding a hearty price if it were still 100% original, but it isn't. I understand the amount of work that goes into putting something like this together, I'm doing something similar myself. Unfortunately, if I were to sell my car (a limited production 944 Turbo model) after I were done, I would not get anywhere near 40K even tho I have over that invested in it. Good luck withyour sale, I hope you get as close t, if not right on, your askng price, but you may be waiting a while.

Gorgeous car BTW, and a very clean install.

Tom M'Guinn

How would one get that smogged in California?