...Where I teach myself to be a F.I. Wizard

Today was a great day! I set out this morning, 20 minutes away into town to register and title my car. I admit to being a little nervous, I'm in the "getting to know you" phase but I've explored and tested to point where might as well jump in and work out the bugs.

The blast down the highway 15 miles was smooth and sweet, another 10 minutes through town/traffic was uneventful, idle good, power smooth through the whole rev range, etc. Here's where it gets interesting....after 1/2 hour in the DMV she's a bit hard to start but finally lit. Well, at this point I can't get an idle in traffic. As long as I'm on the gas no problems whatsoever but she'll die if I'm off the gas. I nurse her 10 more minutes further across town where I had an appointment, come out from there and again a little hard to start but not awful.

Leaving there I decide to take the route home that's longer but only has 2 traffic lights before I hit the highway. 20-25 pleasant minutes later I get off at my exit, I started to head home but noticed she's idling (albeit at about 500 instead of 800) fine again. So I ran one more errand (didn't shut the car off this time) for 10-15 minutes. (still idling fine).

Just as I get to my subdivision she's having trouble with idle again. Sooo, she likes being flogged, a run through the gears and a 3k-3500 rpm sustained is a good thing, but being warm and running at ~2k rpm is gumming something up.

I haven't figured out the solution yet but I'm arming myself with knowledge in the form of internet searches and going to perfect this lovely beast :).......I promise to remember the previous brake light lesson and check the simple stuff first ;)

Helpful comments from folks that know more than me are welcome :)

Brake Lights I conquer thee!

I hesitated to follow this little tid-bit up, due to the cause being your D-A author not anything truly wrong with the car. But, if this serves to help anyone else out there in the world it's kinda my point in bothering to document this journey.

Always check the simple stuff first. I got to thinking yesterday while working and remembered I'd scavenged a couple of bulbs from one of the extra taillight assemblies that came with my car. I honestly wasn't even sure which lights in the back were "stop" "park" or "signal". So I looked that up and came home armed with a brand new set of proper bulbs and new knowledge of which lights were which.

With new bulbs in now what I knew to be brake lights were on (a first) but wouldn't turn off....hmmm. The MC pressure switch is brand new and was secure. So I take the (badly needing replacement) wooden footboard back off and find that the brake switch is making absolutely no contact with the MC plunger.....DUH!! I had to refit the pedal assembly earlier and didn't give another thought to that switch after hooking the wires back to it. Bend the little tab and test out till it worked flawlessly and BAM. We have lights :)

Holy driving heaven Batman!!

This post may have happened a few days ago but we decided we didn't want to make anymore children and I was chained inside for the weekend.....So I got the all new brake system rebuilt and the most wonderful wife ever helped me bleed them the other night. Monday I couldn't take it anymore, the newly polished Fuchs were bolted back on and she came off the jack stands she's been sitting on since that first day in her new home.

We took a tentative first drive around our neighborhood last night after dinner. Britney Spears fashion and all with the toddler on Mom's lap (we didn't get over 20mph and we live in a gated community, I'm not THAT awful of a Father). The young obsessed seemed to be having as much fun as his Dad. The beautiful missus likes it, thrilled that I'm in love with "the mistress" but had the audacity to mention she thought my Karmann Ghia (I had when I met her about a decade ago) was a little more "refined". To be fair I'd spent about 4 years restoring and perfecting that car before she knew me, I've had a month with this ole' girl and I still have work to do (so I'll cut her some slack).

This morning I'd planned to go to the DMV and get a new license plate to go with my new collectible car insurance but turned out my preferred spot, 10 minutes from the house through quiet back country roads, was closed for renovation. I've still got brake lights acting wonky on me so I wasn't about to risk a trip into town. But.....holy wow, the 30 min. or so cruise I had today was FREAKIN' AWESOME! Each mile I drove she got smoother, I had figured/hoped that 4 years of sitting around was causing some bits of rough running and it seems I'm right (so far).

Can a Porsche owner be a cheapscate/the $7 RS Door Pulls

Ok, existential query: I've had almost 2 dozen cars, plenty of those costing several times more than my beautiful new toy will probably ever be worth. I take a certain amount of pride in good ole' fashioned American engineering both on the point of getting something accomplished myself and paying as little as possible to leave my somewhat limited toy budget to stretch as far as it can. So now I own a Porsche, which in my head is a storied brand of car, with some incredible engineering. Can one bring such a special automobile back to what I expect it to be, look and perform like I want on a budget?

We shall see, but I've done some things I'm pretty proud of in much lesser cars so we shall see what I can do for this one.

So....my car came with a brand new set of RS door panels, but didn't come with arm rests, door pulls, or door pockets I'm very excited about refitting to my [beginning to come together] nice interior. The RS was a racing package and one thing it has (and some newer 911's and current Boxster Spyder) was a cool set of straps sticking out of the stripped down door panel that act as the unlock mechanism for the doors.

On-line you can source these for somewhere around $120. But for what these are that seemed kinda silly to me :D Not to mention I'm trying to use blue for my accent touches instead of the "standard issue" Red (I can't stand to be just like everyone else).

A trip to the hardware store got me a nice blue nylon strap for a grand total of $7. This was an overly simple project compared to most I've done and will do but it looks pretty cool and I was pleased with myself so it showed up here. If you want to replicate it yourself get a couple 10mm nuts and bolts and washers, cut off about 10" of strap, don't forget to burn the edges to stop fraying (and I burned the strap around the bolt too just in case). The pricey kit does come with a nice looking grommet for this which I don't have, I'm going to work on that and have a couple of ideas but I've made the smallest cut possible through the panel so I can go back later and work on a prettier pass through.

I need to get a pull-handle still, but that's yet another update.

I have the feeling this blog will be filled with plenty of these such little projects :) so if you are a purist, better look away soon. I'm a "resto-mod" guy. My goal is for this car to recall a '75 911 Carrera, having it's wider rear fenders but not updated to later models with all blacked out trim. I like the stainless Targa bar, the chrome headlight rings and plan to restore the polished aluminum trim.

I won't be "modernizing" the interior as I have nicely done in some of my past 60's and 70's cars as I like this car's classic feel. But I will be upgrading some systems along the way that are "behind the scenes".

Stay tuned :)

I have lights!

A few replaced fuses, a little help from the internet and I'm pleasantly surprised to see just how much of my car's electrical system is working. Don't get me wrong, I had hopes, but in my past experience things like working directional signals, parking lights, wipers, etc was a gift from the heavens (without hours of diagnosing and suffering). Even the high-beams shine brightly :D

On another note

Initial Discoveries

So I got the car home and muscled it (I mean REALLY MUSCLED) it off the trailer and into her spot in the garage. I knew when I picked up the car that the clutch pedal was stuck and it felt like the emergency brake was on [when it wasn't].

So I started by laying out the dozen boxes of parts I ferried home as well as various and assundry body panels and such. I had some really cool discoveries, the prev. owner did a lot of parts collecting and I now how have lots and lots of items I'd have spent thousands of dollars ordering myself. The bad side.....the more I catalog the longer the list of little missing items. I bought it with this understanding, so it's not a big shock.

I jacked her up and stripped off a set of polished 16x7 and 16x9 Fuchs with brand new Yokos. They had been refinished but sitting around outside untouched for a few years had left them pitted and dull. An hour or 2 on each wheel and they are almost back to where I want them.








Next off were the 4 calipers...which led to rotten soft brake lines...I found out over the next few days the Master Cylinder was toast, all the caliper pistons were frozen and the Pedal Cluster was ruined mess. It took me a night or 2 per caliper to rebuild them. In the process I ordered all new braided stainless lines, racing brake fluid, a new master cylinder. I used the time waiting on parts to clean up and repaint all 4 wheel wells too (amazing how much nicer a semi-forgotton spot of the car looks with years of grime and some fresh black paint).

I found out the hard way that I have a "late '75 911. This info came from ordering brake pads and bleeder valves that fit for the back, but not the front. This is good in that I have larger front brakes than expected, but bad because now I've got everything shiny and ready to go waiting on a replacement for the front pads to come in the mail.









In all this I started trying to rebuild said toasted pedal cluster. I spent 2 days trying to get it apart and then took the poor thing to a machine shop to get them to do it. Ultimately when even they couldn't get the $#%#^ thing apart I submitted to the idea that sometimes it's just better to get a replacement part. Thanks to the WWW that's a fairly easy thing to do these days. After all that effort the one I got in the mail a week later was a dream, only needing a good cleaning and some fresh paint, now back in the car working smooth and as Porsche intended.

So now I'm a month into to 911 ownership, I've bolted on and re-fitted a ton of small items interior and exterior. The car is purring (more like roaring :D ) fairly well in the garage on jack stands, but has a bit of a hard starting issue. I'm hoping/planning to get it moving on it's own out of the garage this week, planning a full tank of premium with some injector cleaner and maybe an "italian tune-up" before I go into full diagnosis mode on the engine. It's highly likely after sitting for 2-4 years there's gunk roaming around that needs to be blow out.

There's one more real obstacle to having a road bound car I need to tackle immediately. The lights, both front and rear were totally absent when I bought the car. I've gotten the rear's re-fitted and wired but the fronts I haven't tackled yet. There are blown fuses and I'm HOPING that rewiring and new fuses lights everything back up but I haven't seen that yet. Everything seems to work on the inside dash so I have high hopes this will be a fairly simple (compared to the brake system) fix, but it has to be done before I take Glenda (The good witch of the north) to the DMV to become an operating toy.

I have seemingly millions of little projects that I'll add to this blog but this post hopefully catches me up to today and gets me a jumping off point for future continued restoration and upgrading.