928 Specialists is not too far for you guys. I'm not so lucky, Capt Earl was my best option at two hours away.

 

5 hours, yo. And I'm not sure they are doing service work. Not advertised at least.

 

Captn Earl is in central/East PA IIRC. Not New England. Scott Moore was from that area, as is Kevin Micheal and a few other pretty knowledgable guys. Meet the best of the best at Hershey at the end of the month, and make your new connections there.

 

Working on other people's cars often is not all that much fun or rewarding since you need to work with their idea of what is good enough and does not "cost too much". You also end up giving them bad news about things which need to be done that they had no idea were needed. And God help you if something breaks while you have the car !!!! or just after you worked on it It can be a fun hobby until you start charging others for your work.....then it becomes a business.

 

Earl services will be missed for sure.
I hope all is well. and I hope to be as active as he when I get to his young age!

 

Had a brief discussion with Earl at Frenzy about the benefits of having a lift. He said that he still was more comfortable getting up and down from the creeper, and working from the creeper on his back. I've done that for years just casually, and I pay for it for a day or two after each serious project. Earl is doing it for others, so his up-and-down duty cycle is a lt bigger than mine. So guess what.... It doesn't surprise me a bit that he's going to stop doing other folks' work. Plus, as much as I like helping out others, every once in a while someone may not have the correct amount of appreciation, and that's for help provided for free. Earl takes a rather token fee, probably not enough to dull the effect. Plus a 'customer' probably has higher expectations for work-for-hire, even though the fee is well below market. Then-- A hobby is fun so long as it's fun and a hobby. Sometimes business is fun, sometimes not. Maybe it just isn't fun anymore. K tells me what's fun and what isn't, so I don't have to worry about that part anyway.

 

Anyone every had dealings with "Andrew" at the Pit Stop in Northern VA? Been in talks with him to work on the S4. Claims 928 owners to be frequent customers. Est TB replace to be around $900 (considering not doing the WP since it was done late in '09), which I thought was mightly low....

 

Too low.
Full two day job, assuming cleaning and replacement of some ancilliary stuff.
You are really looking at fully loaded labor of $1500 or so, plus parts.
Doesn't include repair, or parts/replacement of that front harness.

 

Capt Earl is the man!

Here he is with my '88 back in '07 when he helped me prep it for the long drive home to Seattle. Err, I mean, I helped him prep it for me...



Thank you Earl!

 

Yup.

I tried to work the budget for my real job so that they couldn't pay for me full time. Bastards found more work for me.

At this point I'm only working on 928s that I've touched before.

Besides, I'm way far from the OP.

 

Looks so close on the little map I have.

 

I wish Earl well and hope he will continue to participate in 928 community events. He's a real sweetie!!!

LOL! I once got a call from a German friend, saying: "I'm in New York now - would you have time to get together?" When I explained to her that I'd have to hop in a plane and fly for more than 6 hours, she realized America isn't that small...

 

Dave will get the joke, he heard it from Uncle Mitch and myself involving that one time in LasVegas.

 

 

Europeans who have never been to the US don't have a good perception of the distances here. There is actually a joke about it:

A Texan visits Germany and brags about the size of his home State. He explains: "It's so big, you can ride the train all day long, and you'll still be in Texas." The German thinks for a moment and says: "We have slow trains, too..."