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This has actually been done a number of times (maybe 10 or so), with me being one of them about 18 months ago. I put a TT deck-lid with functioning active Aero on my wife's 2005 C2S. I also did Vorsteiner Front & Rear bumpers and GT3 wheels to round out the more aaggressive look that the TT rear spoiler creates. You'd remember seeing photos of this car, as it's a pink pearl. This is actually a very simple conversion with not very many parts needed, providing the TT decklid is purchased complete (wiring harness, brake light, hydraulics, & cooling fan).
You need to replace the stock airbox with either an EVOMS or K&N one as you need room for the hydraulics to come down both sides of the engine compartment and the factory C2S airbox takes up the full width. I tried the K&N first but didn't like the design with a plastic hose and the location of the filter, which is right in the middle of the engine compartment, yet the air inlets are on both sides. The EVOMS intake is a much better design and higher quality. The pipe the air filter clamps onto is metal so you can get it nice & tight. It also has 2 air inlets - one near the factory C2S location on the left and a 2nd one on the right where the air filter is located. I have aa Fabspeed J-Pipe on my car and test fit thathat one too, but it was too close to the cooling fan for my taste.
You need the 997TT wiring harness and it's a direct fit to the factory connector in the engine bay of the C2S. The other ends go to the hydraulic pump, the engine bay light, the 3rd brake light, and the cooling fan. You also need the thin 3rd brake light that goes in the upper wing of the decklid and you need the engine bay fan for a turbo unless you want to jury-rig a mount to use your old C2S fan, but the mounts are different so I'd just buy the turbo fan and keep it simple and easy.
Plugging in the TT wiring harness will automatically defeat the 3rd brake light just below the rear window on the C2S and enable the one in the upper wing. You have 3 options regarding the original 3rd light - you can replace that piece that holds the light with that from a turbo, you can have your body shop paint over it since it's such a subtle hump, or you can just leave it in there since it's smoked in color and not all that noticeable, which is what we did. Unless your car previously had a fixed rear wing setup, like the factory Aero Kit, you don't have to do any coding when installing the TT decklid, it will go up at 75-77 MPH and retract at 40 MPH automatically, just like the factory portion. It will also go up with higher temperatures in the engine bay to try and scoop more air like that factory wing, but that won't really do anything. I mention it because you'll see it up in your mirrors sometimes during the summer before you've reached the lift speed and you didn't press the spoiler button on the dash, which will still allow you manual control over the wing position.
Here are a few pics. I liked the active-aero of the TT wing on my wife's car so much, I fabricated a way to make the normally fixed bi-plane wing on my RUF active Aero too - that was a much more complex installation.
Good luck with your project and let me know if I can help with any questions.
Last edited by Petza914; 10-12-2014 at 11:50 AM.
Reason: wrong photo
Thanks for chiming in Petza! I could find evidence that it had been done and that encouraged me to go for it, but I couldn't find the details so I decided to shoot for a DIY at the end of this so that it would simplify the task for others.
With the wing I got (from a 2010 Turbo) several of the parts were missing and the wiring harness connector was damaged enough it was unusable so I've ended up spending a little over $500 in additional parts. I'm not sure why this was but the several of the pins in the harness were out of their socket and damaged and the some of the holes in the plastic connector were squished (see photo). It appears that someone used needle nose pliers aggressively trying to pull the internal connector out of its housing. Fortunately the cost to buy a new harness wasn't too absurd.
As you recommended I already have the new fan and bolts for it in hand. I installed the Fabspeed dual cone intake last week in preparation for this to allow room for the hydraulics. The lid came with the plastic air ducts that fit up under the lid and it looks like they will dump air directly on top the the Fabspeed's cones so that is a fortunate coincidence.
I've reached most of the same conclusions you did but I did not know that it would automatically adapt to the center brake light change. I was thinking that would have to be the one thing I was going to have to rig something up for. The new version of the spoiler-mounted brake light is on order and should come with the improved spring clips. Thanks also for the info on the existing brake light. Since I have the Turbo panel that deletes the space for the light I am removing the existing light and I certainly hope that you are right and the car won't throw a code for it. If it does, I plan on a adding a properly calculated load resistor to take care of it as my observations with a borrowed Durametric Pro doesn't show a way to kill that one.
I also opted to buy the proper left hinge (which includes the upper mount point for the left lid-support cylinder not present on non-Turbos) , the lower mount point, and both of the heavier duty support cylinders to properly support the additional weight when the lid is raised. There are a few other miscellaneous things as well, I'll detail that in the DIY.
Your cars certainly look great! Interestingly enough, I was also leaning towards going with a 911S logo for the new tail and even "photoshopped" up what it would look like. I'm still trying to decide if I should go with the red S (I know there are a lot of opinions about this too), but I'm thinking it works nicely as a complement to the red calipers adding another small hint of red on the car. See my mock ups below. I've played with the idea of lowering the S a tad as well, more like the 4S does it. What do you guys think? (BTW, I think I did a pretty good job of editing out the Carrera S logo in the photo... if I do say so myself!).
Thanks again for the help Petza... I'll be back in touch if I run into any roadblocks.
If you haven't already installed the Fabspeed Y-Pipe, I would return it and get the EVOMS intake I love the Fabspeed stuff and have their complete exhaust on my RUF car and their J-Pipe intake, which is the older version. I waited a year for the Y-Pipe version to become available and tried to install it on my car after doing the active-aero project on my deck-lid and what you're going to find is that it's not going to work well. If you look at the attached photo, you'll see where I had to cut both the intake pipes down to make the filters stop short of where the hydraulics for the spoiler come down into the engine bay. The left one only loses about 1" so it looks and works fine, but you have to cut the right side pipe so short it doesn't allow that filter to sit nice and straight on the pipe, and will likely effect the way the air enters the intake. My car runs great with the J-Pipe and did not run well with the Y-Pipe. I'm not sure if it's because it's modded with a supercharger and the extra air from two inlets couldn't be compensated for with fuel delivery or if it's because the right side filter had such an angle to it that it created turbulence around the MAF, but it would stumble around 2,000 RPM, didn't pull nearly as strong at the top, and also would throw codes once I installed the Y-Pipe. I even used Durametric to reset the Control Module maps to see if the car just needed to readjust itself, but it wouldn't. I'm sure the Y-Pipe works perfectly in a stock setup, but you could end up making an $800 mistake if you cut the pipes and have the same issue I did. When I did my planning calculations, I took into account the size of the filters on my J-Pipe setup, but the Y-Pipe comes with larger filters both in length and mounting diameter so you can't just purchase 2 of the older style filters and use them either. No modifications at all had to be done to the EVOMS intake for it to work in my wife's car.
You won't get a code once you remove the panel with the current 3rd brake light in it. The reason is that with the proper wiring harness for the TT decklid that pin out in the car harness goes to a wire in the decklid harness that goes to the light it the upper wing so the car doesn't know the panel with the light in it is even there.
The left hinge will make it look more like the Turbos, but is really unnecessary, as the decklid holds itself up just fine with the single sided hinge from the C2S. I actually think the stock C2S decklid may be heavier than the TT one.
The Fabspeed intake on my 997.2 is a shaped a bit differently than yours and is more centered on the engine. It measures only 22.5 inches end to end so I think it is narrower than yours. My earlier measurements showed me it would fit or be very close to a fit, but I forget the exact numbers and I don't have the lid here (it's at the paint shop) to take measurements of the distance between the hydraulic cylinders to verify exactly how much space there is. If worse comes to worse, I have around two inches of straight pipe remaining on the shorter side to provide extra clearance if I need it. I'm pretty sure the shape difference in mine will save me the problems you ran into (see photo below). Thanks for the warning though... it'll be good advice for 997.1 owners especially.
I'll be sure to check the weight of the lids and will return the new hinge and cylinders if I don't need them, saving roughly $150 after restocking fee. Thanks for the heads up on that, I was thinking it was a must-have and wouldn't have bothered to check otherwise. Fantastic news on the brake light!
Distance between the hydraulic assemblies on both my cars is 25.75" so with the .2 intake width of 22.5" you should be OK, even if it's not designed to be exactly centered in the engine bay. The symmetry of the Year intake will look great in the engine bay.
Distance between the hydraulic assemblies on both my cars is 25.75" so with the .2 intake width of 22.5" you should be OK, even if it's not designed to be exactly centered in the engine bay. The symmetry of the Year intake will look great in the engine bay.
Cool! I really appreciate you taking the time to check the distance.
FYI I just went with the red S badge on my 997 (991 style). Attached are a couple quick cell phone photos... I have much better ones coming, just need to upload the photos from the digital camera.
I went with the S mounted level, rather than higher or lower.
Thanks for posting that! It looks really good and looks correct in a line. I'm considering a black 911 to play with all of the black/red on other parts of my car. I already have a black/silver hood badge, wheel centers, and the GTS PSE tips with the black surround.
Here's an update. I went to the paint shop this morning and they had a couple of different paint samples for me to look at and we compared them to the paint on the car. It turns out that our paints can be obtained in very minor variations. Being Arctic Silver, my paint code is L92U. They had a sample of the "normal" L92U and a slightly different version that apparently had a hint of blue added with a paint code of L92U(B). To me the (B) version seemed just a bit darker, it was hard to tell it was due to blue being added.
The pure L92U appeared to be a perfect match with my paint both in and out of the sun and at angles, so that is what the decklid/wing is being painted with. Painting was started today and will be done by the end of day tomorrow. We are planning on keeping them there until Friday to let the paint cure better before transporting them back home for installation this weekend.
Earlier, I mentioned that the brake light for the Turbo spoiler was available in multiple last-digit versions (...01 through 04). Since the first one I got was missing the clips, when we re-ordered we ordered two... one of the same (the dealer thought that was the right number but that someone had taken the clips) and the newer 04 version. I got a call late today that they had both come in and looked identical except for the fact that one was red and one was clear. They also both had clips.
So now I have a choice, take the red one or the clear one. I'm leaning towards the red but was curious what you guys might think. I did a photoshop mockup of a real Turbo both ways (one is actually a 991 but I had a surprisingly hard time finding a clean large rear photo of a 997 Turbo). My initial thought is that the red will work well with the red tail lights and the red S I am considering and contrasts well with the silver while the clear strikes me as washed-out. Thoughts?
I personally prefer the clear as it doesn't stand out quite so much as the red. Had I known this was an option when doing my wife's car, we would have gone with the clear. The light in my GT Silver RUF rear spoiler is clear and I think it makes it less obvious that there's a light there, which I like. As you say, with the taillights being red, the red 3rd light works OK visually, I just prefer the clear.
Pete, you make some mighty good points. Your clear light in the photo does work nicely and picks up the clear jeweled look in the center of your brake lights.
I do have to say that everything about your car works well together and looks stunning. Rather intimidating as well!
10-12-2014, 08:21 AM
DONE?
