Wondering what I would be up against, cost/benefits, were I to attempt to add an OEM sport chrono timer to my car?
Anyone gone down this path?

 

A few on this board have done the Porsche supplied upgrade. You get the software, a button, but no wart. It also gives you some new features in PCM to configure door locks and such. Do some searches on this:

http://www.suncoastparts.com/product/9X7SM.html

Peace
Bruce in Philly

 

As Bruce mentions, you don't get the physical clock this way, but the timer does show up in the center LCD display. In a 997.1 non-Turbo or non-Tiptronic, it doesn't make any real performance-related difference except for the psychological difference of the faster throttle map. In Turbos it allows over boost. I 997.1 Tiptronics and 997.2 PDKs, there are real performance-related advantages related to shift points. In all cases you do get the extra convenience features Bruce brought up as described on the Suncoast page.

BTW, you can buy the same upgrade directly from the dealer without going through Suncoast, although an advantage of Suncoast is that they do bundle the software with the correct switch hardware for you rather than having the dealer do it. The dealer has to be involved in any case to do the actual software upgrade.

Also FYI: With the manual transmission car, switching back and forth from sport to non-sport threw my brain/foot off when launching the car under normal driving. The change in throttle response would cause me to slightly over-rev and over-slip the clutch when pulling away when I first changed to sport. After being in a sport for a while, switching it off would result in my bogging down on launch until my brain readjusted. To get rid of this I would always push Sport every time I started the car which gets annoying after a while (it resets itself on power-off). When I would forget, I'd be more likely to bog the car down. I even stalled it twice this way at inconvenient times out on the road at a stop light.

Unless you have extra money laying around you don't know what to do with or one of the convenience features is really important for you, I personally can't suggest spending the money since there is no real performance improvement in a 997.1 and the problems I just described with launch get frustrating.