The Ultimate Porsche Enthusiast

You already know that there are many ways to define such a creature, and I will add my view to the mix, because, well, the more the merrier. If you think I get it wrong, let me know.

To begin, here is a quote from an article about the 1984 Porsche Carrera that appeared in the February, 1984, issue of Car and Driver magazine. It is a bit over the top, but it's a start:

"It is the evil weevil, the rock-solid, steely-eyed grim reaper of sporting cars, the para­gon of knife-edged incisiveness and buttoned-down insanity. More than any other factory-fresh passenger car available here today, the Porsche 911 Carrera is the abso­lute embodiment of clench-jawed, tight­fisted, slit-eyed enthusiasm run amok, a car for making the landscape pass with explosive fluidity. Strange that a car so serious can bring such unadulterated joy, but there you are, sporting an enormous, cheek-splitting leer when you unstrap and step out. You devil, you."

The above euphoric POV is action-packed, sure enough, but that's good, because whatever I say following it will seem sober and believable.

No matter what, the whole point of owning and feeding a classic, air-cooled Porsche is to have fun with it. How and why you have fun is the matter in question here, and when I provide my stance on the question you may have another view, which you are free to offer and I hope that you do. 

The first mid-engined race car, of which Ferdinand Porsche was a co-designer. 1923  © Porsche (?)

When I mention feeding, of course I am speaking of Do-It-Yourself repair, maintenance, modification, massage, and activities of a similar kind; not only gas, and oil, and insurance, and the like. Plus, for me, I being a DIYer, 'checkbook restoration' - using the term in a widely inclusive way - excludes Enthusiasts. Sorry, but unless you occasionally get your hands dirty, your checkbook Porsche is a pampered artifact of another stripe entirely. Some will say that plopping down a check is okay; after all, some people are very excited about their elderly Porsche but simply have no manual skills, or no place to perform work. I respect that, but for me they are once-removed from being hard-core enthusiasts, otherwise they would find a way to approach the beast in a hands-on fashion, because there is no other way to gain the real depth of requisite knowledge and appreciation necessary to become an Ultimate Porsche Enthusiast.

Some people race, some prefer auto-cross competition, others rally, or compete in a concours d'élégance now and then, but the majority simply enjoy driving their 30 or 40 year-old cars on sunny summer days when it isn't raining. They often visit fellow Porsche owners to share chat and something to eat, while others are more daring and drive in the snow, but they exist in very small numbers because their cars are all rusting to dust from the road salt. I guess there are some who really enjoy just working on their cars. I hope they have a lot of fun doing this, because the main reason Porsches exist is for driving, not anything else. I've said this before, in an earlier post.

I used to know some builders of Experimental (home-built) aircraft who could actually fly, but didn't because their true passion was crafting airplanes. There is room for everybody. 

Nevertheless, it is rewarding to creatively address problems and equipment issues, even design shortcomings, with novel solutions that tread new ground. Which is to say that I don't consider a Porsche to be a sacred object to worship - keeping it all as the factory intended - rather, it's a car, that's all. A car that is perfect need not evolve; Porsches evolve. Darwin knew cars.

I'm not into hot-rod Porsches. For me there are too many of them, and too often they follow a dogma that rigidly dictates the genre's parameters. Many are nicely crafted and all; I just don't want to do this to my car.

Type 64  © Porsche

The notion of a sports car predates Porsche's sports cars by many decades. Ferdinand Porsche began in the last years of the 19th century by designing electric and hybrid cars for practical use, as an employee of the Lohner coach works in Vienna. They were, in essence, rough horse wagons with novel propulsion devices, and not very sporty. That said, though, the Lohner-Porsche Mixte Hybrid set an Austrian Land Speed record for the time, of almost 60 kilometres per hour (~37 miles per hour), plus with Ferdinand driving the front-wheel-drive model, the car won a rally. It was easy to add two more electric motors to the rear wheels, thereby making a four-wheel-drive version - so much for Porsche selling out when it introduced the Cayenne.

Ja, sehr gut

F. Porsche joined Austro-Daimler in 1906, but his subsequent career was dizzyingly convoluted, although he did noteworthy work for Mercedes-Benz (the SSK, and others). Briefly unemployed during the Great Depression, he formed his own company in 1931 at the age of ~56. During all of this time he was a great race car designer, even designing and constructing race cars when he had no customer for the car - he was an Enthusiast. You Porsche types know all of this, but I'm trying to make a case. . .

Sure, today's Porsche AG is in business to make money, but they do so with cars that possess tremendous capability, plus they continue to build and field top-tier race cars. That's their thing. Porsche is not a company that attempts to sell econo-boxes that are cheap enough for the masses; others do that. Porsche builds exciting cars.

Beetle prototype, 1937, Ferdinand looking on.  © Porsche

I'm going to skip the part involving Hitler being an automobile aficionado, and Porsche stealing - essentially, and it was proven in court - the idea for a rear-engined, four cylinder air-cooled people's car from Hans Ledwinka of the Czech company Tatra (and others). That car became the Volkswagen Beetle, and later Porsche sports cars sold to ordinary citizens throughout the 1950s and into the '60s were pretty much hot rodded VWs. As of the model 911 they very much were not VW hot rods any more, at all. 

This is not a detailed Porsche automobile history lesson; it's a simplistic overview meant to establish the idea that enthusiasm and invention have always been at the core of Porsche production and ownership. I believe that the majority of Porsche's sports cars that have vanished from the face of the Earth have done so because they were wrecked while being driven beyond their limits (or the driver's) in competition. Not all, obviously, but a substantial percentage. Anyway, that's my theory. The rest are still on the road. Competition = hard use = inventive involvement to keep them going. There are many ways to be an enthusiast. 

So, how and why do you have fun with your classic 911? My 911 is a hot car. I mean it is hot in there when summer arrives; it doesn't have air conditioning. The car is like a terrarium, all windows and a small top with no sunroof, and inside I'm sweating and there is flora growing. With the windows all the way down it is cooler, but of course it is also much louder that way, and the aerodynamics are such that not a lot of air blows on me. My car lacks central dashboard air vents and the rest of its complicated 'ventilation' system doesn't take up the slack.

As I said, it's just a car, not a sacred object, so I scare off purists when I experiment with solutions to problems, sometimes. This is not a big thing, but I'm playing around,  building a silly gadget to duct more cooling air onto my perspiring carcass as I drive. It does nothing to cool me when I stop, but neither does the car. My first prototype, proof-of-concept version blasts me with welcome air, which is better than no air, but I want to make it smaller and less obtrusive, and maybe more efficient, too. 

My first prototype air snorkel  © Me

This simple gadget is often the subject of dumb jokes and the like when Porsche types see it, but, really it's a useful concept. The idea is to enjoy the car through the act of creatively seeking solutions to its assorted problems, thereby making the car more agreeable to use. In other words, it's not necessary to bow down to a tightly focused Porsche dogma in order to have fun with the car.

The above project is only an illustration of an attitude; it's not meant to be some sort of central focus of this post, since I invent things continuously. However, any other car as uncomfortable as mine (noise, heat, complex and obsolete maintenance, bumpy, harsh, et al) I would get rid of. I put up with the raw nature and hard edges of my car because it isn't like other cars. It doesn't sound like them, doesn't drive like them. It's a Porsche. It's got a heritage, and it has a unique history of real enthusiasm on the part of its builders.

Notice that a central snorkel air intake, for cooling the driver, was fine on this '70s Grand Prix racer.

So, I enthuse over all of it, warts and all. Air cooled. DIY. Dirty hands. Don't be shy about being creative, because it's a lot of fun and it sometimes works.  

Driving Arizona

Saguaro National Park. Saguaros live 200 years and can reach 78 feet (~24m) tall.

On a recent trip we went to Arizona, mainly. Up here in Quebec there was snow on the ground when we flew off to Arizona - there still is some here at this writing - and I imagined that Arizona, which borders Mexico, would be warm and snowless. But no, there was snow on the ground there, too, at least in the mid to northern part of the state, and it was as often as not quite cold. This would be an ideal season to drive an elderly Porsche like mine, which is not equipped with air conditioning although it has heating, but we saw (almost) no Porsches on the roads of Arizona.

This lack of Porsches was puzzling, considering the very active Arizona Region of the Porsche Club of America; perhaps we frequented the wrong neighborhoods. Where we were, 85% of the vehicles were pickup trucks of vague vintage, except for the tourists' cars and the like. In my perspective the exciting parts of the state mainly reside in the Navajo Nation, where a utilitarian truck is the obvious option. Sports car? No. Most of the Navajo Nation is located in Arizona; it sits in three states and it is the largest land area assigned to a mainly autonomous Native American jurisdiction within the United States.

Anyway, driving in Arizona, in any sort of 'car', was a real treat to me, even in my small rental Ford. The paved roads are deliciously smooth and sinuous, the landscape is stunning always, the scale of the spaces is humbling, the air is mainly clear - unless there is a haboob happening, which is routine, but it was simply very windy when we were there. Back home the frost-heaved highways keep the speed of all travel modest, and your Porsche's suspension gets mercilessly tested by those Quebec roads, but slowly. Mine is still in my shop awaiting dry dirt roads, instead of mud.

Arizona offers a surreal and curiously spiritual experience to the visitor, and I don't even regard myself as a spiritual person.   

The first sentence of Albert Einstein's wonderful essay An Ideal of Service to Our Fellow Man is the following: "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious—the knowledge of the existence of something unfathomable to us, the manifestation of the most profound reason coupled with the most brilliant beauty." This says a great deal about how you might feel upon first seeing Monument Valley, or Antelope Canyon, or the Grand Canyon, or Canyon de Chelly. They overwhelm, but they are real and directly before you even though they are part of the 'other' as they stand alone, timeless, and alive. And unfathomable, and beautiful. Etherial is an overused word and is somehow unexpected in this case, but it works, never mind the stone and colossal scale.

Click on any image for a larger version.

Spider Rock (800 feet or ~244 meters tall) in Canyon de Chelly is considered a center of the Navajo spiritual universe. 

Going to all of these places during the heavy tourist season would result in another impression, but if you aim your camera away from the gawkers you may be okay. The heavy tourist season hadn't started yet; we were okay.

Monument Valley

But, speaking of driving, you are permitted to drive your own vehicle into Monument Valley, for a fee. It's a poor idea to do this. The Navajo Nation is happy to collect your money, however, they have no interest in the type of vehicle that you are driving. Pay and go, and if the bottom of your car gets torn off you will be reminded that there is a 'rough road' sign somewhere. We saw plenty of low-slung cars crawling along and zig-zagging while crunching and scraping noises escaped from underneath to accompany the grimaces of the drivers. Also, without an official Navajo guide you will not be told where to drive, nor what you are looking at. Find a good tour in a closed Suburban or Jeep; this is much more comfortable and you will be able to hear the guide more easily - and ask questions when you want to.

You can drive into Canyon de Chelly, too, but there are restrictions as to the type of vehicle permitted, plus there you must be accompanied by a Navajo guide. This is better all around if you feel that you have to do your own driving. Forget any Porsche but a Cayenne in these places, and note that all-wheel drive vehicles are not allowed in Canyon de Chelly. Maybe that excludes the Cayenne, too.


More of the sublime before we get to the ridiculous. Antelope Canyon is a sublime 'slot' canyon in Navajo land on the northern edge of Arizona. I was told that there are about 150 slot canyons on Navajo land, but south of Interstate Highway 70 in Utah there are over 1,000, also they exist all over the world. None are as commercially exploited as Antelope is and there is a mixed blessing and also curse in this. It is said that Antelope is the most dramatic and exotic of all; of course this is subjective and self-serving as an appraisal, since this description was provided by one of the mandatory Navajo guides in upper Antelope, and the Navajos know which side their bread is buttered on. They know too well about commercialization, but also not well enough.

A slot canyon is a narrow canyon, most often narrowest on its top (maybe 3+ feet - 1 meter) wide up there, but getting a good deal wider down in the depths. As a result, light is always dramatic as it bounces down the sculpted walls, and the colors change with every passing wisp of cloud. The forms to be seen are beautiful beyond belief and it is impossible to take an uninteresting photograph in the place. The blessing with Antelope is that it is easily accessible by 4x4 from Paige, AZ; the curse is that the Navajo Nation evidently enforces no limit on the number of awed viewers that get packed into the canyon every day, which means around 1,700 people per day in the peak season. It's only about one-quarter mile (402 meters) long and the interesting part is mostly in the middle! Oh, and the average width is around six or eight feet. The drive to the canyon follows a deep-sand dry wash, and it's fun to churn along in a jacked-up truck with huge tires, but then that's the ten-year-old in me.

This visitor density results in the sardine syndrome, with tourists photographing each other's heads if they are not careful, and all of them are rushed through like herds of animals on the way to market. They will kill the goose that laid the golden egg. Okay, those visitors are not there because this is yet another over-hyped, mediocre roadside attraction - it truly is stunning to see. But, if you go to see such a thing, consider doing a bit of research on alternative slot canyons, especially if you are up to doing a little 'canyoneering' that might get you muddy.

That said, the place is sublime. Click on any of these images of mine for a larger version. It was worth what it took to make these photos of tiny Antelope.


The Mother Road

Before the building of the Interstate Highway System ten years after WWII - a project championed by U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower - the roadways across the U.S.A. were small, slow, sometimes unpaved, spottily marked, and unevenly mapped.  Eisenhower envisioned a high-capacity, well-marked, and fast system of roads connecting all areas of the United States, so that even remote parts of the country could have access to improved transport, commerce, and easy freedom of travel.

Nevertheless, the first single highway that reached from the east of the country all the way to Los Angeles on the west coast, and that was paved all the way, was U.S. Route 66.

The road signs were individualized by state. 
This one has rare glass reflectors in the '66'.

Known by several names throughout the years including the "Mother Road," "Main Street of America," and the "Will Rogers Highway," Route 66 served travelers for a half century, before totally succumbing to the 'new and improved' interstate system. 

Established in 1926, road signs began to be erected the following year, but, it would be several years before the 2,448 mile (3,940 km) highway would be continuously paved from Chicago to Los Angeles.

Running through the states of Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, the highway became one of the most famous roads in America. For decades, this historic path served thousands who were migrating west, especially during the Dust Bowl drought of the 1930's.

Over the years, the road underwent many improvements and realignments, changing its course and overall length, and moving its endpoint farther west to Santa Monica, California. (The preceding five sentences are paraphrased from the website Legends of America.) 

As happened with the earlier trans-continental railroads in the U.S., and Canada, towns sprang up along 66's path, businesses were invented to service those towns, as well as travelers passing through them. Some of those businesses were a bit goofy. There is a lot more info on the Web about this road, so let me get to my recent experience of artifacts left along its path.

Today, many of the small towns along the no longer official Route 66 are shabby and somewhat derelict, at least in my limited experience. We wound up in Holbrook, AZ, one evening. Basically it fits this description. Here we found the Wigwam Motel #6, one of three remaining of the original seven 'Wigwam Villages'. It is a quintessential example of vulgar Americana and, therefore, fits nicely into the experience of visiting run-down small towns along a defunct piece of roadway, fruitlessly looking to spot at least one Porsche in Arizona.

Chester E. Lewis built #6 in 1950, which makes it the last to be constructed, maybe, as there seems to be some confusion over the final franchise built vs. the last Wigwam Village built - that was not a franchise. In any case, it's based on the design of Frank A. Redford, who built the first example in 1933. Lewis purchased rights to Redford's design, as well as the right to use the name "Wigwam Village" (although it's identified on its sign as 'Wigwam Motel') but with a novel royalty agreement to use the name: coin operated radios were installed in Lewis's Wigwam Village, and every dime (10¢) inserted for 30 minutes of listening would be sent to Redford as payment for the name's use.

The concrete 'wigwams' (better identified as tipis) have a door with two skinny, curtained windows, and two small diamond-shaped windows at knee height, one of which is filled by an air conditioner. In other words, you can't see out. There is a bathroom, but the mirror above the sink is mounted onto the sloped wall, meaning that you must squat down in order to see up into it. You take a shower on a slant, too.

Old cars and other junk that Chester favored are scattered around the motel to give a sort of time-warp effect, bringing you back to the '50's and '60's when this place was newer, in a time preceding the Interstate Highway, which later bypassed Holbrook. Chester's daughter, Elinor, still presides at the registration desk of this family-run relic of 66's heyday. I enjoyed it for its pure silliness.

 

The Porsche Pimpmobile 

Finally, I did see one, and only one Porsche in Arizona. It was a Cayenne, and I saw it on the south side of Tucson, near the airport. I'm sorry, I'm probably insulting the owner of that SUV, but it looked for all the world like a pimpmobile. I thought I was in Chicago, or New York where such vehicles regularly run around. Maybe not Porsche pimpmobiles in those places, so this must have been unique to the environs of Tucson.

I apologize to you, too, but I don't have a picture of the 'car' because I was driving and that Cayenne scooted by at too excited a pace to grab a photo, but there was no mistaking it. Pure pimpmobile. This means extra, extra wide whitewall tires, so it didn't have the current, trendy low profile rubber seen on giant diameter wheels that are ubiquitous, but it did seem to have chrome wheel spinners, along with absolute tonnage of other chrome bits. There was a massive hood ornament, plus other shiny gizmos attached up there - little fins and things; of course the windows were blacked out, and that 'mobile' was a bright bronze, almost copper color. I might carry on, but I'm sure you can imagine it and I hope you aren't ill.

Poor Arizona. That state is filled with natural and cultural wonders, but I'm unable to include a brazen pimpmobile as being culturally significant, even if it was a Porsche. Perhaps that's my mistake. My innocent 40+ year old 911 was there to greet me when I got home. That was nice.

There was much more to Arizona, but thanks for reading as much as you did. Maybe some day. . .

Porsche Physiognomy

"Physiognomy is the assessment of a person's character or personality from his or her outer appearance, especially the face. The term can also refer to the general appearance of a person, object [such as a Porsche 911, I add], or terrain . . ." Wikipedia. When people are generally understood to be of a certain character because of their appearance, they typically behave in the manner expected of them - toward the person(s) who appraised them in the first place. 

I knew a guy who owned a 997 GT3. He was given a ticket for speeding, and on that ticket the police officer wrote, "It looked as if he was speeding." When parked a GT3 looks as if it is speeding. Duh. The Porsche owner questioned the ticket before a judge, and the judge had no idea what a GT3 was, nor what it looked like. So he accepted the officer's appraisal and the ticket stood. If it looks like a sports car, it probably is a fast car, and people speed in those things. To the cop, speeding was the expected behaviour, therefore the driver must have been speeding. It's that simple, even if the GT3 driver was unaware of the lurking traffic cop's preconceived idea and, though irrelevant, innocent of it. I know, in some states the traffic police are trained in speed estimation and their expertise will stand in court, but in this instance no approximation of speed (?) was indicated for the ticketed driver, so the whole thing was iffy and a bit peculiar.

Prejudices are rampant all over the world, all of the time. Many wars occur because of them, never mind if anyone is guilty of anything - except within the erroneous perception of someone else. So, if you drive a Porsche, you are perceived as being guilty 95% of the time, no matter what you are doing. You are guilty for owning a Porsche, because - no matter that it is a 35 year old junker that cost less than a used Hyundai - it is a $ PORSCHE $, and you must be a member of the thieving 1%, and that's why there are jokes about the differences between a porcupine and a Porsche. So there.

Very well, if you own a Porsche, you already know the above to be the gospel truth, or you will soon know it. But, it doesn't stop there, with speeding.

You are also understood to be intensely interested in drag racing with tricked-out little rice-grinder cars with sewer pipe exhausts and out-of-proportion 'spoiler' wings on the back, along with other junk. Just ask the driver of one of those cars, who is revving his engine at a stoplight, and he will tell you that it's true, but that you try to hide it because you don't want to be embarrassed when he blows you off the road. Is that part true? And you are rude, vain, aggressive, plus being generally offensive, all without necessarily opening your mouth, at all.  

Not to mention the pick-up trucks, minivans, and big SUVs that tailgate you, blast past you for no fruitful reason on a crowded highway, and similar. You are a target, so why do you drive such a car and subject yourself to all of this nonsense? There must be a good reason, right? Oh, and you can never allow a valet to park your car, lest you have an unending supply of free transmissions available to you.

His Lordship, Bulwer-Lytton

There is only one reason for the abuse you unfairly receive as a Porsche owner and driver; the "Great Unwashed" (to quote Lord Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, in his 1830 novel Paul Clifford) are envious of you to a deep shade of green. Deal with it, and avoid the porcupine thing.

Paradigm Shift

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A poorly shifting model 915 transmission in an old Porsche is, frankly, a Royal pain, and it's tedious and time consuming to rectify the issue - in a way that suits a sporting automobile. Never mind, royals are synthetic potentates, anyway, who just model clothes, wear absurd hats, and they don't matter in this case. So, another perspective is in order.

Okay then, let's look at it this way. A 915 that must, of necessity, be shifted deliberately and very slowly can be understood as an unambiguous safety device. How can you fling your 911 through the countryside at verboten speeds that threaten life and limb, not yours, when the damned thing won't shift swiftly enough to allow you to select the next gear before you need yet another gear already? You get way behind in no time. Therefore, enjoy the scenery and be satisfied that you have not been arrested again.

Yes, my car.

There are many reasons for troublesome shifting, and as I mention in the post below, changing certain plastic bushings in the shift linkage is corrective step one (I have done this job this winter, and have no faith whatever that it will help anything), along with a new clutch cable (done already, too), followed by tiresome adjustment of these and other bits, ad nauseam. Considering that so many mechanisms are infinitely adjustable on a Porsche, it takes an infinite number of attempts to get them all working acceptably. This infuriating process is called a 'hobby' and we are meant to enjoy it.

An alternative is to throw cubic money at an 'expert' to perform these tasks, an expert on old Porsches, but then it is a challenge to find such a person, especially in a decidedly rural area. Who certifies the expertness of such an individual, anyway? Aside from unreliable 'testimonials' and hearsay, what do you have as a credential to look at? Self-taught 'experts' have been big trouble in my immediate experience. So, we DIY types find ourselves with a hobby. Might as well mess it up myself, rather than pay someone to do that. At least I'll know what went where and why, and this could shorten the time and effort needed to repair the repair. I can get creative with my 'upgrades', same as anyone else, so I might as well take credit when things go well, plus it's easier to forget my mistakes when they don't.

This is the bottom of the gear shifting device.

I'm obligated to do a lot of forgetting. 

To face the task of replacing a failed part, you essentially unscrew the old one and screw on a pinch-hitter, new or used. That may not always be easy, but it doesn't take a large dose of creativity to solve the problem. By the way, here is the difference between a new and a used part: 10%. Ask any auto dismantler; most cars getting 'parted-out' are worth vastly more money in pieces, rather than whole. 

But, it is the odd things requiring dedicated brainstorming that offer the real challenge when nursing an old car. Why is that hole there? Why isn't there a hole here? What was the rationale for installing this widget upside down, and backwards? Did these cars originally come with a siren? Oh look, a 5 kilogram radio-telephone transceiver, not hooked up to anything. Was this a cop car once upon a time?

Soon it will be Valentine's Day. I almost said 'St. Valentine's Day' but with the world wracked by heinous sectarian violence I'd rather leave off the religious origin and just get cozy with secularism. My moral theories don't fit any convenient template anyway, so who am I to offer myself as a martyr on the basis of (non-existent) membership in a reviled (by some) denomination of any sort? Somehow I don't feel any safer having said that. I beg your pardon, my thinking tends to go all over the place. 

My contention is that I don't get to spend enough time beneath my Porsche, deftly removing sirens and such, while no one else is aware that I ever come out from under there. So now I'm thinking, "What do I need to do to satisfy my amorous inclinations on February 14?" It ought to be something quite good that might involve emerging from beneath the car, if not actually getting up off the creeper (I'm old). That last phrase is a joke by the way. I'm starting to lose it, so I'd better get back to transmission shifting issues and leave delicate ephemera to others. I'll keep thinking about this, though.

The curious thing about my shifting issue is that the transmission gets harder to shift as the car gets hotter. By harder to shift, I mean that it gets physically more difficult to push the shifting lever out of one gear, and then into another. I'm not talking about gears crunching because of bad synchronizers, I simply mean that it is impossible to move that lever without difficulty. If the clutch is not disengaging for some reason - after the car gets hot, meaning at least an hour's driving - then the gears should crunch, but they don't. So, what changes with heat, causing this issue? Everybody scratches their head over this, possibly including you. 

Although the engine and transmission mounts are just three years old (bad ones can cause shifting issues), to me they look odd for a couple of reasons. There is a generous gap between the rubber of the transmission mount and its top mating surface, which is part of the car's 'frame'. As well, both the engine and transmission mounts are slightly more compressed toward the front, suggesting that the whole engine and transmission unit tilts downward in the direction of the nose of the car. I have to check to see if the shifting rod that protrudes from the front of the transmission is centered in the hole through which it pokes into the body's tunnel. If it's not, then those mounts are dysfunctional, virtually new, or not. The transmission is filled with first-rate, widely recommended gear oil.

As I nearly said, thinking outside of the box can be invigorating, and it certainly is necessary. 

Lemförder to the Rescue

The title you see anticipates my next effort, which will appear as soon as I crawl under the car in earnest to get into trouble monkeying around with the front suspension. That, or I'll report with an excuse for doing something else that's easier.

Later:  I have a proper excuse as it works out, so here I am reporting it:  Two herniated disks, and two impinged nerves that have nothing to do with them. A bad back on this scale is a nice gift that keeps on giving; it hurts and takes time to heal, so the delay with this post, or any other one here, will provide you with a little relief, too. I will have to figure out some light cosmetic jobs for the short term, perhaps flicking a feather duster in the car's general direction. Regrettable, but I didn't do it on purpose.

Still later: No, no work has happened, but at least I'm thinking it all through too much as my back heals. This offers certain rewards and, of course, alibis to go with them. For me planning is a comforting thing; when there is a good plan of what needs to be done, and good solid work to go with it fully understood, then there you have half the pleasure of actually doing the thing already in your pocket.

Mark Twain understood this and he was the perfect paradigm for this philosophy. He said, "I love to work. Why, sir, when I have a piece of work to perform, I go away to myself, sit down in the shade and muse over the coming enjoyment. Sometimes I am so industrious that I muse too long." Letter to John T. Moore, July 6, 1859

Remarkably, Twain comprehended repairing old Porsches very well, because at another moment he pointed out that, "Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under differing conditions." That would sketch out the whole process nicely, wouldn't it?

But I can't blame only Twain for all of this. Tom Clancy got in on this act when he said, "The difference between fiction and reality?  Fiction has to make sense." I rest my case. 

A good amount of time has melted away since the previous update to this on and off, multi-theme post, but that's okay, because a few things have actually been happening. With my Porsche, that is. To see it now you would think that I have been wrenching away steadily at the contraption, but this illusion is the result of a clever distribution of tools and parts left lying around the shop, to fool the eye, so to speak. If it looks like a busy workshop, then it must be such a place . . .

But it is, in fact - I'll stick in some pictures below to prove it. Here are some issues being tackled at the moment: Gear shifting has been unpleasant; stiff and stiffer the warmer the car gets, so the first attack on this frustration involves a new clutch cable, shifter bushings, shift coupler, and all of that. Then, there is a leak of air, road dust, and noise entering the car at the bottom corners of the rear window - the result of inattentive work when the car was repaired/updated at some prehistoric moment; I will be happy to seal this off. Plus, the trunk's gas struts, that hold up the lid, have expired and the lid hits me on the head while I'm rummaging around in there. Also, I am switching to 'turbo tie rods', seen above. Plus tune-up items, random small springs, seals, filters, new brake fluid, and a further list of doodads not interesting enough to mention - and there is cosmetic work, too. Oh, and I'm going to install a new third brake light. Necessary, all of this, if I want this car to continue to wow the locals, as well as be reliable, and actually fun to drive.

My back is a little bit better, and I'm even going to work out in a gym to regain faded muscles. With a trainer.

This first photo reveals the interior, minus the seats, carpeting, floorboards, and shifting mechanism, but the new clutch cable has already been installed.

The second image simply illustrates the process of adjusting the clutch cable. I moved the clutch release lever - to which the clutch cable attaches - one spline of rotation toward the front of the car, in order to put the adjustment nuts in the center of the threaded end of the cable, thereby giving me more 'fore and aft' adjustment. Therefore, the adjustment is totally off, and it will be black magic to get it correct when the car is back on the road in the spring.

The process of replacing the trunk's lid-holding struts is straightforward; remove the little clips from four pins, pull the pins out, and remove the struts.  Installing new struts is the reverse of removal, except for the miserable bottom pin on the left side of the car. You can't even see the silly pin, nor can you feel it, because your hand won't fit down where it is. Not even a dramatically long needle-nose pliers will do the trick, because of junk in the way. I'm going to have to read up on this.

Okay, reading up was no help, but I figured out a clever method, unfortunately I didn't photograph it. Here it is: With the strut out of the car, I took the pin that fits through it's bottom end into my hand and threaded a strong sewing thread through the hole in the end of the pin and tied it. Then I strung the thread through the bracket into which the strut fits, then through the bottom of the strut, then through the other side of the bracket. Being cautious to avoid tangling the thread, I then installed the strut into its bracket. It was then a simple matter to pull the thread, which pulled the pin through the bracket and strut. I cut the thread and it was installed, just like that. Then you slip on the clip that holds the pin in place. Prior to inventing this method, I had wasted hours on this simple little project.

There you have it for now. Next I'll rant about trying to seal the gap at the bottom of the rear windows. Not as easy as I had hoped, naturally.

A pickle fork is a crude fork-shaped wedge that is driven
into the tie rod-to-steering control arm joint to pop it apart.

March 4, 2014. Never mind the gap seal business for now. Finally I installed the Lemförder turbo tie rods that are pictured above. The one on the right side of the car was the easier of the two, so I did it first as a learning process, and all of the difficult issues that people mention are true. I had to buy a pickle fork tool to get the tie rod end off, because all of my penetrating oil and hammering failed to pop it out of the tapered hole in the end of the steering control arm. But once the tie rod end was off, the right side tie rod unscrewed easily.

You screw in the new tie rod (using some Lock-Tight), then the fun begins. Getting the new rubber boot that covers everything and its retainer spring into place involves some learning, ingenuity, tool fabrication, and a lot of cussing. I quoted the Pope. . .  At last I completed the job on the right side, but the left side offered an endlessly entertaining proposition. The reason is that on my car, the brake master cylinder and attendant jumble of tubing is under the car and beneath the left side tie rod, making access 'interesting'. 

In the photo below is the end of the new rubber bellows that encloses the steering rack and tie rod (I know it doesn't look new, but it is); it keeps dirt and water out of the rack, so that your steering doesn't fail. No human on Earth has fingers with enough joints in them to fit up under there, especially when it comes to fitting the end of the bellows onto the steering gear box, and positioning the tight spring that goes around the bellows-end. It looks easily accessible here, but it very much is not. 

The bellows' coil spring is in the middle here. Click to enlarge.

So, this is where the tool fabrication comes in. I invented a number of tools and they did the job, basic though it is. Not easy, however. I'm proud of those simple tools, so if anybody is struggling with this installation, send me a message via the "Post a Comment" thingy and I'll describe them for you.

Most of this stuff will get finished eventually, if I keep my cool. I'm starting to enjoy thinking outside of the box once more in order to create tools, and the like.  

Synaptic Homeostasis for the 911

In the fall of the year my Porsche must to be put into storage for the duration of the oncoming winter; it's the only sensible option in this climate. The vintage of Porsche that I own has a non-galvanized body shell, so any suggestion of salt or slush will start the car to rust immediately and rust is onerous to repair, if it is possible at all. Mechanical mechanisms can be fixed or replaced in a straightforward way, but rust is an insidious cancer that never sleeps once it gains a footing. Best to stay away from rust in the first place by installing the car in a dry and warm place, with moth balls. Well, I've done that - too soon I thought, but it snowed and they spread salt on the roads, and they use enough salt around here to over-brine a batch of schmaltz herring.

A 'rust-free' car here might be considered a 'rust-bucket' in another part of the world, but my car is not near a state of collapse just yet, so I carry on, secure in the knowledge that it is solid after all. I hope.

Once corrosion has been forestalled by comfy, clean storage, those pesky mechanical bits that have been getting loose and tired can be attended to at an unhurried pace during the cold months (-40º is a potential here with the windchill, so stay indoors in your cozy workshop).  This renewal of functional parts is an operation that might be equated with the dusting and cleaning that goes on in your brain while you are asleep; synaptic homeostasis, a process occurring during sleep, is a phenomenon that prevents the nervous system (i.e. brain) from plunging into chaos. 'Cleaning out the cobwebs' some might say. I wonder if this can also be accomplished through meditation. . . Neurons in your brain need a regular renewal in order to function smoothly, strongly, and well, just as do many pieces of an old car.

Spark plugs expire and need replacement now and then, and your brain's synapses need their gaps cleaned a bit, too, so to speak. All complex systems require regular maintenance, whether animal (you) or machine, and this is best performed during sleep time, be it overnight in bed, or over winter in a workshop. Don't simply park the car and forget it till spring, that's not nice. The thing is that the brain does its maintenance procedure automatically, whereas the Porsche just sits there looking needy. The only automatic event concerning the Porsche is the drain on my wallet. 

A Porsche as old as mine doesn't have any electronic computing gizmos to complicate things, it's all mechanical, so you don't reboot, you install new boots - rubber ones. I have a batch of rubber parts lined up on my workbench, right next to the turbo tie rods, throttle springs, A-arm bushings, a clutch cable, 'frunk' lid struts, and an alarming number of other bits. It will take a while to install all of this - I don't work very fast, but it's a long winter here. It's possible that the car will be off the road for as long as six months, so what you see in this post represents half of the life of this car under my semi-arctic stewardship.

Owning a Porsche like this is not the same as owning a new one. I'm sorry to point this out, but many new and bedecked Porsches are fashion statements for the glitterati, and such owners may be unclear about the location of the engine, but they believe it is in a peculiar place that offers a mysterious advantage to their revivifying driving experience. Actually, owners of new Porsches are prevented by law from fiddling with their car's functional systems, given that their efforts might result in an embarrassing faux pas and concomitant disinclination to purchase next year's model. Being seen in the car might be as important as seeing out of it, although since an alarming percentage of chichi Porsches in the world of uber-urban cultural privilege are often only driven at metropolitan speeds, this might not matter. I own a raw, visceral, loud, bumpy car. This is a decided safety feature - it makes so much noise inside that you think you are going wildly fast when you are only going way too fast, so you might survive it and live to drive another day. (At a later and more sober moment, looking back at this paragraph it seems to me that I have been too harsh in my characterization of certain owners of gleaming new Porsche cars; I painted with too broad a brush. On occasion there is a capable owner to be found, and he or she will actually wring the bejesus out of a new car on the track at a DE day, without so much as a single fatality or putting the car topside down.  Excuse me for this; my rash error, but I can't help promoting the cars that I appreciate most - old ones - even if I step on toes in the process. Today's Porsches are technological marvels; I guess I find romance in the DIY stone age. Okay, I'm jealous. Not really.)      

KrazyGlue injected into tiny cracks stops them from growing

For me the winter break is good. Downtime is useful. When I know that there are issues that need to be resolved with my car, my summer driving pleasure always has awareness of that need in the back of its head, because I tend to wallow in the difficult details, instead of skimming over them so that I can smell the roses.  

As your brain repairs itself while you slumber, nonessential chaff gets erased, you might say, so that there is adequate elbowroom for the thinking tasks of the following day. Replacing Porsche parts isn't exactly identical to erasing them, but as long as you are getting rid of potential problems, what's the difference? Renewal is renewal.

Details . . .

Just Do It

Yesterday a fellow Porsche owner popped over for a visit. It was a special visit that didn't cover fixing, or driving, or drooling over unusual Porsches, but rather we discussed means by which a person can enjoy life more fully - okay, so this actually did cover my old Porsche obliquely but it wasn't really intended. My friend told me that I should move away from being too cerebral, and that I should live more from my heart. I probably have to be cerebral for a little while in order to figure out how I might do that smoothly. . . 

It was the mythologist and creative thinker Joseph Campbell who said, "Follow your bliss. If you do follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while waiting for you . . .", but my friend's words had the same ring to them and I took them seriously, because it certainly is obvious that I over-think all the time. Most things that I do I think through in grinding detail, and this causes me unending dissatisfaction with the result, given that my expectation is never realistic enough in the face of the truths at hand. For example, I often imagine restoring my car to totally new condition, except with certain modifications of course, but then I look at it and my mood dampens because it's just an old car and my efforts don't come to much. Perhaps my litany of pending details to be resolved creates a fog that obscures a reality. It will never be finished. Is it a kind of coverup and maybe an excuse for the car being mediocre? I hope not.

Well, I've over-thought this already, haven't I?  I should just drive the car, regardless, just do it. That's easily enough said if the engine is running well, the transmission is shifting nicely, the suspension aligned properly enough to follow a kind of track that has been there all the while waiting for me. Groan.

I'm going for a drive right now in a 911 that runs, imperfect, or not. 

I did it! I feel good. I cranked up the old Porsche and went for a several hour ride down along the Connecticut River on both the Vermont side and the New Hampshire side, too.  I ignored the details that aren't perfect in my car and simply enjoyed the light, the smells, the traffic-free small roads off in a corner of VT that is open and unassuming, and willing to let a person do what a person needs to do.

Jesus saves Vermont (click for larger view) 

Here is the main lesson I'm getting from all of this so far: I don't have to imagine that it is necessary to diminish anything that I am now - being in my head as much as I am - but rather the real potential will be to add to what I am, to expand beyond my self-made confines and be larger in life. It's a very warm feeling, and my Porsche turns out to be an instrument that can help me to reach a new plateau of bliss. Who knew? I suspected it. Don't sweat small flaws, in yourself, or your Porsche.  

An Essay, a Rant, and a Note of Caution

You may belong to a Porsche club of some kind. If so, I hope that it is run in a manner that promotes enjoyment for every member of the club, including those who work to keep it going. Sometimes good fun becomes elusive for those trying to make the club work (without the general membership noticing anything at all), because of errors and excesses that may arise in the club's operation from time to time. Yes, in part the following is based on direct observation, but my reading on this subject has also allowed me to expand my comments further. If you wish to contribute to the job of keeping your club running on an even keel, please consider the advice below.
   
People find happiness in many things, and in the world of Porsche, significant rewards are available via social interactions that arise from, but do not necessarily directly involve ownership, care and feeding of vintage cars, racing, or similar. People also enjoy getting together for pleasurable reasons that involve food and drink, casual conversation, beautiful locations, and, hopefully, these experienced in agreeable weather. Others enjoy DE days, rallying, or Auto-X, and all of this is fine. Someone has to do devoted work to arrange such events; it's normal.

And, some people have more capability with certain types of events than do others. This is normal, too, so the job of producing varying activities obviously falls upon many different people. As well, keeping a Porsche club's managerial structure functioning involves a variety of tasks, from taking meeting minutes, to waving flags in a racetrack's corner. A lot of people are entrusted with assorted duties, and when given that trust they naturally want to do well.


But when anyone interrupts this reasonable chain of events in order to impose inessential, or even inappropriate directives, the whole structure begins to break down, because when people are no longer entrusted with undertakings that they genuinely are happy and able to do, they feel diminished and lose interest. It just doesn't work.


Such a drive to exert power (especially meaningless power) is not an essential part of the world's natural order. It is part, only, of human ego in its negative sense, but human ego is not part of all of nature. Here is an excellent example illustrating these concepts from a unique perspective. It's not a Porsche thing, but it's fascinating:


A recent experiment was performed on an African savanna using a herd of antelope in the wild. Concealed automatic cameras observed the herd for some time, and special interest revolved around the movement of the animals from their feeding grounds to their watering grounds some distance away. The timing of this movement is critical. If the herd - and it had to travel as a complete herd for protection - moved to the water too early in the day, then some individuals would not have enough time to finish eating and would receive insufficient nourishment. If the herd left too late, the drinking would extend into darkness, making individuals vulnerable to predators.


The cameras observed that a single animal would stop grazing and face toward the water source, though it was remote from the feeding location. Then another, and another; when exactly a majority faced the water, then the entire herd would move off toward the water, together. The herd was not led by a powerful alpha male, but by those who first perceived the need to drink, be they juveniles, females, elderly, or other non-alpha males.

In other words democracy, not demands of those who were powerful, was the natural structure and order describing the critical timing of seeking water.


This phenomenon has since been observed in creatures ranging from insects to great apes. Power does not dictate. Power exists for specific, limited functions among animals, but it never controls the needs and actions of the many. Democracy is built into the natural order, it is not a human invention.


There is a modest disconnect between this marvelous exposé of democracy in the general natural world where power is never abused, and the observations written here about questionable management where it is almost always abused. But, in the human case, the reasons are complex and many, but they are avoidable. In nature this is less the case, and in any instance respect for the needs of others is central and critical.


Not everyone is driven to attempt complete control, but there are unfortunately some who are, and it appears that we are stuck with them. In circumstances like car clubs this is dysfunctional, pointless, and divisive. For example, nothing works well in an organization when someone seeks total control over proceedings that are better tended to by the capable individuals whose normal job it is to do them.


I have made this essay as generic as is feasible in the interest of addressing the broadest possible audience. After all, there are a great number of publications written over decades - within the realm of Porsche clubs alone - that describe and decry the means by which club chief officers can destroy the spirit of a club, rather than build it. Add this to that list.


All of which is to say that in a circumstance where one person presents him/herself as the indispensable center of everything, when there are able people waiting and eager to work, beware. You need good people to successfully run a Porsche club, but they will flee from a person like this.


You own your Porsche in order to have fun. If you belong to a club, make sure that it employs this idea for all who are involved.


To the right is the heraldic coat of arms of the state of Baden-Württemberg, in the southern part of Germany. That's where Stuttgart is, and that's where the head offices of Porsche are located.