Again, sorry folks for no photos -- still on the road with a troublesome laptop computer that cannot upload photos. Previously, I had two posts on my Porsche 911. Here is a third -- enjoy --
Part III
Once the car was in the garage, the money pit opened for the first time. For those interested in reading more on this human agony, see Stefan Wilkinson’s The Solid Gold Porsche. It truly becomes a contest of man (or woman, I guess), verses machine. Aha, the car won’t start because it turns over too slow! Well, go buy two batteries -- one is not enough on these cars. Little did I know that the batteries are in parallel, and I could have bought just one. Since the size of the batteries is difficult to find, the next thing you have to do is somehow adapt these batteries to the hood compartment area, not that easy a task, because you sure don’t want a battery or two rolling around the front of the car. Live and learn. Pep Boys draws first blood. The batteries are there because Porsche needed to put more weight evenly distributed left and right, and to replace what were once lead weights that resided up front.
OK, the car now cranked well, but sputtered and died. It started in zero degree temperatures before I bought it! So the car gets its first ride to Stuttgart Automotive in Centerville, a great place to get financially hosed down. My only consolation is the lead mechanic there is now dead, and hopefully burning in the hottest regions of hell. First major problem – gas has gone bad, rust has formed in the gas tank, and has burned out the electric fuel pump. Also, the Weber Carburetors – that look like they were just rebuilt – needed to be rebuilt, as the idle jets are clogged. Take out tank. Clean and scrape out with a chain. For $500, Ray, a less than forthright mechanic, was more than willing to rebuild the carbs -- probably didn’t need it now that I look back. Solve problems? Hardly. Get it home, drive around a bit, and car dies. More debris in carbs. Another electric fuel pump burns out. Wife comes with Volvo and strong robe and pulls me home. Back to Stuttgart and more money down this deep pit that undoubtedly extends to China.
This car was rather filthy, especially underneath. And because it had sat and before that undoubtedly neglected and mistreated, there was plenty of surface rust in nuts and bolts. Cleaning is a strength of mine; however, mechanics certainly do not rank high on my list of inborn abilities. One of the things I quickly discovered was that this car had many areas underneath that were coated with a thick, granular tar. That saved much of it from rusting, but became a great challenge to me as I had to remove this stuff, putty knife after putty knife. It was encrusted in the fender wells, and it was so thick that the horns, located in the left fender well, were literally filled with tar and stones.
Besides this obvious problem, the car was not a complete car. Sure there were to extra boxes of parts and two extra front seats, but some critical pieces were missing – like the belly pan, which protects the master cylinder and fuel pump for road debris and rocks that could disable these important components. My friendly mechanic Ray had plenty of extra parts that I needed, and would add to his growing fortune at my expense by selling me these parts, thus reducing his extensive and slow-moving inventory.
The rebuilding of the carbs was my first experience with twin Weber 40IDAC units. On several occasions during those first weeks of ownership I had to clear the idle jets of junk, as the fuel lines and gas tank remained a bit of a problem even though the tank had been cleaned. Weber carburetors are the gold standard of carburetors for the racing and sports car crowd, although now aftermarket injection systems have cut into the business somewhat particularly related to U.S. car applications. They are a formidable technology, with many variants due to interchangeable idle jets, main jets, emulsion tubes, and air correction jets. When you combine this complexity with issues related to balancing and synchronizing, mastering a set of Webers takes someone who has both intuitive sensibilities and rational mechanical skills. Naively at first, I thought all I needed was my old Unisyn synchronizer from my youthful days of owning an MGA to take charge of the Webers. Never was I more wrong.
Indeed, was wrong about so many things concerning Porsches and restoration. To bring back a car to life takes more money that a novice can ever imagine. It also takes persistence, inner strength, knowledge, luck, and good friend like Cliff Brockman. Porsches are so different than conventional, water-cooled, Detroit iron. They are precisely put together, idiosyncratic, and devilishly designed in terms of the ergonomics of repair.
One thing I learned the hard way is that unless you have a relative in the body repair and auto paint business, don’t buy a car that needs to be repainted, for that will cost you more than you think. My Porsche was repainted from its original Conda Green to a dark brown, a dark chocolate color that was popular in the late 1970s. As one friend called it, it was “shit brown.” Not only was the color atrocious, there were areas that were cracked and checked, probably because coats of the enamel were put on before the previous layer had fully dried. Furthermore, the lower part of the driver’s side was damaged and poorly puttied, with the result that the door did not close properly. Gaps, as I would learn are important. And the left rear quarter panel was also not right, but then this car, no matter how I detailed it could look somewhat right at 20 feet, but up close it was horribly disfigured. More than likely the owner, who had the car painted, also decided at that time to update it, and thus it had a more modern 1975 or 1976 look, with the addition of Cookie cutter wheels and a rear reflector and bumper that was imperfectly installed.
The interior of the car was fairly intact, although there was an ugly hole in the dash where there was once a fog light switch. A minor flaw in the driver’s seat would be fixed with the extra seat skin that I could take of the spare seat that came with the car. An Alpine radio didn’t work, the tach was dead, windshield wipers didn’t wipe, the horn was silent, and the heater defroster controls controlled nothing. Looking out of the dash with the sun was directly shining on it revealed pitting on the passenger side. Boy, was I a fool to buy this car!
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