Mongo

wow I really like that 83 928S with those turbo 3.6 wheels on it! Awesome car! Also that is the most sharks I've ever seen at a meet in that pic up there!

Andy

Nicole

Too bad you missed out, Andy! Maybe you can join Sharktoberfest later this year, and see about as many 928s "in your backyard"...

Ed Scherer

Regarding Louie Ott's misfortune...

Helen and I were just on our way out the front door of the dyno shop when we heard the boom.

I happened to still have my (film) camera in my hand when we went running to see what happened, and this is what it recorded (click on the photos for larger versions):











I'm amazed and happy that this didn't do more damage. Hope Louie can get his shark cleaned up and get back to having fun with his shark ASAP.

It really bummed me out to see a fellow shark owner's pride and joy on fire. Especially a guy as nice as Louie. I had a chance to talk to him a couple of times, enjoyed listening to him at the tech session, and found him to be a really amiable, humble guy.

BTW, here's a nice photo of Louie about ten minutes earlier.



I shot about 5 rolls of film at the OCIC, which I'm going to try to get film-scanned in tonight and then I'll post a link to the results. I really need to go full digital pretty soon; this scanning is a PITA.

SharkSkin

Aqw geez... what a PITA! I've had to clean up a mess like that on one of my previous cars. No fun at all. Now I only carry Halon or Halotron. Yeah, they're more expensive but there's no cleanup. I have to say though, given a choice between a crispy shark or one covered in dry chem, I'd choose the non-crispy option any day. Well, look at the bright side... at least those extinguishers didn't have to be unloaded in the interior...

Nicole

It's just horrible to see a shark suffer like this!

Right now my main concern is that Louis gets home safely. I hope that all crucial systems work on the long trip, and no hidden damage will interrupt the drive.

Once home, I think Louis will have a lot more cleanup work to do, to make sure the powder does not hide in all the little creases and secretly corrode everything. Not a job I envy him for, but much better than losing the car!

John Veninger

What was the cause of the fire?

Nicole

Hi John: It was great to see you again at the event!

John Eifert's posted an explanation further up in this thread. He knows more details than I do.

John Veninger

It was wonderful to see you and everyone else again!

Sorry for not fully reading the post

Normy

-I hope you all realize how painful it is to see all these great times portrayed on my laptop, while I'm out "slaving" around the world...

Beat me some more master!!!! heh heh!

N!

PS- Devek days is a bust, since I'll be in Michigan in training, but the October thing: I'll call in sick if I have to!

heinrich

This is EXCELLENT photography. Looks as if our good friend Ernest was not going to let things lie, keeping an eagle eye on that engine just in-case. Wow. Looking at those flames it is almost incredible that the nose cone didn't burn right off, and also that the engine is still functional.

You're right, Louie is a downright nice guy who would give you the shirt off his back. He will take this in stride, there's no getting the Professor down. A couple of years back he lost an engine to the dreaded 2/6 bearing failure, and he steamed ahead and got the motor stroked and in the interim bought this blue beauty. No biggie to Louie.

Heinrich

JE928Sx4.

Wow, that is some action photography! Not having a fire extinguisher, I was too busy at the time trying to determine the best way to RUN AWAY!!!!!!!!! Just kidding.....well.....not really . You must have been just to the right of me taking the pictures.

Ed Scherer

A couple more notes:

• I felt a little weird taking pictures when a bunch of other people were actually doing something to save Louie's car, but it seemed that there were a lot of people on it pretty quickly with plenty of extinguishers. I wish I would have started shooting sooner and taken a whole bunch more pictures, because it was an impressive "save".
• Major kudos to Marc White, who performed one critical operation that made a huge difference to the rest of the save -- getting the hood open. There were flames coming out around the edges of the hood, but it was stopped at the safety catch. It takes guts to put your hands in the flames (IIRC, Marc wrapped some cloth or something around his hands) to release the hood.
• And, of course, great work by everyone else who joined in on the save.
• I'm stunned (and really happy to hear) that the car started (I almost said "fired" ) up again. I was expecting this to be a major loss.
• I'm going to be that much more careful when working with anything flammable from now on. Never want to see anything like that again.

BC

I'm just thinking what it would be like to live across the street from a dyno shop? Sorry - but thats the first thing I saw in that picture after a very nice 928 being saved by, what, 20 fire extinguishers?

JE928Sx4.

The dyno shop is a side business for them. It's also and HVAC duct fabrication shop. Surprisingly it wasn't that noisey outside the shop though.

Ed Scherer

I'm sure there are advantages and disadvantages.

But there's one big disadvantage: an otherwise quiet Sunday afternoon interrupted by about 100 screaming dyno pulls. Curiously, the dyno guy (Anyone remember his name? Nice guy.) said that the neighbors don't complain and, IIRC, that he once even had to retrieve something that got ejected from the dyno and impacted one of the houses!

Big advantage: think how much time you could spend dyno tuning!