Howdy, I wanted to share my experience with the forum of working with Sam to take my 991.2 TTS to stage 5.
Background
I'm in my mid 40's and had taken a long break from fast cars and tuning. My previous tuning experience was with a MK4 Turbo Supra back in the 90s. I started getting the itch for a fun car last yr and had always loved the idea of an AWD turbo Porsche. I did some research and narrowed things down to either a 991.2 turbo s or a 992 C4s. I decided the C4s was plenty of car for me and found one at Porsche of N Houston. It was a Black 2020 992 C4S with the aerokit.



After purchasing, I immediately decided to add a JCR exhaust and a stage 2 tune from M Engineering. My hope was to get the car down in the mid 10s. It was running a pretty consistent 10.8(dragy) on stg2 93 map so we started toying with some Ethanol mixes. E40 was a nice boost of power so i settled on that. I sent off the TCU for the M Engineering PDK tune. I started testing the new setup and got the car into the mid 10.6 range. Unfortunately the clutch was getting some slippage at the end of 3rd gear and I had the PDK red fail message pop up a few times. I spoke with the guys at M.E and their suggestion was that I get a clutch relearn done. As I searched around for a shop that had the correct pwiz to get the relearn done, I decided that I was really starting to push the torque boundaries with the Carrera PDK. So, in my search for more speed (reliably) I decided after just a few short months I was going to sell the c4s and try and find a previous gen 991.2 turbo S. I ended up locating a beautiful chalk 2018 turbo S with 7k miles and pulled the trigger.


991.2
I knew through the forum that the search for a 991.2 tuner started and ended with Sam at ByDesign auto. I sent him an email asking questions about modifications and tuning. The new stage 5 VGT TIAL turbos were just showing up on rennlist cars and when I saw the quick spool and torque curve I knew that's what I wanted. Sam answered all of my questions...we must have texted back and forth 500 times in that first week. His customer service blew my mind. As a small business owner that emphasizes CS I really appreciated his approach. Luckily one of my employees had a tuning/mechanical back ground and I remembered just enough from my Supra days ...so we decided to tackle this job ourselves. We have a retail shop( we sell Thermal and Night Vision equip) in a mixed use building with 60 foot bays so we decided to install a 2 post lift. I ordered the following from Sam
BBS FI-R wheels
COBB AP
DO88 Y PIPE
IPD Plenum
DO88 intercoolers with hose kit
Kline Inconel (headers-DP-76mm exhaust)
Meth Kit
TIAL stg 5 (900 vgt) turbos




As I waited for the parts to arrive I started testing the Turbo S with DRAGY to get some baseline numbers. The best i could do stock was 10.87 with brand new p4s tires that didn't hook very well.


The first item to arrive from SAM was the COBB AP and we immediately loaded up some maps that really woke the car up. I have access to pump VP101 so Sam worked up a 97+ octane map for me and I ran a 10.16 with the car totally stock aside from the tune. I was a little shocked at what the stock turbo could do with race gas and Sam's magic. I needed some addition meat on the ground so i found some used forgeline wheels and grabbed some 888r 255 front and 315 rear as a second(track) set. Once all the bolt ons and turbos arrived we got to work. Sam helped us out whenever we ran into a question but honestly it was pretty straight forward. .... I couldn't imagine doing it without a lift though. Only real snag we hit was the meth controller had some bad wiring that had to be replaced.



Once everything was up and running I took the car out for some data logging and Sam tweaked the tunes. The car's power delivery was so smooth but still violent when the meth kicked in....hard to describe. The exhaust sounds amazing but I do sometimes miss the whistle at idle of the k04 from the 992. Once everything was dialed in i did some pulls on blacktop road(closed private road of course). Ran a 9.71 at 146 on a not so great surface.





I did a few 50-130 pulls and I noticed the *** end was breaking loose at 60mph so I told Sam. He suggested we get the car dyno'd just to make 100% sure the torque was in a happy place. We found an AWD dyno locally. It was a mustang that had a Dynojet mode. Unfortunately the operator did not want to do 4th gear pulls so we did the testing in 3rd which wasn't ideal. as we were getting some slippage. we tested a 93, 93 plus meth, and 100 plus meth map(this wasn't working on the 3rd gear dyno setup at all).




This past weekend I had my first opportunity to run the car on a prepped track. I went to the Import Face Off event in Ennis TX at the Texas Motorplex. I had no plans to compete in the event but they did allow test n tune runs between divisions. Unfortunately I could not get good 60 ft times. I tried the 888r all the way down @ 25psi but it didn't help much. I spoke to Sam and a few other racers and I think the prep was just not very good that day. The top end was fantastic though. I had a 5.03 and a 5.06 60-130 run and trapped 149.7. ...just wish it would have all come together on the traction too. Trap speed would have been down a little had it hooked on the 60 ft but was still pretty amazed at that #.




SLIP FROM BEST 1/4 run



All in all I'm very happy with the Stage 5 and Sam is a fantastic guy to work with.

 

Great story and beautiful car! Sam seems like the way to go. I used ESmotors for my tune because of the reputation they have with these cars but am second guessing myself hearing all the Sam story's!

 

wow what a back half!! congrats and beautiful car.

 

Awesome!
Upgrade your brake fluid to SRF, put on a set of Ferodo pads and sign up for a track day next! Sam's put forth some good tunes for track driving.
These cars are monsters, just driving in a straight for a handful of seconds is a waste of a car (and driver)!

 

Amazing. Exactly what I will get to one day. I got all of that done besides the meth/turbos which will come sooner or later. Right now on my "stage 3+" I'm enjoying it and get pretty consistent 10.2-10.3s on the draggy on the 21" HREs.

 

Great mod list! I have the same parts except for stock turbos.

 

Awesome post bud and I am having a great time working with you! Def room for improvement with good prep. If the prep is not decent it can actually be worse than the street as you can see. But more fun to come! A few other recent Stage5's are going to reach out to you for some sharing

 

Thank you for sharing

 

I'll get the traction figured out...the exciting thing is trapping almost 150. That's pretty amazing!

 

What could this car do without the meth kit?

 

There is no need to second guess. Both equally as good. Catering for each customer's need. All depends on what you want out of the car and how you drive it.
I can say so because I run ES Motors ES800R kit, which is equivalent to Bydesign Stage 4, mine is a 991.1

Numbers are as good, and reliable too.
Sam is a great tuner, enough greats results as proof of the pudding, and so is ES Motors.

 

On just pump a full Stage5 can achieve low 10's or even high 9's at 140+ with 60-130 in teh 5's to give you an idea. More with race fuel.

 

low 10s on pump is impressive!

Is there a reason why so many people with 991s go with meth? I just feel like every other turbo platform I've been part of have knowledge of (evos, wrx, 996tt, etc) there was always a split in opinions that meth wasn't bad per se but alot didn't like it due to the potential of it failing or the kits not being designed properly and it wasnt being distributed evenly to all cylinders

Are these kits plummed directly into the intake manifold runners?

Is it possible to have failsafes built into the stock ECU incase the meth system fails?

Sorry if im de-railing..just curious.

 

Those are great questions. The honest answer is that these cars generate a lot of heat as the turbo chargers are pretty small. Even when you go with a full frame turbo or something like our Stage5 that has really high efficiency (“By Design” the Stage5 is as efficient as a full frame XR on pump gas!) the next obstacle After intake, temperature and octane is fuel capacity. So in a lot of cases, it is being used as supplemental fuel. The risk factor goes up as you push further down that path. But of course it can be done in so many different ways with so many different strategies to keep safety in place. Even at the really high horsepower levels. Lots of experience has made it pretty safe.

I will say this and it may help a lot. Let’s get a pump fuel that will make over 700 hp to the wheels, pretty conservatively and efficiently… Without any changes just turning methanol on can give you up to 50 extra horsepower. That’s the safest way to do it

 

That is C O O L