Porsche Cayman Tuning

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We outline options for your Cayman tuning and report on the ultimate modifications for your car. Porsche Caymans are awesome to work on and with carefully chosen modified tuning mods you can dramatically maximize your driving opportunities.

The Cayman is a good car modification project to execute. We see car enthusiasts wasting money on their Cayman doing the wrong mods and then having to start over. Follow our tips to avoid making the common mistakes

Cayman Tuning modifications.

Typically these motorsport modifications are usually fitted by our members, decide how far you want to push your car before you get going.

Getting the best sports parts for your planned usage of the car is vital. Stage 3 (competition) mods just won't work well on the road making the car difficult to drive.

Please watch our video which covers the 5 principles of tuning your car. Be sure to keep up with our latest YouTube content and subscribe.

Best mods for your Cayman

1. Lightened Flywheels - a lower weight flywheel will improve the engines rev changes. Not beneficial for all Cayman engines.
2. Air Induction and Sports Exhausts - Please be warned on their own these mods won't ADD HP for most setups, but they enable you to release power after other mods by losing a restriction.
3. Cayman Suspension - Fitting a more sporty Suspension kit radically improves your Cayman handling Coilovers and Bushings are the usual go to mods
4. Turbo upgrades - forced induction is the most efficient approach to increase your intakes air supply, this means you are able to combust more fuel and make higher power. Typically one of the most costly mods you'll see massive gains.
5. Fast road Camshafts are one of the most significant mechanical changes, but should always be fitted by someone familiar with setting them up on your car and it can sometimes be hard to find one but there might be a local firm to regrind a stock cam for you.
6. Head work - The goals of porting and flowing the head are to get air flowing into the engine while removing flow restrictions and turbulence.
7. Brake Upgrades - Improve your ability to stop should be high on your agenda.
8. ECU Tunes - A tune/remap provides the most advantage compared to cost, aftermarket ECU upgrades, and inline Tuning boxes are all alternatives.

Cayman Tuning Stages

Typical stage 1 mods often include: Suspension upgrade (drop 24mm - 44 mm.), Panel air filter, Sports exhaust, Lighter flywheel, Engine Tunes/Remapping, Alloy wheels.

Typical stage 2 mods often include: fuel pump upgrades, Power/Sport clutch, Ported and polished head, high flow fuel injector, Fast road cam.

Typical stage 3 mods often include: Adding or upgrading forced induction (turbo/supercharger), Engine balancing, Sports gearbox, Internal engine upgrades (pistons/head/valves), Competition cam.

Your aims when modding your car should be a flat and wide torque output. You want to avoid sending all the torque to be at the top end unless you are creating a motor sport car.

In this article we shall give a little insight into the world to the best modifications for your car, but we'd encourage you to spend some time on the site looking into the details of each type of performance mod.Fast road cams offer one of the biggest power gains for your money as far as a bolt on performance parts goes on a NA (naturally aspirated) engine.

The exhaust & intake valve durations play a big role in your cars power band, but be careful here, getting this wrong can upset the idle and make the car challenging to drive in traffic. You'd need to follow a cam upgrade with other mods and finish with a performance chip to fully release the power gain.

Don't forget to ramp up the fuelling when you are increasing the power - it makes the car more thirsty.

Using high octane petrol is another option if you find you are suffering from detonation or premature ignition on your Porsche project after fitting other performance mods. Larger injectors will enable you to supply sufficient fuel to the engine.

A fuel pump will only deliver a finite amount of fuel, so you may need to uprate this if your injectors are demanding more fuel.

Cayman Intake and Exhaust Tuning.

The next area for modification is the intake and exhaust. Please note that WE DO NOT RECOMMEND INDUCTION KITS, unless you have tuned your car with over 30 percent more power and are finding that the standard air intake has become a limitation.

Derestricting the airflow into the engine is a primary goal of tuning so get a better flowing air filter if you find that the car is running lean only if you find the car is running lean. Induction kits can sound sporty but due to the warm air in the engine bay they will not really increase power and actually rob you of power.

Sports exhausts can usually air flow out of the engine but do not go too large or you might just stuff your flow rate and make things worse. So generally speaking, keep to a size of 1.5 to around 2.5 inches to maximise flow rates, and this should take into account the amount of air your engine is moving.

Getting a professionally ported and polished head with larger valves can fully maximise your power gains. When you heavily modify your Cayman you will usally see that the standard clutch starts to suffer so get an uprated clutch. The best mods in our experience for your Cayman are Remapping or piggy back ecu, fast road cam and air intake and exhaust.

NA (naturally aspirated) engines do not achieve big power gains if you tune/remap them, unless you have done extensive modifications. With turbocharged engines this is another story. A tuned/remapped turbo will give large power gains and take full advantage of the strength of the block. Adding forced induction will see massive power gains but this is usually too expensive to be cost effective. Turbos are usually harder to add than a supercharger. It is more challenging to map a turbo as the boost builds exponentially with engine speed.

It is more straightforward to map a supercharger because the boost is directly proportional to engine speed on a linear curve. Adding forced induction will nearly always require a lower compression ratio or water injection.

Alloy wheel upgrades.

Because alloy wheels are less heavy they improve performance and they help to cool the brake disks. We can't go into too much detail here about tires but they are how the car puts the power down on the road so are a critical choice. directional tread pattern tires work well on Cayman, and make a big difference over budget tires. Large Cayman alloys can decrease performance. If you get big alloys you will be changing your final drive ratio.

Although some people have gone larger than this without issues we would restrict ourselves to a 18 inch rim size as the maximum.

Cayman Handling/Suspension upgrades

Many Cayman owners uprate the handling of their cars with sports suspension kits as a priority, this will certainly increase your enjoyment of the car.

Look out for adjustable coilovers which enable you to adjust your ride height and this allows you to fine tune your cornering performance.

What considerations must you make when setting up and selecting your suspension if your Cayman serves as a daily car as well?

Improvements to the bushings

What factors should you consider when setting up and selecting your suspension bushings if your Cayman is also used as a daily driver?

It is possible to connect the Cayman's suspension components to the chassis of the Cayman using poly bushes, which are drop in replacements for the factory mounts. The rubber ones usually start to fail with time and need replacing anyway so why not upgrade.

Installing new OEM rubber bushings may dramatically improve the performance of your car.

We found that most Cayman factory suspension setups need tweaking, a few degrees of toe out for cornering or toe in for stability, around 1.5, and slight negative camber will substantially enhance your cornering and handling.

We suggest that you fit performance suspension and lower the car by 24mm - 44 mm. Larger drops require arch work - especially on models already equipped with performance suspension.

Turning our attention to the engine we need to get a bit more torque out of the top end.

To be completely frank and honest, on the more modest engine sizes you are wasting your time spending money on modifications, so if this applies to you get yourself an engine swap then apply the following mods.

If you would like to know more, or just get some friendly advice on Tuning your car please join us in our friendly forum where you can discuss Cayman options in more detail with our Cayman owners. It would also be worth reading our unbiased Porsche tuning articles to get a full grasp of the benefits and drawbacks of each modification.

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