GTgears

Gonna need to get Pauter to make some custom stroker rods for you...

BGB Motorsports

It's a shame because most people would think, myself included, that what I am about to tell you is a decent amount of power. As you know though, we will only leave it alone for so long until we need more.

She spit out 375/300 at the wheels on a Dynjojet on the first pull to produce an estimate of 430hp at the crank with an engine that's not even 30 minutes old, on break-in oil, being run by a file mapped for a 3.4 motor and being dyno'd on one of the hotter days of the year in the southeast. It was an open-air dyno room at 11:00am where it was already 90 degrees with 85% humidity. It's 8:00am and it's already 84 degrees here.

So...more to report later but given that the 3.4 program power output ranged from 340rwhp to 350rwhp (hot summer dyno days vs. cool, dense air November/December days), we are on target for the expected output goals for torque/hp.

It's disappointing really when you keep thinking about how someone that makes this car could have so easily done this for us.

mjdavis

Mr. Tecce, what advantages does this car have over, say, a locomotive, which I could also afford?

Leica356

I know I might be beating a dead horse, but has anyone successfully transplanted a Metzger engine into a Cayman yet?

mobonic

John, could this conversion be done on a 997.1 Carrera S (swap non dfi to dfi?)

BGB Motorsports

I don't know of anyone in the U.S. that has done it yet but that's not to say that it hasn't been done. I only know of the 2 that were raced in Europe in the 24H ADAC event at the Ring in 2007 from both the Alzens and MSpeed. One car had a 997 Cup sequential and the other did not. Not sure if both had 997 cup motors or 996 cup motors or what.

While that is probably by far and away the most reliable, tested, Porsche flat-6 sequential drivetrain that would bolt up, we wanted to try and create something that produced similar power numbers BUT was also available at your dealer for remanufactured cost figures of $9000 for a reman engine and $3800 for a reman gearbox. Heaven forbid your friend/wife/girlfriend/neighbor borrows the car and executes a $ shift with it, you will not be out $40K in motor/trans parts!

GTgears

Yes, Jurgen Alzen Motorsports. But it also required the installation of a GT3 gearbox inverted to get the right bolt pattern to mate up.

Mobonic,
You ask an interesting question. What was struggled with on the Cayman was different gearbox bolt patterns on DI versus non-DI gearboxes. To do the swap BGB had to use a DI Cayman to get the DI Carrera engine to mate. The question, that I don't know the answer to, is whether or not DI and non-DI 997 Aisin gearboxes have 2 different bolt patterns or not.

PedroNole

John- VERY NICE! Can I drive it at Daytona....PLEASE???

utkinpol

John, just to double check - do you speak of X51 9a1 DFI engine from 997.2 GTS car here? Or about 997.2 GT3 motor? I thought GTS one was 408hp, how did it get to 450?

BGB Motorsports

This is all 2009 + 9A1 based stuff from the DFI S model motor family...3.4 and 3.8. HOWEVER, the car already had a complete list of permitted GA bolt-ons: race headers, race DME file, DFI pulley kit, full 4" race intake, etc.

It is a bone-stock 2011 spec DFI 3.8 engine but by no means in stock trim.

utkinpol

what is 'DFI pulley kit'? just a smaller size master pulley for serpentine belt or something internal?

what was an approximate total price to do such a swap including ECU, wiring, sensors, etc total for parts minus labor? does PCNA offer any warranty on remanufactured 9a1 engines?

BGB Motorsports

With the 997.1 motors in Grand-Am we were all able to slap on a reduced 80% crank pulley from Mantis Sport that actually produced horsepower. Ifwe then wanted to slow down or speed up the water pump or power steering pump we could swap pulleys around. When it came time to install pulleys on the DFI motor we took one look at the motor and realized it wouldn't be possible to shrink the crank pulley. as parts or bosses on the engine case would not allow it. Therefore we came up with the idea to space the entire pulley system further off the face of the engine so that we could run a smaller crank pulley. After completing our first iteration we realized that the DFI crank pulleys also work as a harmonic balancer so we had to scratch the first DFI prototype crank pulley and start again. RSS Tuning was kind enough to produce this entire kit for us and it is now available from them. It's worth about 6hp on the 3.4 engines so we are assuming it is worth at least that with the 3.8 engines. The best part is that the kit works on both 3.4 and 3.8 DFI engines. While I haven't tried it on a DFI 3.6, I would have to assume it works there too.

Nothing has been touched internally, as the goal of this entire project is to use stock engines and gearboxes from the 997.2/987.2 era cars.


I believe that a reman engine comes with a 1 year warranty from PCNA. BUT, if they found out it went into a Cayman, I would assume they would hang up on you. So for this application, I would not assume they would stand behind it and you can't blame them. I don't want to speak to that aspect of it.

I don't know what the forum rules are for my quoting numbers and stuff like this so maybe it best to contact me directly. Labor for the swap is 50 hours to remove your engine, swap all of the parts and re-install the new engine back in the car, delivered for road use.

BGB Motorsports

My friend you are not going to like the answer I have for you. It's not worth it. I know that you are considering it because you have a really nice chassis and want more power but the labor in stripping your car's entire chassis harness and installing the $6K USED but "new to you" harness, ECU, alarm, key, etc. you bought used from the junk yard; if it is missing parts you are hosed but all of this labor has already killed the economics of the project.

You would have 125 hours in removing your car's harness and laying in the new one and troubleshooting all of the sensors. You would have another 50 hours in the engine conversion side of things, but it would be easier because you're installing a 911 oriented engine as opposed to a backwards intended engine, so there is less swapping of oil lines, cooling lines and p/s lines than there was in our conversion.

My advice to you is to buy a GT3 throttle body, a BGB air box, crank the revs up another 200 RPM and let that 3.8 of yours rip. Then sell it to a fan and buy one of those things in 3 years!