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It's been a couple of weeks since I took ownership of my 4S and I'm loving the experience so far. I would like some more power though and a little more noise under hard acceleration without it becoming an obnoxiously loud car. The car already has PSE and I love being able to turn it off and on as I please.
So what's the best bang for my buch to extract some power and a little more sound? IPD Plenum, GT3 TB, 200cel sports cat?
Last edited by Morpheus1870; Nov 9, 2025 at 01:06 PM.
Not too much you can do with the naturally aspirated motor, but there are a few things. I put Soul long tube street headers and a Softronics tune on my car. It did make a difference you can feel. Not huge, but I'd do it again. I've had my car at a few track days sponsored by the Porsche dealership, and everybody remarked how great my car sounded. I just had a look at the price of the Soul headers. Holy smokes, I bought mine 4 years ago and I swear they were half that price at the time!
Not too much you can do with the naturally aspirated motor, but there are a few things. I put Soul long tube street headers and a Softronics tune on my car. It did make a difference you can feel. Not huge, but I'd do it again. I've had my car at a few track days sponsored by the Porsche dealership, and everybody remarked how great my car sounded. I just had a look at the price of the Soul headers. Holy smokes, I bought mine 4 years ago and I swear they were half that price at the time!
With the headers how loud was the car with exhaust closed in Normal drive mode?
Fellow owner, mines is a 2015 manual. I can't tell you exactly what is the best bang for the buck because everything porsche is expensive, but I can walk you through the steps I went through to achieve what I believe is the perfect balance of aggressive sound, perfect tone, but yet quiet when needed.
I too thought PSE sounded good at first until I heard the soul exhaust for the 4S. So that was my first power mod including some BMC filters. This was worked for me at first but I still felt the car was missing something in terms of mid range power and sound.
Next mod I performed was the Soul headers. Again, this improved the mid range power and gave the car more volume with the exhaust. Now while the noise was great at WOT, I personally felt like that setup had too much drone for me in the lower RPM.
After that I came up on an AFE intake and I took a chance on it because it had a similar configuration to a stock GT3 intake. When I performed this mod I was also in the process of a GT3 bumper change so I had to ditch the Soul exhaust to go center exit. I did custom titanium piping from the cat back to create my center exhaust.
So today, my setup is AFE intake, Soul high flow cat headers, custom titanium pipping the rest of the way. Now I believe the car sounds AMAZING and almost GT3 ish. The power also feels good. I haven't done a dyne or draggy but it's not like this car is boosted, so you should expect minimal gains, but again it feels great. Only other performance mod I have planned is a set of dundon intake runners.
If I had to choose of these mods would be the best bang for your buck, I would go with a set of high flow headers. I hope this helps to give you some perspective.
ehhh, the ipd plenum always felt like snake oil to me. yes, it's technically better in that it flows more air, but we're talking about optimizing airflow via minimizing turbulence through an already large tube. bench testing will show that it flows some number of CFM better, but at the flow rates the engine produces? the differences are negligible.
as above, N/A mods cost cubic dollars to get any actual return on investment as far as power is concerned. the overwhelming majority of N/A mods offer sound, and you get that from exhaust. some people like putting a higher flow intake filter on as well, that's your call.
a tune will create the most noticeable change by way of altering the driving characteristics, but keep in mind the power increases are incremental.
It's been a couple of weeks since I took ownership of my 4S and I'm loving the experience so far. I would like some more power though and a little more noise under hard acceleration without it becoming an obnoxiously loud car. The car already has PSE and I love being able to turn it off and on as I please.
So what's the best bang for my buch to extract some power and a little more sound? IPD Plenum, GT3 TB, 200cel sports cat?
As stated above, with NA engine the ROI of all mods would be very minimal.
your perception of "lack of power" might change if you drive mostly in Sport mode so the throttle is more responsive & in PDK's manual mode so you're always in the right gear & thus always in the power (actually torque) band.
Lightweight wheels i picked up below for $1600 from Maxtera off Alibaba. 24 pounds back wheels 22 pounds front wheel. Shedding rotating mass is a huge gain in power to weight. 20 HP ??
And then finally not a performance gain per say but if you have a manual the GT4 short shifter for $250 is a must have. Also change to the GTS spec rear tire size of 305 for adding connection with terra firma.
Headers and tune is what you need, problem is they are expensive with not a lot of gain but you will feel it. Every Porsche I have owned gets headers and tune as first mod.
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4S 991.1 - power upgrades
