Snowboarder54

Over the last year or so I found it necessary, due to some financial reasons and way to many mountain bike wrecks, to park my GT3 to concentrate on other aspects of my life and to get my body healed up. My car spent much of it’s time parked at Sharkwerks over the last 14 months ,but as often happens in life things turned around and I found my way back. As my Gt3 was the first customer 3.9 conversion and had nearly 35K miles since the conversion, 66K total, Alex and James were itching to tear it down to see how it was holding up and install some of the newer upgrades they have developed over the last few years. So they did just that. The good news, everything looked good inside and they were very happy, as was I, when they tore into to things. A new 4.0 clutch, flywheel and pressure plate were installed and everything else freshened up and I was ready to roll! The bad news is that the very first day that the car returned home I managed to do one of my dumbest things I’ve ever managed in over 50 years of Porsche driving, hit a wet spot here, about 20 miles from my house, which was damp with fluid on the road and managed to slide off the road and impacted a tree on the passenger side with Alex in the car. Fortunately we were both fine although Alex got a pretty good blow to the head and was slightly concussed. After fighting with the insurance company for three weeks it was determined a total loss and a value was established which wasn’t quite what the current market is but reasonable enough considering the high mileage of my car. Needles to say I wasn’t feeling real good about the whole ordeal, nor was I in a financial shape to upgrade to a newer .2 GT3 or RS, which I would love to do and step up to the SW 4.1.

I shipped the car to Sharkwerks the following day and met with the insurance adjuster several days later. It appeared obvious to everyone who looked at the car that it was a total loss other then the adjuster. Hence it took nearly three weeks before we could reach a settlement. From the offset I knew I wasn’t couldn’t allow the 3.9 motor to end up in a salvage yard someplace and my intention all along was to buy the car back, find a donor car and switch everything off the silver car to the new car. I had visions of it taking me 6 months to a year and endless days and nights. Alex and James kept insisting it wouldn’t be a big deal, although to my eyes it appeared more of a challenge then I felt I wanted to take on. My main concern was getting the silver car and figured it would take several months of searching until I could find a proper donor. Then the worst case scenario would be I would have a nice 3.9 sitting in my garage I could walk past every day for the months to come.

Then things got interesting, once I got the approval to purchase the salvaged car from the insurance company I shot Mooty an email, telling him the sad story and asked if he could be on the lookout for a suitable high mileage donor. With in a few days “The Mootster” located a car with 47,000 miles and the party started! I closed the deal on the car flew down to LA and drove it to Sharkwerks Wednesday before last, James started switching motors that Friday, Alex and I started helping by removing brakes and other parts, much to James chagrin, sorry we slowed you up so much James, and things starting happening very fast. James would send Alex and me out to chase parts, to the tire shop, to get food or whatever else he could thing of to get us out of his way. Oh and I cant forget Dan, he was in and out, answering phones, packaging parts and always cleaning one thing or another!

So, after only a week and a half the boys at Sharkwerks totally dismantled both my cars, engines, transmissions, wheels, brakes and many other parts. The new “White Shark” is now sitting in my garage, clean and running like only a Sharkwerks 3.9 does, al refreshed and ready for many more miles of pleasure.

This is a very happy ending to a very sad story. I would like to give a huge shout out to Mooty for not only his help in locating the donor car but for his help in finding buyers for some extra parts I had to sell to help absorb some of the cost of the swaps and also for his words of encouragement along the way and his help in closing the purchase. He’s just an awesome individual and this whole event would not have been possible without his participation, contacts and knowledge.

Another huge shout out to Alex, James and Dan, with out their help I would never had be able to pull this off in such a timely manner! These guys are fricken awesome!!

Here’s the end result

ChrisF

That story makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. Congrats on the new ride! There's some good egg's up here in the Norcal GT3 community. Well done Sharkwerks and mooty.

PS: time to update the sig.

Alan C.

Great story and a really nice looking GT3. Glad it all came together for you.

bmwtye

Glad it all worked out for you! When I first read your email i was like oh no

cbweaver1

Great story, thanks for sharing. Outside of Germany, California may be the next best place on the planet to be a GT3 enthusiast.

widers911

what a great ending to an unfortunate event. congrats on the new ride!

tasman

Glad it worked out for you! Here's to many more years of safe GT3ing.

Nizer

Nice car. Cool story. Time to get back on the mountainbike.....

RDCR

Yep, this is the place to do that as well.

Great story, one of these days I hope to be calling Mooty to find me a car as well!

Yoops Racing

At first Glance I was ....OH NO! Not the Silver 3.9 that I have spent so much time drooling over to do the same to mine. So glad to hear no one was hurt...
It looks like all came in to place and the White Shark looks sweet.
I assume this means no upgrade to 4.1 anytime soon...

Snowboarder54

Probably not in this life time, but you never know one can only dream!

aussie jimmy

glad you guys are ok.

DC640

im glad things worked out!!

Snowboarder54

One thing I neglected to mention in my original post was that we were all pleasantly surprised as to the condition of all the RSS suspension parts from the silver car. They were all just as tight as new and after 35,000 miles! So a huge shout out to the folks at RSS as well! They were installed in the white shark as well. I suspect I'll get another 35k out of them with no problem!

Jamie_GT3

Alex and company at Sharkwerks are one of the best shops around. I have yet to hear anything bad about their service... I especially like the fact that they torture tested their 4.1 (7 rebuilds!) before even thinking of releasing to the public...

Congrats to the OP as well... Scary situation...