and that the engine relies purely on oil and air for cooling. She was like "Oh ok! I get it! But what about in the winter, don't you need anti-freeze so your radiator doesn't ice up?"

 

My father (who worked for Porsche for yeaaaarrs) has recalled memories of dealer service advisers selling coolant flushes to 911 customers back in the 70's. Imagine the damage control he was responsible for on those....oof.

 

Wouldn't a "coolant flush" just be an oil change? I have had many people trouble with the idea that the heater is the exhaust!

 

That's so true , moving south so that the temp of the coolant stays above 0C 32F is very very important .

I flush the coolant every time I start it up .

 

I have had people think that is dangerous. Exhaust heats your car!

 

It is dangerous , exhaust can leak into the heating .
But on the whole scale of "dangerous" , its another one I don't worry about .

 

Someone asked me this week at work if "Porsches" (what I figured was his way of describing older, air-cooled 911's) pre-heated their gas... by routing it over their exhaust manifolds[!?]

I explained that a 911 ducts ventilation air over the exhaust to get warm air, and that's probably what he'd seen... But that, no - Porsches don't *purposely* flow gasoline over their car's hot exhaust pipes.

Then he showed me the drawing that ginned his confusion. It was of a Carrera GT's drive train. (below)
What he thought was a gas tank was its single massive exhaust muffler plenum.

Porsches are just a mysto-fabuloso-contraptions to most Joe Q Publics

 

In some veggie diesel retrofitted vehicles , heating the fuel is done .

 

When I had my 964 inspected once, the guy tried to sell me one of those.

Also, back in the day when I had an RX-7, on many trips to the dealer they tried to sell me an "intake valve cleaning", and always showed me a little model with a camshaft, tappets, etc to explain how dirty, sticking valves hurt my RX-7's performance.

 

What a bunch of wankels !

 

Wankstas.

 

that's real

 

Or a head gasket for your RX7

Chris

 

I bought my first 911 in Colorado in winter. Day I bought it, it was 60 degrees and sunny. Stayed at a friends house that night in Colorado to rest up for drive home.
Overnight, one of those out-of-nowhere snowstorms blew in and temperature dropped into teens. I woke up in middle of night look out the window and did a brief, sleepy panice: Was there anti freeze in it? Oh, wait a moment, never mind...

 

So did the windshield wiper washer bottle freeze or did it not , don't keep us in suspense .