I drive the car into work. Supposed to get close to 60 today, so I drove the Porsche to work. I never get tired of that motor's sound Drove Meg to daycare today and she loves to ride in it.

Saturday we had about 14 cars for our drive to breakfast. Took just under an hour worth of backroads and some cow dung in the road but we made it safely to our destination. Meg loved it as usual; she loves the Porsche.

No pics from the day out of my camera, but you can see some here from the other club photog:

small photo gallery

 

It was a big Porsche weekend for me I drove both cars , at seperate times of course, to Wal-Mart for $21 Mobil 1 then washed the brake dust off the wheels and checked the air in both of them.
I did a bunch of chain saw work on a large maple theat fell at my property and am suffering the muscle pains today

 

$21 mobil for 5 qts? sounds pretty cheap. I remember paying close to $60 for a full oil change supply.

 

I had a busy weekend. I helped a friend install a block heater in his new 2010 Prius. The instructions estimated it to be a 45 minute task. It took us 4 hours. The instructions glossed over a lot of things. The work included removing the entire wiper assembly and wedging your hand down into areas with sharp edges. Did I mention that my hands have a lot of scratches?

After we finished his car, we focused on getting the fan belt pulley off my cabrio. A nut stripped when we were installing it. Despite lots of attempts, we were unable to do it while it was in the car. We ultimately had to cut the new belt and remove the alternator/fan assembly. With the fan on the bench, I was able to use a Dremel to cut off the @#$ nut and use vice grips to remove the stripped stud. We reassembled using bolts instead. I'll order studs in the future. Got everything back in place, started the car, moved it out on the drive way to idle. I then checked the voltage at the battery. It showed 13.8 volts. Horay. We cleaned up and took the car for a test drive. The engine was running a bit rough. I assumed it was due to lack of use and stale gas, so I headed to a nearby gas station to fill up. Once filled, the engine was sounding better, so we took it to the far end of my town and began to circle back to home. Then.......

My ABS and PDS lights came on with the ! light and beeper. My radar detector began rebooting multiple times. I began to wonder what would cause all of that. I was wondering about a low battery voltage. I turned off the head lights (4pm) and headed straight to home. As I pulled off the highway, my friend noticed that the dash lights dimmed when the RPM dropped. Getting more worried but closer to home. The engine stalled just as I was turning on my street and I began coasting. Fortunately, we go to the driveway. We had to push it into the garage. I checked the battery. It was 11.7v. I put disconnected the ground and connected my charger. I let it charge all Sat night and Sunday.

I didn't have time to troubleshoot. I suspecting either I have a bad battery or bad alternator or we broke a wire reinstalling the alternator. The battery is about 4-5 years old and the alternator has about 100,000 miles on it. My plan is to check the voltage of the battery again. It that's good, start the car and check the output voltage at idle and under load. Any other things I should try?

Frustrated and my hands hurt.

 

I spent Saturday morning cleaning out the radiators on the turbo - and fitting some mesh to the grills to stop having to do it again. The air ducts on each side force all the leaves etc. to the end of the rads so they were completely blocked at that point.

Also took the 964 out for a blast, which I enjoyed a lot - but it is quite unwilling to start when cold now - takes three or four attempts before it will idle. I plugged in Durametric to it but there aren't many inputs you can monitor on the 964 - engine temp looked OK, but voltage looked low so may have to look into this at some point. Not sure my trickle charger is working all that well so might replace it.

Some pics of what was clogging up my rads - and of my newly installed mesh.

 

rob- sucks to have all that time into it and still have a problem. Good luck with diagnostics.

 

The cab one made me smile. Fur hats and thick coats - it doesn't matter if it's minus 20 outside, if the sun is shining cab owners will put the roof down!

 

Hey Rob, Sorry to hear you had such problems. Let me know if there is anything I can lend a hand with!

 

Friday I went to a Turkish dinner party. Those people could EAT, it was like an endurance sport. Amazing food! Om nom nom.

Took the Pcar out Sunday for a ride. Just driving, no place to be, no time to get there. Perfect drive.

 

Well we took a nice spirted drive in both cars, my wife in the Boxster and me in our 964, we did switch at the half way point, and raced home. It sounds like I've got some noisey rear wheel bearings on the 964. So today I'll be looking into getting a new set.

Went riding yesterday, and I'm still somewhat sore.

To make today even better, my wife decided to call off work, she has plenty of sick\vacation time.

Had a little scare while driving the Box home, a small P\U pulled out of a dirt road with out looking, and I had to perform some evasive manuvers. All I have to say is wow the Boxster can handle!!

 

Worked on the Packard. One step forward, two steps back. I hate electrical work, especially after someone else has attempted electrical work on the same vehicle. Garage is dark and cold. Using a headlamp to work by (which I actually LIKE). Fabricated a mount for the replacement stop light switch. Rewired the headlight internals (found rotted insulation and source of direct shorts) Put the car back on the ground for a test drive on Sunday (even though wiring for lighting was still dangling everywhere). Good news - the mechanical brakes are working much better now; not quite Big Reds better, but better. Bad news, the engine is running very poorly. I am pretty sure it has a significant vacuum leak. Found one source, from a previous "mechanic"s efforts; maybe another on the rotted carb base insulator gasket. Bottom line, I counted up 14 items to be done before Thursday. At one (successful) hour per item, and, oh, my paying job. Well, you get the idea. Also remember, when working on cars, especially 76 yr old ones, each action item usually creates one or two additional action items.
Still didn't get time to sort out my excessive Heat problem in the C4.
Arghhh.

 

Is the Packard going to be ready for this weekend?

I did pretty much what I set off to do: spent time with my son, watched the Yankee games, played out with the dog in the rain, and not much else. Loved every minute of it

Now I'm glued to the computer tracking my new toy. Should be here on Saturday!

 

Jason - Thanks for the offer but I think it should be obvious where the problem is. If I get stumped, I may give you a buzz.

 

Probability for the wedding is rapidly declining. The groom and the mother of the groom are less than happy with me right now. I guarantee you that the mother of the groom would be even LESS happy if the Packard died along the route to/from the church with the wedding party inside. I am siding with Risk Management. Actually, I think I am going to be the one most disappointed with this situation.

Back to work.

 

Got the p-car all washed up and put away for the winter ready to start the winter projects.

Marc