[Jake Raby]

I've asked some of this before but it didn't get answered.

I did answer ALL of your points in the original thread. I will do this again here, but will post my original reply at the bottom of this post for others to see that may be concerned. I did NOT avoid your questions.

My understanding is that engine designers produce dozens of sample engines and put them through simulations and real world trials involving millions of miles and still design and production defects exist.

You have mentioned a single trial mule car.

If you think that Porsche spent thousands of miles testing the Boxster's engine- you are incorrect. If they did the engine would have never been released with all the issues that it has, since day one. In the past German soldiers tested Porsches and VWs, but that hasn't occurred since the 1950s and certainly not today where every penny they can save is done. The most powerful department at Porsche today is the accounting department.

With our lab work and a single test car we have already completed a ton of field testing . No one outside of Porsche could afford a fleet of test vehicles to test configurations with. Due to this we use a single vehicle and gain comparative tests from this vehicle to form back to back comparisons. This is why the program has taken us 3 years to get to this level and why we didn't sell a single component during those 3 years and also didn't sell any engines until 2 months ago. We have other cars on the road that are owned by other shops that have worked with us to get more data, one of these has been on the road for over 2 years-

Can you tell us what testing you have done on the various configurations of engines you are offering? For example...has the 3.2 to 3.6 engine been specifically tested and how many and how much? Ditto the 2.7 to 3.0?

To date our biggest effort has been with the 2.5 and 2.7 base engines and most of that has been with solving reliability issues. The materials and processes we are using have over a decade of testing and application in our aircooled engines, for instance the cylinder material used for the 986 engines is the same as our aircooled cylinders and those have had output over 100HP/ cylinder without issues under boost.

We are relying on our past experiences with materials and processes to assist with the initial points of 986 engine development as the aircooled engines run much hotter with much more heat soak and higher output than most any 986 engine will see per cylinder.

To date the only development we have not thoroughly tested is the newest IMS upgrade. That will begin in about 10 days when I create another test engine of 2.9 liters, from a 2.5 base engine, using a 2.7 crank.

Other testing that I could share with you now is considered proprietary to the program, but as we can safely share these things, we will do so.

The 3.2>>3.6 conversion is the newest development and is in testing now. There are no direct test info from this unit yet, but all the materials, processes and components have already been tested in the earlier engines and we don't anticipate any issues- if they exist we will find them and address them before anyone ever purchases one. It doesn't take a fleet of test cars to develop an engine, just desire to succeed.

Does use of the engine for a drivers education event (not racing, just driving fast on a track) void the warranty? Auto-X?

Thats competition. Any engine used for competition could see driver error so there will be no warranty on those, for good reason. A DE would be the only acceptable activity for any engine still under warranty. If a failure exists during a DE and we did the install of the engine the failure would be covered by warranty, as long as the instructor offered a detailed report of the driver's skills and what occurred when the engine failed.

Extended warrantees will be offered for some engines, once again all dependent upon the build, i's use and state of tune.

Have you done anything to the sump? Deeper? Baffle changes?

Absolutely. We are adding a completely new oil return system, different baffles in the sump and a ton of oil delivery components as we speak. These are mostly being done for the Boxster Spec competition cars, but are optional with other builds. These items will be covered in the Excellence article, you can read about them there in a few months.

Do you have any locations yet for authorized installers since that seems to be a requirement for the warranty?

We have not began the dealer program, as of yet. Our plan is to supply re-sellers as authorized distributors of our parts, tools and processes and for these people to attend assembly and tuning training classes here at our facility and then to assemble engines and offer their own warranty. This will enable local Porsche shops to complete the job, interface with the car and customer and meet their needs.

The only engines we'll offer warrantees on will be those that we have assembled, tested and installed under our supervision directly. Having been in the performance engine industry all my life, I have experienced most every issue possible and I am very hard to please when it comes to warrantees.

5.

And lastly, emission issues in a non-California state are a concern since my state does access the OBDII port and talks to their central computer in the state capitol before OKing the emissions every year. Has there been any emissions testings of the engines and what do you know about the non-CA legality?

Emissions testing is a critical subject and changes from state to state and its something that we'll address with each customer one on one, up front prior to the proposal stage of the engine purchase.

We will only supply bone stock engines to be used in California, utilizing our updated components for longevity and reliability only. We won't be able to cut corners to get past smog requirements in states like California and Arizona as ANY performance engine mods are deemed illegal, even if the engine still passes a sniff test or OBDII interface inspection. We hate to exclude anyone from the processes we offer, but the law is the law. It will be up to our re-sellers in California to offer the engines and components if they desire, but we'll not be supportive of their efforts.

We are finalizing a plan to offer vehicle shipping to our facility for those who wish to utilize our warranty so the shipping is included in cost of the labor prices for the install.

As far as cost goes:
Today the price of our engines aren't that much more than a stock 2.5 replacement from Porsche. The most recent Porsche reman price is 10K+ due to the dollar Vs Euro exchange rate and his rate will continue to impact the prices.

Our price for the 3.2>>3.6 conversion will be MUCH less than an X 51 conversion, which is the only way you'll come close to the same performance. The beauty of what we do is the fact that it's a direct bolt up, no conversions required.

Most of our performance engines creating 75HP more than stock cost the same as the stock, updated engine that won't fail- thats because we do everything "all the way" or we won't do it at all.

I'll close by saying that my efforts of engine development and testing have been internationally recognized for well over a decade for doing a lot with very little with good old fashioned common sense and effort. The Boxster is my current challenge and I'll continue to do as much as possible to make the engine something that Porsche never made it into. I have driven 40 year old cars across the country with 28 channels of data logging capability measuring every aspect of the engine.

What we are doing, no one else is doing and thats because its not easy, not cheap and not profitable for most. I accept it as nothing more than another challenge and we have been more successful than I would have ever expected.

And to date no one that has purchased an engine has been concerned with a warranty period, they appreciate what we have created, how it has been done and why.
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Below I will paste my reply to mikefocke's original questions in the sister thread to this one from a few weeks ago:
Originally posted by Mikefocke
Without significant mileage on multiple samples, how do you have confidence that your rebuilds and improvements will not blow up in their own unique ways?

Doesn't a engine designer run at least 20 cars for at least 100k miles both in simulation and on real roads in multiple climates (and even then designs and manufacturing techniques prove inadequate)? How can you duplicate such testing?
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My reply:

First off, I appreciate your objective view of what we are doing.



Quote:

"Without significant mileage on multiple samples, how do you have confidence that your rebuilds and improvements will not blow up in their own unique ways?"

Without significant mileage on multiple samples, how do you have confidence that your rebuilds and improvements will not blow up in their own unique ways?

Porsche did a lot of work for us, and we have not had to start from scratch.. We have addressed the problematic areas with enhanced procedures and components that Porsche could not have afforded to do with engines created in very high volumes. The 911(pre water) never had these issues, because it was a much lower produced vehicle and more time was put into each unit as well as money.

Do some research on our past efforts with earlier engines and you'll see that we have taken other engines, totally redesigned them and made them go from a "Black sheep" to something highly sought after. The best case would be the Porsche 914 engine which we can now double the output of N/A and still attain the longevity of a bone stock engine. A factory 914 engine was anemic and plagued with cylinder head issues, through development we haven't had a single head related failure in a decade.

We have done this through rigorous testing in harsh environments where neglect and abuse was common... An example of this is driving a Boxster against the rev limiter for two miles at a time, trying to create a failure... (I try to do that every time I drive the test car)

I love to break parts and I love to force failures to study what happens, we have been known to scatter engines in front of a crowd of 500 under Nitrous just to see what occurs and how spectacular we can make something fail.. Breaking parts is part of success with engine design and modification.

This is not something we have just started working with and quite honestly the ONLY reason I initially agreed to assist Charles with the development was because of the challenge the engine offered. Tackling an engine with so many issues. that is so hard to work with was right up my alley- he knew that.



Quote:

"Doesn't a engine designer run at least 20 cars for at least 100k miles both in simulation and on real roads in multiple climates (and even then designs and manufacturing techniques prove inadequate)?"

Doesn't a engine designer run at least 20 cars for at least 100k miles both in simulation and on real roads in multiple climates (and even then designs and manufacturing techniques prove inadequate)?

Think Porsche did that??? HELL NO! If they did they would have never released the car until all the BS gripes were worked out! Based on the failures that everyone has documented, that we have seen at as low as 30K miles it is clear that Porsche let these engines fly out the door before anyone put close to 1100K on the first one.

In the days of the aircooled Porsche, (and VW) German soldiers were often tasked with driving the cars for tens of thousands of miles to prove their endurance and integrity- that clearly does not happen today.



Quote:

"How can you duplicate such testing?"

How can you duplicate such testing?

Extreme effort and attention to concern. No one forces us to test anything, we don't do it because we have to. We do this because I WANT to!

I am currently outfitting the test car with a Race-Technology DL-2 data logger that will observe both the OBD2 sensors and outputs along with 16 more channels of data acquisition that will be used to monitor all critical aspects of the engine. I have used a similar unit with our vintage development program to gain data over both street and competition environments. See this page for the data we gathered on a recent 3,450 mile trek cross the Continent to test colling system enhancements and lubricants for our Air-cooled engine program
www.aircooledtechnology.com/crosscountry

While on this trip we made a run up Loveland Pass, to the Continental Divide. When we reached the summit we met up with a pair of Engineers from Chrysler that were using the 12,000' elevation to program the ECU for their new pick up truck engine. We started chatting with them, looked at their gear and then they looked at ours and asked us why the hell we had 3 computers and 28 channels of data logging in a 40 year old car... I explained it to them and this is the reply the lead Engineer gave me.
"Damn, thats impressive, I have worked here for 18 years and we've never driven a car across the country to gather data".

We may not have the funding of a vehicle manufacturer like Porsche or Chrysler, but we damn sure have the initiative and drive to accomplish what they couldn't. We have done it before and we'll do it again! The team we have assembled is made up of highly motivated "fire pissers" like yours truly who live, eat and breathe mechanical modification..

I certainly don't want to come off like an egotistical jerk, but we are confident that what we are creating will be effective and we have been and will continue to put it to the test of both time and performance.

Building engines, lab testing them and then field testing them, followed by periodic tear downs to observe the goings on internally are the minimum of what we do. Heck I have been known to change cams in one engine 11 times in a single week just to see the gains in performance for a street engine, and that meant a complete tear down of the test engine each time...

We don't sleep much.