Special Thanks to Steve Wong

[Carrera3.5L]

I just wanted to go online and say "Thanks Again" to Steve Wong. As some of you know, I recently rebuilt my 3.2L Carrera motor into a 3.5L twin-plug and have been getting prepared for some dyno tuning to happen shortly. There are a couple of threads that you can search to read all about it.

After breaking the motor in, the 1K oil change, valve adjustment (many were WAY loose) and head stud torque check was performed. The motor is bone dry underneath and the dipstick level barely moved (if at all) during the first 1,000 miles. This motor did not drink any oil on the 1K run-in!

Steve had provided a "break-in" chip for me that was designed to run a bit richer then normal during the run-in period. Steve has mapped many modified 3.2L's, 3.4L twin-plugs and even a 3.7L twin-plug motor but mine is the first 3.5L he has done. As Steve will probably tell you, every case is different. Mine was no exception.

The motor is very tractable, and even in my heavy 2,800 lb. car (with a full tank of gas) the car feels much stronger in the low and mid-range but seemed to run out of breath at 6,300 rpm.

Some of you may know this and others not but 911chips.com is not Steve's primary business. It is strictly his passion, as he is involved in real estate as his primary source of income. What I am about to share is a testament to his dedication and willingness to provide exceptional customer service.

I have been trying to coordinate some time with him to get the software optimized (part throttle fuel and timing as well as WOT fuel and timing) for the motor before the dyno session. Steve took Wednesday afternoon off from work (I did as well) and he drove 1.5 hours down from L.A. to my house in South Orange County.

Steve hooked up all of his cables and wires to run the car from his lap top and monitor the a/f ratio with his LM-1. Here is a pic of Steve checking his laptop while sitting in my garage:



One thing that he found right off the bat was that the throttle position sensor was not adjusted correctly, a fact that I sheepishly admitted not having checked when the motor was running. What was essentially happening is that the part throttle maps were not changing over to the full throttle maps at WOT. No wonder the motor was running out of steam at 6,300!!! Instant power increase found and we hadn't even left the garage yet!

After everything was checked and secured, the car headed out with cables hanging out of the decklid, run up the side of the car and down through the sunroof. Oh, I almost forgot the probe sticking out of the tailpipe! We got a few strange looks but as long as they weren't from law enforcement I didn't care!

Steve wanted to start out with checking the air-fuel ratio at WOT so we proceeded to do 3rd gear runs from 2,000 rpm to the rev limiter programmed at 6,840 rpm. You need a long stretch of road with little to no traffic to be able to do this as my gearchart indicated the range of speed is approx 30 mph to 105 mph. We would then pull over and Steve would analyze the data and make changes. This is a tedious and time consuming process.

The first few runs there were large a/f spikes during the rpm operating range. Steve made subtle changes at varying rpms and after a dozen or so of these runs the a/f ratio had flatlined across the entire range.

To make an increasingly long story short, Steve also dialed in the part throttle timing and fuel. WE SPENT almost 6 HOURS driving around! It was 9:30 p.m. when we pulled back into the garage with both of us getting a little green from getting carsick. Lots of jerky, on-off driving done (we both drove) to trace pings and dial them out, which Steve did. All I can say is I HATE 91 OCTANE!

Steve can elaborate more on what was done as this post is getting way too long already. Steve, if you see this, feel free to provide whatever info you want, none of this portion is covered by the magazine exclusivity.

We figured it would be about 3 hours to get it sorted and it ended up taking twice as long. I promised to take Steve to dinner after we were done but it went way over the forecast so Steve took a raincheck. Don't worry Steve, I'll catch you at the dyno.

The car runs better then ever now and looking forward to the dyno session to happen early in the New Year and see what the motor actually makes for power/torque. Steve says that we are 99.9% there and his final tweaks while on the dyno may gain a couple of horsepower but the grunt work has been done. The motor now pulls smoothly all the way to the rev limiter at 6,840 rpm and is noticeably quicker at WOT from 4,000 on up.

Steve, I can't thank you enough, for you to take the time out of your busy work schedule right now (he is developing/building a small number of homes at present), drive the 3 hours to/fro and spend 6 hours making sure my car is as close to perfect as possible speaks volumes.

Merry Christmas Everyone!!!

Ralph

[MIK911]

Steve--U da Man!!
See you at the TRE New Year's Malibu run?

Mike
'86 coupe

[alf]

Steve and his products rock! He has never failed to answer all my questions promptly and patiently. If you own a 911, you owe it to yourself to try one of his chips. If you do not like it just send it back.

alf

[89911]

The only problem I have with Steve is that he doesn't live on the East Coast . I am envious that you have him in person to tune your car! We were working out the fuel curves in my 3.4l this fall but ran out of time to get it as close to perfect as I could. A lot of dyno time and emails helped. Looking forward to getting him this spring to go the final steps. He really is a great guy and a very helpful.

[Steve W]

Merry Christmas, and thanks everyone for the kind words.

Ralph, thanks for inviting me to your home in that beautiful section of South Orange County – Rancho Santa Margarita, to get an opportunity to drive that 3.5 monster of yours. And with all the new, wide, open and expansive highways out there, the location make it ideal not only for Porsche driving, but testing as well. We ran the car to 6800 in third gear several times – how fast was that again Ralph?

Ralph's car drives, idles, runs, sounds, and accelerates so smooth, that it is really deceptive of how fast this car really is. Absolutely no quirks, exhaust resonance or drone, that with the exception of the slightly deeper exhaust note of the European George headers and Dansk dual out sport muffler, you'd almost confuse it with a stock car - until you punch it. Lots of torque and the response is immediate.

As Ralph mentioned, we spent considerable time pushing and dialing in the programming under the most extreme of conditions, full throttle, part throttle, sudden throttle transients etc with both of us taking turns at the wheel that we both were getting kind of sick, I think Ralph more so than me with the way I was driving The Innovate LM-1 was indispensable in this application. With it we were able to log air/fuel ratios, rpms, acceleration Gs, injector duty cycle, and throttle position, which as we found, the full throttle microswitch was never activating at WOT. Instant power found. Fuel and ignition changes were made and reloaded into the DME on the fly with Ralph behind the wheel, and myself on the laptop. After fine tuning the air fuel ratios, at both WOT and part throttle, we spent some time to see what the ignition timing limits were with this twin plug motor and our gas. Unfortunately, with our octane challenged 91 here, 20-22 degrees of max ignition timing at WOT is what this motor was comfortable with.

Some of you may be wondering, just how fast this car is. Since power is all about acceleration, here’s some comparative data that may be of interest. Below is a screenshot of the LM-1 log files from Ralph’s 3.5, with an overlay of my 3.2 in the dotted lines. The graphs log full throttle acceleration in third gear, on a flat road from 2100 to 6800 rpm. The black lines are the rpm rise curves, and the red line signals the activation of WOT. The air fuel ratios are in violet, and as can be seen are programmed equally on both cars. You all know about the build of Ralph’s car. My 3.2 motor had been modded with ExtrudeHoned manifolds, SSIs, a modified dual out muffler, cleaned up ports, bored throttle body, and a billet aluminum cone intake. Comparing the two RPM rise curves, you can see that my 3.2 completes the 2100 to 6800 rpm sprint in 15.50 seconds, with Ralph’s 3.5 taking 12.78 seconds, 2.63 seconds faster. If this was a track car, we would be concerned about acceleration from 4500-6800. In this case, the 3.5 completes the run in 6.47 seconds while the 3.2 in 6.96 seconds, about a half second faster. Think of all those half seconds shaved each time the throttle is punched and it adds up.



Next it’s off to Vision’s dyno to see what power this motor puts out, and if there’s any more power to extract. Stay tuned for the numbers, as I think we’ll be going to the dyno next week. Happy Holidays everyone, and have a prosperous and Happy New Year!

[Jeff Alton]

Very cool guys!! Just hurry up and get to the dyno!! I need to see how much more power the 3.5 makes over Ralph's friends 3.4. Glad it is running so well.

Jeff

[efhughes3]

Ok, I have to jump in here. I can personally attest to how well Ralph's car runs. He was generous enough to come by my hotel in Newport Beach to show me his car as well take a ride/drive in it.

The power comes on much lower than what I'm used to and pulls strong all of the way to redline. We were driving around the coastal hills and it is really am amazing how much torque the motor provides. It pulled very well from the high 2's and I'm 215lbs, an I'd guess Ralph to be in the 200lb range, so there was definitely a load.

Thanks again Ralph!!

[Carrera3.5L]

Originally posted by catca
Very cool guys!! Just hurry up and get to the dyno!! I need to see how much more power the 3.5 makes over Ralph's friends 3.4. Glad it is running so well.

Jeff

Hi Jeff,

I'm hopeful that we can still do the back-to-back comparison but my friend's 915 (the car is an '85) is acting up. It won't go into 2nd and he suspects a problem with a synchro ring. He needs to take the transaxle out and tear it down. We will keep our fingers crossed!

Ralph

[Carrera3.5L]

Originally posted by efhughes3
Ok, I have to jump in here. I can personally attest to how well Ralph's car runs. He was generous enough to come by my hotel in Newport Beach to show me his car as well take a ride/drive in it.

The power comes on much lower than what I'm used to and pulls strong all of the way to redline. We were driving around the coastal hills and it is really am amazing how much torque the motor provides. It pulled very well from the high 2's and I'm 215lbs, an I'd guess Ralph to be in the 200lb range, so there was definitely a load.

Thanks again Ralph!!

Hi Ed,

Thanks for the kind comments. No problem at all, a short pit stop on the way to chasing down last minute errands for the wife was fun. Good thing our drive was during the Holidays and no one else was really out on the road to interrupt our "testing"

Hopefully the drive has given you the fire to take the plunge after your DE event in February! Imagine how much quicker the car would be if the motor were in a lighter car then mine.

Hopefully your trip back to DFW was less eventful then your trek here.

Did you get any good pics of my dusty car? I'm always looking for more.

Ralph

[Wavey]

This thread should confirm for all time that Steve knows what he is doing, his products do the job, and he is indeed one of the better human beings on this Earth. As they say on NPR, anyone who says different is itchin' for a fight.

[efhughes3]

I did make it home much easier than leaving. I also butt-dyno'd mine upon return (while the feeling of your car was fresh in my mind), and there is definitely a huge difference. Thanks again, I am motivated-plus my engine yoke arrived while we were gone.

BTW-my wife said I was grinnin' from ear to ear when I walked back into the hotel.

A couple of pics of you leaving...



One in exhibition mode...

[Jeff Alton]

Ralph, I guess the compression "problem" turned out okay if you ended up backing some timing out due to detonation. I wonder what it would have been like if you had got closer to 10.5 to 1. I am still not sure what CR I am going to go with. We do have that good old 94 octane though. Any idea how much more CR I can run with the better gas, all other things bein basically equal??

Jeff

[jpahemi]

Hi Ralph:
I've got to ask about your advance #'s; they seem low for a twin plug motor with the CR you ended up with. Comparing two exact same 3.5's, one single the other twin; would the timing be lower on the twin due to the flame propagation in the head? From the #'s Steve told me for my chip; I'm in the 25-26.6 degrees of advance (WOT), for my stock (relatively) 3.2.
Regards,
J.P.

[Jeff Alton]

With twin plug you do use less advance for the reasons that you listed.

Jeff

[Carrera3.5L]

Originally posted by catca
Ralph, I guess the compression "problem" turned out okay if you ended up backing some timing out due to detonation. I wonder what it would have been like if you had got closer to 10.5 to 1. I am still not sure what CR I am going to go with. We do have that good old 94 octane though. Any idea how much more CR I can run with the better gas, all other things bein basically equal??

Jeff

Hi Jeff,

I am now glad that I ended up at 9.5:1 rather then over 10:1 as was the original goal. Obviously, with the 91 octane, the timing is forced to be conservative, in some places Steve mentioned that it is a few degrees less then stock. I am still not convinced that the US spec Carrera's are actually 9.5:1 as advertised, I would bet they are closer to 9.2:1. The 10.3:1 Euro spec cars are rumored to be in the 9.8:1-10:1 range in the real world as well. Don't have any definitive proof, just what some people in the know have told me and my experience with another European make that uses Mahle...

It's really hard for me to say what kind of CR you can run since we are not blessed with your 94 octane down here, but always lean on the conservative side. I would think that 9.8:1 to 10:1 would work fine in your case with twin-plugging.

I would also highly recommend buying Steve Wong a RT ticket to tune your motor. I hear Vancouver is beautiful in the summer.

Ralph

[Carrera3.5L]

Thanks for the pictures Ed! I'm glad you can't really see me in any of them, my wife always tells me I have a face made for radio!

Ralph

P.S. - The car had about an inch of dust on it from some high winds we had last week, but you would never know it from those images.