Only a couple of short notes before I go to bed. I had a very exciting day today, driving a RUF 550 HP kit equipped 997 Turbo with Tiptronic until I ran out of gas.

1. impressive power increase, this car definetely has at least 50-60 HP more, so the 550 HP claim isn't exaggerated.
2. engine run smoothly, same as stock, only the oil temperature seems to be around 10 degrees Celsius higher when driving hard, water temperature is same as stock
3. incredible torque increase, especially in the low and mid rev range
4. kickdown "lag" slightly worse but this can be avoided by not flooring the throttle pedal completely in the lower rev range
5. engine revs freely, there is no lag, hick-up or something else, it feels like stock, it just revs quicker towards the rev limiter
6. fuel consumption increased by aprox. 60%(!) when driving at verz high speeds on the Autobahn. At lower speeds, the fuel consumption has increased by aprox. 10-20%
7. Vmax still 310 kph like stock car due to Tiptronic. There seems to be some sort of "safety switch" in the Tiptronic software which prevents the engine to rev higher than the set safety limit of 6400 and 6600 (or 6600 and 6800, I don't remember the precise figures anymore). RUF is working on a solution but it may take a while. Most of the time I was driving at speeds between 270 and 315 (speedo), so this didn't bother me today.

Conclusion: great power and torque delivery, very good adaptation to the Tiptronic with the exception of the increased kickdown lag and Vmax issue. Still highly recommendable, especially since RUF has a fantastic service and they don't bull around and they don't tell stories. Very honest people, maybe too honest for "regular" customers who don't know much about technical details and how such things usually work in this business.

The increased fuel consumption may be an issue for those who care about fuel cost and/or how often they need to visit a fuel station. The stock Vmax is also an issue which isn't too important in my opinon but of course RUF needs to find a solution sooner or later because some people want to have it all.

Would I buy this kit? Definetely. One reason would be the friendliness and service of the RUF team and of course the fact that they're only 50 km away from my home and if there is something wrong...

I won't comment on performance figures until I don't get the chance to do a REAL LIFE comparison with other cars, incl. the Carrera GT. We're working on this right now but I can't promise too much since I don't have much spare time left.

Regarding the Performancebox: it works pretty well with the external GPS antenna, with the internal one...well...I wouldn't really trust these results all the time.
Still...although the company makes a lot of claims and ads, professional equipment used by car magazines usually looks different and is much more expensive. Like I also said before, the testing coditions incl. the equipment have to be certified, bla bla bla. You really can't even directly compare test results from one car magazine to another. In the past, the absolutely same car (license plate) achieved completely different results from one magazine to the other, so please take this with a grain of salt.

Regarding the CGT: like I said before, I saw MANY MANY MANY test results, some with my own eyes, simply because I was there when the testing was done. NONE of these three or four different CGT did 0-300 kph in less than 30 seconds, with a tiny exception for one run out of 10 when it was 29.something. In th e CGT community, it is actually a well known fact that most CGT never achieve the performance data Porsche advertised. This is even valid for the 0-200 kph performance. Like it or not, this is a fact.

The 997 Turbo is a nice car and yes, times around 40-43 seconds for the 0-300 kph run are normal. This is pretty fast, as far as I remember, the 996 Turbo did 0-300 kph in 60 seconds but maybe somebody could look this up to make sure I got the right number (a lot of time has passed... ).

We tested it ourselves with two 997 Turbo Tip, from 0-230 kph or so, the 997 Turbo Tip beats the manual all the time, between 250 and around 300 things start to look different, the manual actually gains a second or two. The five speed Tiptronic is actually a huge advantage for the tuning because the last gear is longer and theoretically, the Tip equipped 997 Turbo could reach a fabulous Vmax of 330 kph and even more. Unfortunately there is that damned Tiptronic rev limiter issue and I'm not sure that a solution will be found soon.

More to come this weekend, I need to go to bed, my eyes already hurt.