As many of you know I have been working on offering a dual program ECU for the 993TT. The below picture shows a completed production ECU fitted with a modified circuit board. Very few Tuners can reprogram a '96 ECU and still retain full control of all the intended functions of the ECU, like boost control or OBD2 functions. The '96 ECU is a dual chip ECU which means that the memory and proccessor is split into seperate chips, the end result is that the ECU actually can handle more processes faster and quicker. The far left hand Intel chip that houses the MAP's is extremely rare, and only a few people have these jewels.. The sad thing is they can only be programmed once, and in order to change your mapping you would need another chip. We are not talking about $100 chips but $1,000 plus and really it depends on who needs them and how much you want to pay for them.

The solution is not new, but getting the product made has taken some time and money. Since the stock Intel chip is soldered to the main board, the proceedure now is to install a chipset socket. A circuit board now contains the new replaceable/reprogrammable chip, encryption safeguards, and dual mapping capabilities. It is now possible to provide a customer with multiple maps based on fuel grades and power outputs.. And, at the same time, I now have the ability to offer a MAP based program vs MAF based. In short we can now replace the Mass Airflow Sensor, and run a Manifold Air Pressure, by doing this we can now run more air into this engine without the restrictions of the current MAF.

For myself, I can now run different turbocharger combinations, camshaft changes, Intercoolers, exhaust changes on my dyno and email the raw data to Guenter and he can send me the new file. Burn the inexpensive chip and retest.. For those that ask, this is not a piggy back system.

As usual, I am slowly working on making these feature come to pass. The cart is definately out in front of the horse, but progress is solid and forth coming..

 

 

Exciting news... MAP instead of MAF? Fabulous.
What impact does this have on the 97/98 ECU - will you be offering MAP modifications for these in future also?

 

Kevin, with what you have done here, do you foresee a potential to get better HP and or performance gain with this improvement w/o doing those major upgrades to the turbos & engine ?

If I read this correctly, it provides increases to you guys that have modified/upgraded components, what about us stock guys, will it apply.........?

 

MAP or MAF, the key to real, sustained power above the 540 level is intercooling - Kevin knows this, he has seen it first hand. I am looking forward to following his journey

 

VerySideways, the '97 ECU is basically a '96 with internal jumpers/trace wires to delete the far left side chip. With that said, one could use a '96 ECU or for someone that wanted to keep there stock ECU case the '96 board can be installed. That is why I asked people to sell me there '96 ECU's so that I could have spare units.. The other option is to sell your '97 ECU for a premium and pick up a '96.. Like everything else, if there is a demand for it, I can could have it done, but there are other widgets that need to get finished.

Tom, for myself, I feel that Stage 1 and my Stage 2 packages are for individuals that basically want to keep a "stock" engine. They do not want to replace the camshafts and rods.. However, as time goes on, many individual are having to open there engines up and replace valve-guides and address other issues. In order for me to release larger turbo combinations, camshaft packages, and so forth, this was the gateway that needed to be explored. However, for a person that had a "stock" engine and was tracking his car is a stock class, a specific Tune based on high octane fuel, higher boost settings, and higher timing could now be obtained.. I must add that there is "risk" with that tune. In the end it is a give and take.. Sooner or later, you will have to get into your engine and strengthen it..

TB, is correct.. This is one of my nightmares.. I have a request.. Can any one secure the Secan aircraft cooler cores? A new one, a wrecked one. I have a stack of engineering data sheet comparing various manufactures cores.. I know that Jean has some specific info, but I need to get to the source.. We need to see the actual engineering data of each core.. Forget for a minute the Secan cooler or design.. We need to step back and look at the performance numbers of the actual cores. It would be foolish to rule in or out anything with out this data. This would be a interesting project for all of us to undertake..

 

Kevin
There is one available second hand for around $17K US - apparently the new price is going up and they will cost $29K US Absolutely mad money and all the more reason for studying the cores to find out why they are so expensive !

 

Kevin
as TB mentioned, there was one for around $17k, which is prohibitively expensive IMO other than for professional racing, I am not sure it is still out there for sale.
Secan has been bought by a US company a few years back, it is still run independently, however reports to the US mother company (hint). My opinion is that Secan is not the only company that can give you what you need, there are a few other aerospace related companies that can do a great job as well, none have really ventured into automotive related field (very few did in fact), and I expect that the result will not be too different (neither price most probably because of the R&D involved to make them fit for automobiles).

 

I must be missing something. Don't FVD and protomotive have larger intercoolers that I suppose don't work better but are bigger than the stock one? Just what exactly is so special about the secan and why can't it be duplicated? If it's for an aircraft it's probably designed with a large safety margin to keep failures to a minimum hence it's high cost. Our engines might get by with something less durable. I'm sure there are engineering students that'd think this would make a great senior project.

 

Acropora
Secan is one of the leading R&D and engineering firms in the world. They are component providers for a lot of the aerospace components (not only cooling) as well as all sorts of military applications and Columbia for instance. No wonder some F1 teams, many racing houses (Porsche and other) and the late Cadillac LMP02 use their cores for instance.
It is not about size, although they are huge (they fill the full bay on a 993TT for instance), but rather about the engineering design, materials used and so many other things. Some other builders in the industry use similar cores, the Protomotive cores are the same as some that are used in helicopters, and have a very similar core design, albeit not the exact same materials and flow characteristics I guess. If they could be easily reproduced, many mutli-billion dollar companies in the armament business would replicate them. Only a handful of premium engineers and sophisticated testing systems can give such quality.

 

Jean's answer is very comprehensive. I would just add that as I understood it, the cores are not just sitting on the shelf from some generic aircraft application.
Porsche commissioned Secan to design them from scratch for the GT2 EVO application and one can imagine that it was a serious engineering project.

Somebody on here must be able to contact with them to find out more exactly what makes them so good.
RS Tuning got them to make their new intercoolers for the 996tt which appear to be equally as effective (they were fitted to the 612hp EDO car which holds the Ring "production car" record) and worth 40-50hp on an RS modified 996tt - unfortunately as I have indicated before getting ANY info out of RS is near impossible

 

So who builds the protomotive units and do they work? Clearly todd's engines put out lots of hp so are they just not able to do so for prolonged periods of time due to the intercooling issue? From what I'd read in the past the stock IC was second only to the secan one. Having been a General Dynamics/Atomics mechanical engineer in a former life I must say this intercooler design is no where near as daunting as say engine internal component design.

 

Acropora
You seem much better suited to answer these questions, I am far from being an engineer , keep in mind that this intercooler is almost as expensive as our TT engines, and when Mirage war planes, Airbus, Boeing and space shuttles among dozen of others choose to use them, I would say there must be something different in them? I am just guessing, I also know that they use sophisticated alloys and not simple aluminum.

As far as Protomotive, I know who sells the cores but I am not in a position to disclose it even though it might not be a secret to many people here, I will be more than happy to put you in contact with Todd, I hope you understand.
The readings that I have seen on my engine dyno run logs across the RPM and boost range seem outstanding, but I have no proof to say that they are sustainable HP under load and driving conditions. Efficiency numbers are in the 90s under those particular conditions. Whatever I have tested so far is very good, the car holds its power very good, even in our very harsh temperature conditions, nor after a few laps on the 'Ring. I would most probably not feel a drop of 50hp if it happens. I also don't have KKK turbos, and have a very efficient engine running decent levels of boost.
I am sure that under racing conditions things will be substantially different, under RS testing conditions as well most likely, how much less I really don't know, it held up pretty well on Manthey's MAHA dyno runs.
I will be testing more thoroughly soon with accurate datalogging and hopefully be able tpo share some more.
Kevin sorry for the hijack.

 

So does this mean that there is no beniffits of a -97 ECU

 

No benifit with the '97.. The '96 can be tuned..