996TT K16g Turbo Upgrade

Have a car in today for a turbo and ecu upgrade.  2002 996TT with 70k+ miles on it.  The old turbos are starting to show signs of leakage, so time to upgrade to a little more power.  Turbos and programming came from Tony at EPL.

First thing to do is to raise up the rear of the car and get it supported on jackstands safely.  I always block the front wheels as well, since your drivewheels and parking brake wheels are off the ground.  On the GT case, you can use the case halves as a jacking point, then safely support the car using the crossmember/suspension points.   I like to leave the jack under the engine just as a third point of safety.

Once the car is raised and supported safely, pull the rear bumper off to expose the intercoolers.

Set the bumper aside in a safe place so you won’t scratch or step on it.

Once the bumper is out of the way, you can pull the intecoolers off the car.

With the intercoolers pulled, you can now see the turbo.  I recommend a can of Aero-Kroil from Kano Laboratories for the exhaust nuts and oil lines.  It is like PB blaster on crack.

Pull the exhaust off, oil lines, intake tubes, etc.  On the drivers side, it is easiest to just drop the header off the engine with the turbo attached.  Especially if you are upgrading headers, you will find one nut is very hard to get tight if you try with the header attached to the car.  The passenger side you can just pull the turbo without any space restrictions.

Note, this car only has no cats and no mufflers 🙂

With the turbos out of the way, it doesn’t get any easier to change the spark plugs, so make sure to do that while you are in there.  On the 996TT’s you can do spark plugs with the turbos in place, but in this case, wait until the turbo is off to get a little extra working room.  Figure 30k miles maximum on spark plugs in a 996TT, shorter lifespan if you have upgraded your turbos.  These spark plugs were done when I pulled them out.

New turbo in place:  Button up all the oil lines, making absolutely sure you do not get any dirt in the oil lines when you install the new turbos!  Use tape to cover the holes until you are ready to screw in the oil line!

With the new turbo in place, the intercooler can go back on, and off to the other side 🙂  Stay tuned……

Once the turbos are done, you can install the 5 bar fuel pressure regulator, and you are ready to flash the ecu!

Update:

This week we got the car flashed to the new program.  Using the laptop, serial cable, and the correct file, we had the car flashed and up and running.  After putting about 500 miles on the car with no boost to allow the turbos to break in properly, the owner was able to start laying into the boost.  The car now hits 1.2-1.3 bar over the stock .7 bar.

911911 Turbo996TTPorsche