Category: Air Cooled 911s (Page 3 of 4)

11/5/16

The 912 sat all week.  I had no choice after last week’s adventure but to leave it in the driveway .  I spent the week working, and the 912 was in no shape to be driven.  Furthermore, my car pushing helpers were unavailable, as Kim was back at her apartment and working and Kris was still sick, hopefully not because she pushed the car last week.

On Monday, I pulled the trigger on a new coil.  It was not expensive.  The cost was less than the towing fees I paid in September because I had not upgraded my AAA membership in a timely manner, but that’s another story.  The coil was delivered by mid week, turning out to be a blessing and a curse.  The good news was that I had it in my possession.  The bad news was that I had to look at it for a couple of days before trying to install it, making me feel somewhat apprehensive and stressed.  In theory changing the coil should be pretty simple.  Just unplug some wires, remove some bolts, remove the old coil, put in the new coil, put back the bolts and reconnect the wires.  Simple. In theory.

Throughout my life, cars have epitomized the most complex of devices to me.  I was fascinated by them, but never really had the confidence to touch them in a mechanical way.  I have never intentionally removed a single part from a car.  I think I secretly wanted to take auto shop in high school, but, for a myriad of reasons, was too afraid.  Time passed and then cars and life really got complicated, driving any thought of tinkering with them  from my consciousness.  Pam would argue that those thoughts should have stayed far away.  And they would have been if I hadn’t got my first Cayman and subsequently joined the Porsche Club a couple of years ago.  Since then I have spent a lot of time around cars and car guys, and my interest in tinkering with cars has resurfaced.

There are no words to describe my mechanical ability because I have none.  To put it in perspective, Pam changes the light bulbs in the house.  I do the laundry.  Pam does the plumbing in the house.  I do the cooking.  The thought of f***ing something up is so overwhelming that it prevents me from taking it apart.  I once had a Masters Swim coach, an ex Olympian, who had an acronym, NEBAB, which stood for Never Ever Been Athletic Before, for people who joined the swim team and had no athletic skills.  When it comes to being mechanical, my swim coach would have referred to me as a NEBMB, where the M stood for Mechanical.  He would have pronounced it NEE-BOMB.  And it would have fit.

I am a conceptual guy.  I can look at almost anything and understand how it works,  I just have a fear of tinkering with it.  I like to get my hands “dirty” analyzing data, building spreadsheets, writing some computer code, and doing complex financial calculations.  I haven’t turned a wrench in decades, and when I last did, it was under the extremely close supervision of one my high school friends who was a mechanical savant.  So just looking at the box with the new coil in it made me a little nervous.  It also made me a little excited.  I bought the 1977 911 to try to learn to do some mechanical tasks.  As I have written about before, that project went up in smoke before I did a single mechanical thing to it.  Now I have the 912, and I have not done anything to it myself, partly because my garage is still not rebuilt and what few tools I have are in storage and partly because I have not had the courage to take anything apart.

But all of that was about to change with the coil project.  To slightly misquote Lao Tzu, It represented my first step on a journey of 1,000 miles.  Or so I hoped.  My confidence, though a little shaky, was buoyed because the 912 was running like shit, and I thought my mechanical ministrations could not make it much worse.

So I gathered up my courage and my $20 socket set from Pep Boys, peeled the car cover off the back end of the 912, opened the rear lid, memorized where each wire was attached, removed the wires from the old coil, took a deep breath, and started to take out the bolt on the left of the coil.  The bolt came out easily, too easily.  It was short and nothing was behind it.

I began to work on the bolt on the right.  After turning and turning it for some time, I realized that it was not any looser than when I started.  Because the new coil came with a mounting bracket, I assumed that I should just take the old coil off by removing the old mounting bracket and then reattaching the new coil using the new mounting bracket.  Big mistake.  It took me about 10 minutes and some help from the electrician, who was working on my garage project, to realize that the right bolt was really long and had a nut attached to it on the back end, which was inconveniently located behind the fan shroud.  I could barely reach the nut with my fingers.  I had no way to see it.  Thinking a box end wrench would be small enough to get behind the shroud and hold the nut in place, I headed out to buy a set of them.  I again opted for a really cheap set, as I would be buying nice tools once the garage was fixed.  I returned and proceeded to try to get a wrench on the nut again.  Same result. No way to get it done.

At that time Jeff, my neighbor not my Tequila mentor, walked over.  He was happy to see me wrenching in my driveway, not a sight that is prevalent in my neighborhood.  He offered his tools in case my meager assortment was not sufficient.  Then he said, “Never mind.  They are all in storage.”  We both laughed because he has been rebuilding his house for almost two years, and his tools have been in storage the entire time.  Then he said, “Maybe we can get at it thru the rear seat.”  We both discounted that idea immediately.  His question, though, did make me re-think my strategy, causing me to look, really look, at the new coil.  I had been so fixated on getting the old one out that I had never looked at how the mounting bracket was attached to the new coil.  The bracket was not integrated, but it was affixed by tightening a long screw which had a nut on the end.  At that point I realized I did not need to remove the existing coil and bracket, I just needed to loosen the bracket that was affixed to the old coil and slide the old coil out of the old bracket.  After some maneuvering and beating myself up over my own stupidity, I was able to loosen the bracket and slide the existing coil out.  From that point is was easy to slide the new coil in, tighten the retaining screw and plug in the wires.

With the new coil in place, I nervously sat in the driver’s seat and turned the key.  …. …. … The 912 started immediately.  The tach behaved nicely as I revved the 912 in the driveway.  With newfound confidence I backed it out and drove it around the neighborhood.  This time after about five laps I was able to drive it right back into my driveway.  No pushing required.  I had taken the first step on my journey of 1,000 miles.

10/29/16

It’s been almost two months since the 912 left me stranded in the South Bay. It has been running but not running well.  At the time it quit running, I thought that the reason it stopped was  a loose wire on the coil because I got it running after I  jiggled the wire a day later after it had been towed to my house and the engine started, even though jiggling the same wire had not worked the day the engine quit.  Getting it to run did not fix the aberrant behavior of the tachometer, as it continued to swing wildly, nor did it erase the niggling suspicion I had that the engine was not running well, which frustrated me.

At first I was frustrated because I wanted to continue to drive the 912 to work a couple of days a week but did not feel comfortable doing so, even though I left the driveway in it a few times only to feel the niggling in my head and return home.  Then I was frustrated because I couldn’t get it looked at.  Then I was frustrated because I had to juggle too many cars in the driveway when Kimberly, my younger daughter, stayed over.  Then I was frustrated because I took it to my renegade Porsche breakfast and everyone concurred that it was running, or at least idling,  well, everyone but me that is.  Then I was frustrated because I found out I have to spend a boatload of money to get a good baseline analysis of the 912, something I had already done somewhere else.  Finally,  I was frustrated because I still thought the problem was electrical or fuel related, not engine related, and I did not think the baseline would find that.

Despite my mounting frustration and my feelings of impending doom every time I drove it, I have driven it sporadically over the past six weeks, most recently last Saturday when I drove it to Mel’s Diner for breakfast with my Los Angeles PCA buddies, my first appearance at a Los Angeles PCA event since the renegade group’s self imposed exile in February.  I was a little leery about taking the 912, not being completely confident that it would make it up Doheny all the way to Sunset.  It did.  Predictably, I just missed the light at Sunset, forcing me to stop at the signal.  I then had to use the emergency brake to prevent me from rolling back down the hill as I tried to turn right from a dead stop.  Of course, I was embarrassed, having driven a manual transmission enough years to know how to just dump the clutch and get the car going forward without rolling backwards on all but the steepest grades.

After arriving at breakfast with no further incidents, I started to feel like maybe the car worked okay and all the niggles in my head were false alarms. Then I left breakfast, which was actually lots of fun, and headed down the hill, figuring it would be the easy part of the drive.  It was, but I noticed that the engine was stuttering as I was driving down the hill.  Not a good sign.  I ignored it, but the niggling started up in my brain again.  Drove to the market. Then drove home.  On the ride home the engine stuttered again.  I put it in the driveway, covered it and forgot about it for the remainder of the week.

Today I took the cover off and started it up again.  I was still convinced that problem was electrical or fuel related, and I was going to test my theory.  I was prepared.  My VW guru, Dilthon, had emailed me coil testing procedures using an ohmmeter.  I had had an electronics class in high school, some forty-something years ago, so I vaguely remembered what an ohmmeter was and how to use it.  Of course, I do not currently have an ohmmeter, but Andy, who sits next to me at work, has one and brought it in for me to borrow.  I sat at my desk at home today and read the coil testing procedures.  I was okay with removing the wires and testing the resting resistance.  Then I got to the part about making it spark and needing another person to help me, and I said, “F**k this.  I am going for a drive instead.”  Big mistake.

I did not have ambitious plans.  I thought I would just drive around in a four square block area around my house.  Excellent idea.  So off I went.  I made it about three laps, and I was just about to start the fourth when disaster struck.  The 912 just stopped running.  Deja vu, I thought.  I was still convinced that my wire jiggling fixed the problem last time.  So I was pretty confident that when the 912 stopped running right around the corner from my house I would just jiggle some wires and the engine would start.  Easy.  Wrong.  I jiggled the wire that I thought was the culprit.  I sat in the driver’s seat and turned the key.  Nothing.  I went back and jiggled more wires.  I sat back in the driver’s seat and turned the key again.  Nothing.  They say that expecting a different result from the same set of circumstances is a sign of insanity.  So I must have been insane because I jiggled the wires again and sat back down in the driver’s seat and turned the key.  Nothing.

I could see my house.  It was just around the corner, about 50 yards away.  I said  to myself, “No stress.  I will just push it.”  Then I realized it was on a subtle incline.  Maybe one degree, but I knew I couldn’t do it myself.  I walked home.  It took all of 30 seconds.  I rousted Kim, who was over for the weekend, off the couch and asked her to help me.  We walked back to the car.  She got in the driver’s seat.  I couldn’t help myself.  I guess my temporary insanity had returned.  I told her to try to start it while I jiggled the wires yet again.  Nothing.

I made sure the car was in neutral, positioned myself at the rear of the car, asked Kim to release the emergency brake, and pushed.  Nothing.  That was as effective as jiggling the wires, just a lot more tiring.  I told Kim to reset the emergency brake.  I figured I would walk to John’s house and get him to help, as I had seen his car in his driveway on one of my laps around the neighborhood.

It turned out that John was not there, having gone bicycle riding with Don, his brother in law.  But Kristin was there.  She was sick and watching football, but she was a trooper and I convinced her it would not be too difficult to push the car.  She agreed to help, and we walked back to the car and tried to push it.  This time it worked.  We got the car moving, made it to the stop sign, which was about 20 feet from where the 912 had been stopped, and then negotiated the left turn onto my street.  Then the car was able to coast on a slight downhill, enabling  Kris and I to stop pushing and allowing Kim to easily steer down the street and into my driveway.  There was just one problem.  The front of the driveway has an upslope, which was steep enough to stop the car before it made it all the way up on to the flat part of the driveway.  Kris and I tried to push it a few times.  It was futile, and the car would not budge.  The incline was too steep for us.  Apparently it was too steep for the emergency brake, too, as it was hard to keep the  car in place as we debated what to do.

I checked out my neighbors’ driveways, looking to see who was home and started to ring one’s doorbell when I noticed a stranger and his wife walking their dog up my street.  I recruited him to the cause, and with three of us pushing and Kim steering, we pushed it onto the flat part of the driveway.  Much to Kim’s chagrin, I had us stop before we got all the way up to the spot where the 912 would be parked, a spot far enough up the driveway that Kim and Pam could park behind it.  I thanked Kris and the stranger.  Before the stranger left, he and his wife complimented the 912, saying it was a beautiful car. I agreed.  Then the stranger said, “By the way, If you want to sell it, I know someone who would be interested.”  I told him I wasn’t interested in selling it.  He did make me fell better about owning it, though, despite the fact that it is a money abyss.  I bade goodbye to Kris and the stranger.  Kim was still concerned that I would not be able to push the 912 the rest of the way, but I told her not to worry, Pam would be home soon and she could help us if we needed it.

Then my temporary insanity returned.  So I jumped into the driver’s seat and tried to start the car.  It worked!  Proving that I was not insane for trying.  It also proved that the wires had nothing to do with the two times the engine had quit and that jiggling them had made no difference whatsoever, convincing me that the coil has been slowly failing, causing the car to run poorly and to sporadically stop running.  Letting the coil cool down must have enabled it to work well enough to start the car and keep it running for a while.

I will be buying a new coil and testing that theory next week.  Though it would have been smarter and easier to use it, I guess I really didn’t need the ohmmeter after all.  I will be bringing it back to Andy on Monday.

8/6/16

What to do?  What to do?  This question has haunted me since I purchased the 912.  It is a testament to the bubble in which I live my life that that is the question I ponder on a daily basis.  Of course, I am aware of the desperate times in which we live.  Even I cannot avoid the awful events of this year, ranging from the US election process to ISIS actions, with a very sobering dose of Florida and Dallas thrown into the mix.  Obviously, I am concerned about these events. I just do not dwell on them.  Instead, I focus on what to do with the 912, mainly because that is the only thing I have some control over.

Though it sounds like a simple question, the answer is not so simple.  Is the car going to be rebuilt as a collector car with every effort made to keep it original or as a fun car with changes made to the original specifications.  My 912 has already been modified somewhat.  It does not have a numbers matching engine, as the engine was replaced.  Its transmission started as a 5 speed, but was replaced with a 4 speed sometime before 1991.  It has been repainted in a color that is different from its original color.  A passenger side mirror has been added, which does not work because the mirror refuses to stay in the position in which it was placed.  I can never fix the lack of a matching numbers engine, though I can restore the remaining anomalies, should I desire to do so.  The benefit of this would most likely be that I could maximize the resale value of the 912.  Of course, I am not doing this for the money.  If that were the case, I never would have bought it.

The current state of the 912 forced me to postpone my real decision with respect to long term issues, as it was really clear that it had suspension problems and the engine was running like shit.  Before I could modify anything, I had to get the infrastructure functional.  So this week the 912 got new shocks, new side view mirrors, and a new carburetor float.  Due to the failure of the float, a part that is no longer made, the 912 would not run well.  It stalled at idle and putting it in motion or maneuvering around a corner was an adventure.  As I drove it to the shop, I really thought I would not make it.  It turns out that the smell of gas that I was getting re-acquainted with was not as normal as I remembered.  The float just did not float any more.  The result was a constant state of carburetor flooding and the lovely smell of gasoline.

The 912 did not have a passenger side mirror when it was built.  Porsche did not offer one as an option.  It took me a long time to really understand why.  Now I have absolute clarity about the issue and a slightly expensive failure to address.  Sometime in its life, a prior owner added a passenger side view mirror to the car.  At the same time or some other time they changed the original Porsche driver’s side mirror and put on an inexpensive aftermarket mirror.  By the time I got the 912, both side mirrors needed replacing.

I went on line and purchased two inexpensive replacement mirrors, one for each side.  I brought them with me to the shop.  That is where I learned why there was no passenger side mirror and if you add one why it is in a different location on the passenger side than it is on the driver’s side.  If the passenger side mirror is in the same location as the driver’s side mirror, then the driver cannot see the passenger side mirror due to the roof support.  It’s odd and irritatingly non-symmetrical, but the mirror needs to be in a different location.  Foolish me.  I assumed that when the previous owner had the passenger mirror installed, it was in the right spot.  I asked the shop to just replace it where it was.  I also didn’t want to move it because it would require adding more holes to the body of the 912, and I am not ready to deal with the body yet.   Irrespective of its location, adjusting the passenger side mirror is a pain in the butt because there is no way to reach it from the driver’s seat.

When I picked the car up, I was really more concerned with the engine performance and the ride.  I was not disappointed.  Both were great.  It was like driving a different car.  I loved it.  And the smell of gasoline was just about non-existent.  The passenger side mirror was not aligned, but I decided to deal with that later.  I was just happy that the mirror stayed in whatever position it was left in.

I was driving it to Seal Beach today and tried to adjust the mirror.  Guess what I found out.  There is no way to adjust it so I can see alongside the passenger side of the 912.  If I get the left and right adjustment right, then the mirror points up too high and all I see is sky.  If I get the height angle right, then the mirror points way too far to the right of the car.  I guess the prior owner had the same issue.  I am now looking tor a convex attachment to alter what I see in the mirror.  In the meantime, I will just ignore it.  The visibility in the 912 is so good, that I really do not need it.  When I get around to painting the car, I will pony up the $400 or so for an original Porsche driver’s side mirror and have the passenger side mirror removed.   So the good news Is that I have made at least one decision.

6/26/16

It’s been about a month since I bought the 912.  As I indicated in my prior post, the honeymoon sort of ended when I saw the oil leak.  The car spent about a week in the shop where the more obvious of the oils leaks were fixed, which included the replacement of the transmission seals.  Since then I have been driving it, continuing the experience I had when I brought it home.

The car has had its coming out party this weekend.  I took it to breakfast to meet my Porsche friends.  They all seem attracted to the car, as are my neighbors and co-workers.  The color, though not the original, is very appealing.   I am not thinking of restoring it to its original color, Bahama Yellow, any time soon or at all.

I have learned that it’s a great little commuter car.  I have driven it to work many days over the past two weeks.  For the most part, all is as I expected, though the smell of gas is a reacquired taste.  I take it on the freeway on the way to work, and it is quite happy to cruise around 70 MPH down the 405.  I take it on the streets on the way home, and it is quite happy to go from light to light and stop sign to stop sign.  In the afternoons I take the Targa top off and am happy to enjoy  the openness of the car and its connection to the world.

As I alluded to in my prior post about this car, it has power nothing.  I find my commutes in it very relaxing, as I do not make phone calls, I do not mess with my Nav system, and I do not change the radio station, which is set to crank out Country tunes.  I do not try to compete with the Prii.  Instead, I just focus on driving the car.  It is relaxing because I am so present when I drive it.

As I drive and use the car I am compiling a growing list of things it needs.  It needs to go back to the shop, as a small oil leak still remains.  It needs interior work, including seats, door panel and carpets.  It needs new retractable seat belts.  It needs a more period appropriate radio.  It needs paint work.  It most likely needs new tires. It needs new side view mirrors.  It needs the clock fixed.  It needs the interior light replaced.  It needs the lights in the gauges replaced, as you can barely read the dials at night.  These are just the obvious things it needs.  I am also convinced that it needs suspension work, which might include some upgraded components.

The good news is that the car is running well and the transmission is shifting smoothly.  So none of the issues, except making sure the oil leaks are under control, require too much immediate attention.

I bought an old car, even older than the 1977 911 Targa.  It’s a 1969 912 Targa.  The engine is a naturally aspirated four cylinder beast that could be used to power a large lawn mower.  It has power nothing.  Even the windows have cranks. And, oh yeah, it’s got little windwings you can push open for ventilation.  The car came with two keys.  Not a key and a spare key, but a key for the door locks and a separate key for the ignition.  I’ve had it for a week, and still cannot find the air conditioner, which apparently never got put into the car.  There is no power assist with the steering or the brakes.  I actually have to think about turning and stopping before I turn or stop.  And I feel the road through my hands and feet as I drive.  Not the artificial electronically intelligent feelings I get in todays cars, but real, linear, tactile feelings.

The steering wheel is huge by today’s sports car standards, and I must really turn it to make a tight right turn.  There is no traction control or antilock braking.  There is a four speed manual transmission.  The car has carburetors, pre-millennial devices that squirt fuel and air into the engine cylinders, that apparently need to be adjusted frequently and give off the distinct odor of gasoline, an odor that has been eradicated for the most part by technological advances in gas pumps and fuel injection systems.

The Targa top comes off by hand.  There is no button to push on the dash to make it happen.  The gauges are somewhat imprecise devices, designed to have no significant digits and be generally correct, not absolutely right.  They also take up a lot of space because there is no multi-function display to save real estate on the dash.  The aftermarket radio which was installed about 20 years ago is the only digital device in an otherwise analog car.  It is so  far away it is almost out of my reach.  And forget about reading what the buttons say.  The only navigational aid is the small map that may be in the glove box or the Thomas Guide that may be under the seat.  This car will never be part of the Internet of Things.  The car does not have a single computer chip, as the car, despite its state of the art engineering in 1969, was built before computer chips were invented.

It was very disconcerting when I sat in it to drive it the first time.  I felt the 50 mile drive home would be daunting on many levels.  I had to take the freeway.  I was uncertain about the car’s mechanical reliability.  I had nothing to occupy my mind while I was driving.  I had no cell phone to dial or speak on.  I had no text to read.  I had no radio telling me which artist was singing which song.

The first part of the drive was stressful.  I left the gas station intending to putter around the neighborhood for a few miles before I got on the freeway.  I felt that way for a quarter mile.  Then I said the hell with it  and entered the freeway onramp.  It was a little nerve wracking but I did it anyway.  Interestingly enough, by about halfway home I was feeling better.  The car was able to attain freeway speeds, though I knew better than to try to do quick lane changes or fight for position in the line of cars.  I lost the urge to dial the cell phone.  I lost the need to know who was singing while the song was playing.  Hell, I even lost the urge to change the radio station, which was playing some form of modern rock that was out of place in my head.  Of course, I had no idea how to change the station anyway.  Just adjusting the volumne took work.  I liked the way I listened to the wind and focused on the various aspects of driving the car.  When to shift.  When to brake.  How to avoid having to come to a complete stop.  By the time I got home, I was hooked on driving, I mean really driving, this car.  It was fun.  I felt alive.  I felt I added to the experience more than the car did.  I felt connected to it in a way I have never felt connected to a more modern car.  Even though I was still leery about its mechanical reliability, driving it was …..  relaxing and fun.

Speaking of mechanical reliability, I was pretty pleased with the car during my ride home.  Everything but the clock seemed to work pretty well.  Of course, reality hit about 15 minutes after I parked the car in the driveway.  That’s when I noticed the oil leak.

5/20/16

Forgive me Ferdinand, Ferry and all other Porsche Aficionados……………

I was hurting.  And it took quite some tome to get back to the place best described in a Robert Earl Keen lyric:  Feels So Good Feelin’ Good Again.…

Losing the 1977 Targa was the cause of my pain.  I began calling it Porsche Pain (I love alliterations as much as I love puns)  to myself, even though that did not connote the depth of my feelings of loss. So after the fire I went about trying to restore myself from my current glass is cracked outlook on life to my normal glass is half empty outlook on life.  I tried all my usual stuff when I needed to reset my equilibrium.  Nothing worked.

I tried talking to friends and family.  First I talked to Pam.  She was wonderful and sympathetic for about the first 50 times we talked about it.  She was there for me, but could not quite understand what was taking me so long to get over it.  I mean, she has gone thru childbirth twice and understands real, deep and meaningful pain.  So this event did not move the needle on her Richter scale.

My Porsche friends were not a lot better at helping me.  Sure, they were sympathetic and concerned….of course, their concern was mainly for the Porsche.  That is only a slight exaggeration.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, Pam and I went to a BBQ with Porsche friends the night of the fire.  We had a great time and told lots of stories.  Most of the ones they told related to natural disasters, like hurricanes, floods and fires, especially fires.  I guess they were trying to help by helping me by applying the Misery Loves Company idiom.  That didn’t work either.

I tried talking to friends and coworkers.  Though they were all sympathetic, those conversations did not do the trick.  I did notice, though, that lot’s of people laughed when we talked about the fire.  They were not trying to be mean, but…..The best laugh I got was from my dentist.  I was in the chair when he walked in and said, “Hi Harry.”  Then he doubled over in a fit of lughter.  He could not stop laughing for several minutes.  He was not being mean and was really apologetic.  I went to high school with my dentist and have known him for quite some time and Pam had been in his office the week before so he knew the whole story.  Oh well.

Then I turned to music, my usual mood lifter.  That did not work either, because I found myself listening to an assortment of Country Music songs that expressed pain.  Here is a small sample of what I was drawn to:

• Jimmie Dale Gilmore’s Just a Wave, Not the Water where one lyric goes like this:  I Would Have Killed Myself But It Made No Sense Committing Suicide In Self Defense
• Chris Kristofferson’s Me & Bobby McGee, where one lyric goes like this:  Well I’d Trade All My Tomorrows For A Single Yesterday
• Robert Earl Keen’s Travelin’ Light, where one lyric goes like this:  …Feeling Blue Travelin’ Light With A Hole In Your Soul Where The Wind Blows Through

Music was efinitely not working.  Porsche Pain, as poor a label as it was, still existed.  If I could just get over it………

Yesterday, out of the blue one of my coworkers walks up and practically busts a gut laughing.  I just looked at him as if to say WTF?  I was not offended by his outburst.  I am not a sensitive guy, so there was no reason to take it personally, even though I knew his outburst was related to me.  I just had to wait it out and hear what was making him laugh.  I did brace myself, though, as he is as much of a loose canon as I am.  When he stopped laughing, he spoke three words:  Porsche Partum Depression.

It was all I needed to hear.  Three words that were right on so many levels.  They had Ps.  They had alliteration.  They formed a pun.  They were insensitive.  Better yet, they were politically incorrect.  They conveyed my pain entirely.  Not superficially, like Porsche Pain.  As far as I was concerned they were just perfect.  I laughed out loud.  Really laughed at my experience for the first time.  That was all I needed to move on.

So as I sit here and write this I am feeling so good at feeling good again.

5/14/16

It’s been six weeks since the fire.  I have been mourning the loss of the 1977 Targa for the entire time.  In addition, I have been half heartedly looking for a replacement car.  Well that is not exactly true.  My heart has been fully committed to looking for a replacement, but Pam’s hasn’t.  Pam has a couple of reasons for her reticence.  First, I did fail miserably on the first one, even though it could have happened to anyone.  Second, she says we need a place to put it, like a garage……and we do not have a functional one at the moment.

Before the firemen left on the day the 1977 Targa burned, I asked the firemen if they thought the garage was damaged enough to need to be rebuilt.  They said they didn’t think so.  I was happy to hear that.  The next day John and Kris drove back from Mammoth and came over.  Ostensibly to see the burned car, but I think he just wanted to show us the ridiculously large bruise on his arm as a result of his broken arm/shoulder from his skiing accident.  In either case, Kris said we should report the fire to our insurance company.  I told her that I didn’t think I needed to, and then we changed the subject back to John’s arm.

The next week Pam asked me to check if the electricity worked in the garage.  I thought it would, but I was not sure.  The light fixture had been destroyed in the fire nd the wiring was just dangling from the ceiling.  But I thought the circuit could still work.  Well, it didn’t.  This posed a problem.  The contractor who remodeled our house about 15 years ago put in a new electical panel, but never identified which breakers were attached to which circuits, so I had no idea which one related to the garage.  That didn’t matter, as none of them looked thrown anyway.  This did get me thinking, though.  If I needed an electician, maybe, just maybe, I should report this to the insurance company.  So I did.  Let me restate that and thank Kris at the same time.  Thankfully, I did.  The adjuster came out and said I need to do a lot of work on the garage.  All the beams I thought had a little bit of charring needed replacing, he said.  Then he went on to say that given the age of the garage, it was built in the 1930’s, that once they started redoing the beams there would be a lot of code upgrades required.  So now we are restoring the garage, which is why it is not functional now, and will not be for three to four months.

My first task was to pick a contractor.  I talked to one recommended by the insurance company, but, as luck (?) would have it, one of my neighbors was rebuilding a garage after an electical fire, so i met with his contactor and decided to use his contractor because he was dealing with the vagaries of building something in Beverly Hills, which is not for the faint of heart.  At he moment, the time to restore the garage just keeps lengthening, as we get more information about the garage and more and more issues appear.  It started with an engineer identifying all the ode upgrades required.   I have to thank Kris again and again.  If I had not dealt with this properly and tried to sell my house without doing so, I can only imaging how much of a haircut on price I would have had to take.

So Pam is 100% right.  I have no place to put another car.

4/2/16 Part 2

…. As I walked to the garage, I realized something was very wrong.  The Targa was on fire!  I freaked out, essentially not believing what I was seeing.  I knew enough not to put water on the fire, so I ran inside and called 911.  One day I would like to hear a tape of that call, as I am sure I sounded pretty stressed.  While I was waiting, I ran inside and got Pam’s keys and put her car back on the street.  When that was done, I looked back up the driveway.  The flames and smoke were clearly visible from the street.  At that point, I knew the car was gone, and I began to fear the garage would go too.  So after waiting at least 2 minutes from my first 911 call, I called again.

About a minute later the fire engines could be seen up the block.

They parked and quickly set up operations.  My neighbors all came out to see what was causing the commotion.  I have never experienced anything like it.  On one hand I was exstatic that the firemen were saving my garage, that no other structures were envolved (like my house) and no one was hurt.  On the other hand I felt an incredible sense of loss.

Soon Pam came walking up the street with Jake, our golden retriever.  She could not believe the commotion on the street, and could not believe what had happened.  I had a hard time believing it, too.  One minute I had a great project car, the next I had a project too far.

Once the fire was out, the reality of the situation began to sink in.  I was pretty devastated.  Of course I blamed myself and began second guessing just about everything.  I called Mark and expressed my feelings, and he reminded me that new cars and completely restored cars burn.  To drive his point home, he sent me a video taken two days earlier of a 911 Turbo bursting into flames at the New York Auto Show.  Of course, there were many people with fire extinguishers on hand to put that one out.

A little later I called my friend John, who was with his wife Kristin in Mammoth for the weekend.  I actually face timed him and was busy showing him pictures of the car, the garage, the mess.  Of course the phone was pointed at the computer screen so he could see the carnage (no pun intended).  After he expressed the appropriate level of concern and amazement, he told me to turn the phone around and take a look at him and his surroundings.  I did.  Oops.  There I was going on about the car not even realizing he was waiting for an x-ray at the Mammoth Hospital after suffering a shoulder injury while skiing.  I was so consumed by the car fire, I had not even looked at him before showing him the pictures.  Then I felt even worse.

That night Pam and I had plans to have a BBQ with several friends who are avid Porsche owners and collectors.  Pam, who was not pleased with anything about this, quipped, “Do we have to go?  I don’t want to go to another Porsche BBQ today!”  That did not make me feel any better, either.