The Racelogic VBOX Sport is a must have for any driving / racing enthusiast. If you’re like me you want to know your 0-60 and you need your quarter mile time and trap speed to compare with your friends (okay, not really). Sometimes it’s hard to get out to a track and the VBOX is the next best thing. Using GPS signals it logs your acceleration, braking and speed data for predefined and user designated parameters.
The construction quality is excellent and the unit feels solid and is well designed. The Sport is water resistant so it’s possible to take it on a boat or jetski and it would fare well off road (in a dusty environment). I purchased the optional suction cut windshield mount and it is similarly well constructed and has worked flawlessly. Although the VBOX sport doesn’t have an integrated screen it connects to an iPhone or iPod via Bluetooth where the information is displayed.
The unit’s operation is pretty straightforward: Once the Sport is turned on it acquires the necessary GPS signals. From there you simply pair it with your phone allowing you to start tests and review results. I’ve only had one pairing issue and it was easily resolved.
Accuracy should be quite good given the technology employed by the VBOX Sport. Users report that times and speed are fairly close to what is run on actual tracks (less than a 1% margin of error). I’ve posted the best results I’ve gotten in the Turbo S (so far) below:
10.88 at 126mph! I know the times shown by the VBOX are in the right ballpark since I have actually recorded a few of my quarter mile runs (prior to having the Sport) but I’d be really curious to see what the car would run at out local track. I have also tried the VBOX Sport out in my truck and the results seem spot on.
As I said, this is a great unit. It’s not cheap but I think it’s absolutely worth the price and is a valuable tool that any modder, tuner or racer will appreciate (check it out at Racelogic’s website). If anyone in Utah wants to use my VBOX please – especially if you’re planning to go to the track- please hit me up!
Following the aftermarket part installation it was clear the car was going to need some tuning. This time around I decided to use Cobb and their Access Port. Back when I had my 997 I had to take out the ECU and send it in to EVOMS (shudder- such bad memories of those guys) to get a new map flashed onto the car. This made it nearly impossible to make small adjustments. However, the Access Port (AP) allows you to flash the a tune onto the car’s computer though the OBDII port! You can load on a new tune in just a few minutes. Additionally the AP logs data which you can send to a Cobb tuner and they can make adjustments as needed for you. This is a game changer.
COBB Access Port Tuning Module- this is where the magic starts & how we make the magic faster.
Right out of the box the AP comes standard with a slew of off the shelf (OTS) tunes. Before putting my new parts onto the car I installed the OTS stage 1 tune. The low end seemed more powerful but I didn’t notice much of a difference up top. After the parts were installed I uploaded a stage 3 OTS tune. Again, more bottom end power but very little difference up top. It’s tricky to get a good tune in Utah. I’m fighting high altitudes, catalytic converters (restrictive) and low octane (91 standard here). This is one reason that it’s so important to be able to log data and make tune modifications.
The Cobb Accessport is a very cool piece of hardware. It allows you to tune the car from the OBDII port! After installing the Access Port software onto your car you can upload new tunes. The tunes can be tweaked by logging data (via the AP) and then sending it to a qualified tuner.
I’ve been working with Sam (at By Design) and Mitch (at Cobb) to try and dial in the tune. While there’s a lot of stuff I understand, there’s plenty that doesn’t make a ton of sense to me. When I look at all the data from a logged file some columns leave me scratching my head and I’m forced to put quite a bit of faith in the tuners. Below is a 0-140mph run of my third tune version.
The corresponding times for this run were pulled off of the Cobb Access Port.
0-60 in 3.013
60-130 in 9.693
0-130 in 12.706
At this point I didn’t have a good way to measure a quarter mile run. As I look back in time there are quite a few things I wish I had done differently- gather timing hardware beforehand, test and measure the car in stock form and measure results of each tune iteration. Hindsight…
I’m up to version 4 of my custom tune at this point and the car seem to be running well and I can finally feel a bit of the torque in the upper end. Probably one last tune will eek out all there is with the current set up. Realistically that won’t be much more than I’ve already got- there’s just too much working against us here.
After loading in version 4 of my tune I did an experiment and put some octane booster into my fuel (real octane booster). The data logs looked so clean it was unbelievable (almost no preignition / knock) and the car gained nearly a second in the 0-130 range. With tune version 4 and 93-ish octane here’s what I ended up with (these were measured with a VBOX and a mini review will be posted shortly):
That’s not too bad! I finally have a 10 second Utah car. Apparently if you live in Utah, spend a butt load of money and put in premium gas that we don’t even have here you too can run stock times! Yes, sadly these are pretty much the same times one might run if they lived in California at sea level and had just driven the car off a dealer lot.
Admittedly that leaves me perplexed- it’s hard to understand why a forced induction car would run so much slower in Utah given that the car should be putting roughly the same amount of air into the engine (turbos compensate fairly well for altitude). My goal is to find a stock Turbo S that I can measure at some point to see what a baseline speed might have been. I’m probably being way to scientifically anal about things but I want answers!
If my research pans out I think I’ll look into a methanol kit. A methanol system would give me the equivalent of 115 octane. Given the positive effects of octane I’ve seen I imagine that this would add a significant amount of power and top end speed. I am clearly not very good at being content.
Update: Somehow I managed a new best time of 10.88 in the quarter mile… with plain old 91 octane in my tank. I wish I had logged that run (I have 3rd gear pulls from the same round I can look at though). The worst part was that I had my GoPro setup but forgot my memory card (ahhh!). Maybe octane wasn’t the magic ingredient- I will have to explore this a bit more.
Since I have a little more free time I decided to fill it by acquiring a drone. I picked the DJI Phantom 4 to try out. Obviously I’m not going to be “droning” professionally, but I wanted something I could take some “good” video with (the P4 does 4K @ 30FPS… with some caveats…)
Initial impressions are favorable. Setup is pretty simple if you’ve got a advanced engineering degree (I would plan on a couple of hours to upgrade firmware, get software installed and configured and get your actual hardware charged and ready for flight).
Flight is remarkably easy. The P4 uses GPS to help with flight which made me more confident and definitely makes controlling the drone much easier (it hovers in place when not moving). When starting off you start out you can use a “beginner” mode which keeps the Phantom within a 30m radius (of whatever you designate). Once you get more comfortable DJI claims you have up to 3 miles of control. The POV on the remote is excellent and makes flying intuitive. The P4 has some anti-collision technology to make sure you don’t crash but I found it incredibly annoying and restrictive (however, that was while flying inside my house). In sports mode the drone can travel up to 45 MPH but flyer beware.
Video quality is not quite what I expected. There are a lot of video artifacts and a distinct moire effect on detailed surfaces like grass. I think this has something to do with transmission transmission throughput. I’m trying out different settings and I’m hoping I’ll find a way to clean things up a bit (maybe encoding stuff through software like Adobe Premier will help- I’m not sure yet).
You can record video in any resolution up to 4K and / or take hi-res photos from the air. I don’t know why, but (as I have mentioned in previous posts) I am enamored with aerial photography.
Overall construction quality is good. A lot of work has clearly gone into the design and implementation of this product and it’s a blast to fly. I love the fact that the blades can be removed and installed in a matter of seconds. Transport in a backpack should be no sweat as the unit is compact and fairly light. It will be fun to get some aerial shots of upcoming adventures.
While the P4 is obviously not a professional quality drone I did expect better video quality (I watched a lot of videos from the P3 and this seems to be a step bbackwards). Knowing what I know now I would probably buy it again. Remember to register your Phantom drone with the FAA and avoid restricted airspace. Happy flying!
I swore I would never do it again, but he siren song of aftermarket parts and more power has always proved to strong to resist… There are so many well developed and proven upgrades and technology for the 991 that I felt comfortable giving them a shot. I teamed up with Fabspeed, IPS, ByDesign, Cobb Tuning and Ken Garff Porsche for the build. It is, thus far, one of my smoother builds to date.
I bought this cool wall art from Fabspeed. Then they asked me if there was anything else they would help me with. That was the beginning…
I collected everything I needed over the next month (more on that in a second) and made the necessary installation arrangements.
This is what came out of the car:
The old parts they took out look so much worse than the new stuff going in that it’s hard to believe! This is the old muffler and exhaust tips, the old catalytic converts, exhaust headers, air filter, intercoolers, plenum and Y-pipe.
And these are the new parts that went into the car replacing the items above:
Fabspeed X-pipe exhaust
Fabspeed X-Pipe exhaust detail.
Fabspeed headers
Fabspeed header (detail)
Fabspeed catalytic converter
Fabspeed black ceramic coated exhaust tips.
IPD Y-Pipe & Plenum
IPD Plenum close up.
ByDesign billet intercoolers
BMC air filter
The installation was done at Ken Garff Lehi. They have a beautiful new facility and all the guys there were super cool and did a fantastic job.
June 25th: Officially underway. The car has been pulled apart. Parts will be added soon…
June 25th: Ken Garff’s service department is new (gorgeous) well organized and they do solid work.
June 25th: Love the way this car looks under the hood (or rather under the bumper).
Headers are in! Daniel (one of the salesman) was holding the headers prior to install and said, “Look at these- like art!” I don’t know about that, but they’re pretty sexy. The catalytic converters are in too! Everything seems like it’s fitting well.
June 27th: Love the way the Fabspeed X-pipe exhaust looks. This should be wicked. So far really happy with the guys at the dealership.
A quick comparison picture of the stock vs Fabspeed headers. Also the stock vs By Design Intercoolers. And then everything zipped back up. It is an absolute shame that you don’t get to see any of the cool stuff locked away in the bumper but at least you get a peek underneath. Visually I really prefer the Fabspeed exhaust to the stock box hanging down off the back of the car.
So ends the installation portion of my journey. Next up- tuning!
