Shark Werks Coolant Pipes for 997 / 997.2 GT3 / RS / 4.0

Description

Shark Werks Coolant Pipes for 997 / 997.2 GT3 / RS / 4.0

This item is considered preventative maintenance and should be installed on all 997 and 997.2 GT3 and GT3RS (2007 to 2011) models. This part is not required or compatible with 996 GT3 models (which already have a metal tube), 996 Turbo models, and we have a different part for 997 Turbo models.

The GT3 engine is known for being incredibly robust and reliable, however a few major issues exist with concern to its cooling system, and this part is designed to fix one of these problems.

A known weakness is that the coolant pipes (6-8 per engine) come unstuck from various housings and cause complete catastrophic coolant failures.

A lesser known issue involves the plastic coolant elbow pipes that run to the oil cooler (aka heat exchanger). These pipes are molded plastic and have a very thin wall where the pipe connects to the engine with an O-ring seal. The problem is that over time and mileage, the thin plastic wall will break down at the o-ring slot (its weakest and thinnest point) causing a crack to appear. Eventually the whole engine will need to be removed in order to replace a cheap plastic tube. Both of these issues have been observed on the 997 Turbo models as well.

After a customer spent nearly $2500 replacing this small part due to a coolant leak, costing him two track days and several weeks of downtime, we decided that a permanent solution was necessary and made these stainless steel pipes with CNC billet ends. We believe these should be used in place of the OEM part to avoid the aforementioned costs involved in replacing these leaky tubes ever again.

A razor blade showing where the stock piece fails. The car had approximately 40,000 miles of use in a mild climate:

Shark Werks GT3 Coolant Pipe shown next to the stock plastic part:

The engine must be removed in order to install these so we recommend performing the “coolant fix” at the same time or replacing these whenever an engine rebuild is in progress.

Price shown is for two pieces. One kit per vehicle is required. O-rings are included and pre-installed.