This paper deals with the performance improvement of a 3-dimensional turbo code based on the partial concatenation of the 3GPP2 code with a rate-1 post-encoder. First, we optimize the distance spectrum of the 3-dimensional 3GPP2 turbo code by means of the adoption of a non regular post-encoding pattern. This allows us to increase the minimum Hamming distance and thereby to improve the performance at very low error rates. Then, we propose a time varying construction of the postencoded parity in order to reduce the observable loss of convergence at high error rates. The different improvement stages are illustrated with simulation results, asymptotical bounds and EXIT charts.