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Convincing the wife 4k in parts is really just a couple hundred dollars and that it is normal to be on the first name basis with the UPS and USPS delivery personnel.
I propose a sub-level 1 level... maybe call it introduction to self mutilation or something like that. In that level we would learn how to deal with the many fruitloops we meet when hunting for and buying these cars, raccoon exorcisms, mold abatement, briar patch extractions, etc.
Ohhh yeah, excellent post!
I recall talking to a guy on the phone about his black 85. He said it needed some catch up work. I drove for 2 hours and got to where I swear they filmed Deliverance. This crusty comes out of the trailer(yes, I said trailer), and we go around back, shoo some goats out of the way, and there it was - the pride of Stuttgart. It was 1/4 submerged in what I will choose to call mud, however the fragrance was more like broken septic tank. The hood was folded back, as if it unlatched at 130MPH because it was literally molded to the windscreen and roof line. It had a 5sp in it!, but according to him, it came in on the trailer because the engine would rev, but no motion(who knows?). The back was up on the wheels, I mean the wheels were horizontal, and the brake rotors were sitting on top of the wheels.
He was asking $2600 but was open to negotiation. I told him if he pulled it out of the sewage - er, mud and then hosed it down, and removed the trans and engine, I'd give him $500 for the pair. He said he had another guy coming over later. Wished him luck. It's still there, if you want it lemme know.
A job that every owner will need to do sooner or later?
A job we all dread, yet know is likely to come?
A job peculiar to a 928 that other car owners wouldn't understand? (or understand it's significance?)
Probably the second, that is what I was thinking when I made the original post.
I've had my '85 for about five and a half years now, have done tons of work to keep it a DD, (daily driver).
I ain't fell down no rabbit holes yet. ...cough cough, or linked all my threads..
No credit given for checking tire pressures, fluid levels or opening the window a bit when passing wind for your rev limiter.
Any listed job qualifies for the level.
Level one: Reading and understanding the entire owners manual, tuneup and change of all fluids, brake pad/rotor refresh, radiator removal/hose replacement/belt replacement, seat removal for terminal carpet cleaning.
A job that every owner will need to do sooner or later?
A job we all dread, yet know is likely to come?
A job peculiar to a 928 that other car owners wouldn't understand? (or understand it's significance?)
Originally Posted by Socal_Tom
Probably the second, that is what I was thinking when I made the original post.
Well, the door handle is known to be a pain, but if you have a kid (or a neighbor kid, or a wife/gf, or...) with small hands, it is supposed to be easier.
TB/WP an be a pain, mainly because of "PO Idiocy", and broken bolts on disassembly. The WYAIT rabbit hole can be bad on that one too. "Bad" in both time and money.
Intake refresh is not to hard, just long and involved and expensive.
MM/OPG is somewhat similar, just usually less expensive than an intake refresh (fewer parts).
Odo gear is actually pretty simple. A bit on the "fiddly" side, a fair amount of small, detailed work. I have a bit of background in scale modeling and gunsmithing, so that sort of stuff doesn't intimidate me.
The same can be said of the seat switches and the wiper motor - often times the seat switches stop working, but can be cleaned up and brought back to life with some time & effort (no cost). The bearing in the wiper motor goes bad and the thing howls pretty loud. Replacing the motor is not cheap. A new bearing is (was) $20. Getting them both apart & back together is...
Interesting.
There are a few others, some of which are exclusive to the 928, CE panel is one (how many other cars have a removable fuse panel that typically comes out and gets cleaned up?)
The fun part about this, however, is the level of "enthusiast" involvement. Dwayne, Bill Ball, Sharkskin, Dan the Pod Guy (RIP to both him and his site), and a host of others have "been there, done that" and documented it.
Anything that needs to be done has been done and written up. All the pitfalls are revealed. Workarounds and solutions are there.
And if you get hung up, Stan, Sean, Dave, Greg, Doctor Bob, Colin and a host of others are here and willing to offer suggestions.
Add on Roger and Mark (and a few others) who go to great lengths to make parts available to us and the challenges of working on an older, exotic car seem to evaporate.
That takes a lot of the "sting" out of the ownership. (not the cost, though).
I think it depends on when you started (before or after Rennlist) and what your overall mechanical experience was before the 928.
How many seemingly "simple" tasks thanks to DIY write-ups were a royal PIA 20 years ago for some of us having to figure it out on our own?
If this is your first "hobby" car and your first attempt at DIY mechanics, just getting the car on jack stands without crushing the boxed in area under the car is a right of passage.
Outside of that, the bell curve is very long......
Outside of that, the bell curve is very long......
Ah,,,, Learning curve?
(couldn't help myself) We know what you meant. alternately, it could be more accurate as a Poisson dist with a lambda < ~0.5 Showing that the adeptness of the repair gets easier with time?
I thought of it like a bell curve in class, for someone like Greg Brown, a task 90% find difficult is super easy to him. Where as a job he finds difficult would be damn near impossible for that 90%.
So if we were being graded, #2 would have missed twice as many answers as Greg, but still received a 90% due to the bell curve effect.
I thought of it like a bell curve in class, for someone like Greg Brown, a task 90% find difficult is super easy to him. Where as a job he finds difficult would be damn near impossible for that 90%.
So if we were being graded, #2 would have missed twice as many answers as Greg, but still received a 90% due to the bell curve effect.
<----we don't use this one enough.
Ah! Now I think I get it. When you said the bell curve would be long, you meant it would not be a narrow peak, but a very wide/flat STd of the typical Joe bag-a-donuts repair guy compared to the pros.
In that case, I can see what you meant. However, in this use case, finding a meaningful measure of central tendency for the start of the STd would be problematic. We could take a 100 ave guys, with a 100 ave 928s, put them in the ave shop, and measure how long it takes to do the TB/WP job. Then, once we have the measure of central tendency, we could take the variance of the times, and create the 1st Std from the chi square of the......
10-16-2017, 11:07 PM
<----we don't use this one enough. 
