I have been doing Porsche mods since about 2005 and this is the first I have come across a project like this. Its very normal to hear of a transmission swap in cars like a Nissan 240SX, Subaru STI, and even older generations of the BMW 3 series and 5 series. But doing a Tiptronic to Manual conversion in a Porsche is just something that has not been seen by my eyes. Really its not much different or expensive on a 996 Carrera. This customer of ours from Australia started out with this 2002 Carrera Convertible Tiptronic. Aftering making it stand out with some Fuchs style wheels, KW V3 coilovers, and getting a serious boost from a VF Engineering Supercharger, he started his conversion. The 996 transmission is much cheaper than a 996 Turbo transmission. Obviously you need the corresponding parts such as the clutch, flywheel, master cylinder, pedal, shifter and housing, etc, but once the plumbing is mounted and the parts installed, your there. One thing that does need to be done is the unmarry the TCU from the ECU. Without this, the car thinks it has a tiptronic issue.
The car was run on a Dyno Dynamics dyno and put down 480 horsepower and 354 ft/lbs of torque. The VF Engineering supercharger kit makes about 130hp gain over stock. Now this totally depends on what his baseline test was. On our Mustang Dyno we usually see a stock 996 Turbo make about 340 awhp and a 997 Turbo make about 400 awhp. So this car must have had a higher baseline to end with that result, but what matters is the gain.
End of day, this car has turned out really sweet and we love the little details to keep it up to date with the GT3 style seats, flat bottom steering wheel, and just overall cleanliness.
Hi, I am from Indonesia and i would like to do a manual conversion as well. You did a great job, do you think you can help me out, how you did the swap? There are not much conversions yet in the world. Thanks
Thank you for the comment. We didn’t do this was a customer in Australia. Really need manual trans, pedal assembly, remove tcu, reflash ecu for manual.
Hello Sirs,
Please kindly note that I’m doing a similar project to turn my 2003 C2 from Tip to Manual. Could you please explain what you mean with the following:
“One thing that does need to be done is the unmarry the TCU from the ECU. Without this, the car thinks it has a tiptronic issue.”
Your detailed explanation would be wonderful and very helpful.
Thank you very much in advance.
How’s it going? The TCU and ECU are linked together to communicate information from the transmission to the engine or vice versa. In order to successfully do the conversion, the two modules have to be unpaired so the ECU doesn’t think it needs to send parameters to the TCU during operation. Hopefully, this helped clarify your question.