Permission is given to use this material in any publication as long as my name and affiliation are left intact. If you can, send me the issue. Previous Porsching columns are available at http://www.cs.vassar.edu/faculty/welty/porsching PORSCHING by Chris Welty Hudson-Valley Region, PCA The Glen - Part III I love 911s. I really do. I love the shape, I love the sound, I love the feel of it. Right there in the blazing July heat, with starting problems, I still loved 911s. I did not, however, love MY 911. I hated it. I wanted to kill it. I would have driven the thing into a river if it had not been for the fact that there were other people around who may have doubted my loyalty had they noticed one hint of dissatisfaction - that and of course driving a car into a river implies being able to start it. One of the most frustrating experiences in the world, you realize, is discovering that something that worked just fine a few days ago doesn't work today. The only thing more frustrating than that is to fix something only to find that there is something else wrong. The only thing more frustrating than that is having twenty well-meaning bozos come along and tell you exactly what the problem isn't. And the only thing worse than that is having to call up Michelle Pfeifer and cancel your date because your Porsche won't start. Although John and I had figured out for sure what was preventing the starter from cranking, we were unable to fix it, and had come up with a barely livable work-around that required two people (one person to turn the key, the other person to stand in back and short the solenoid to the rear fuse block). If that wasn't enough, we had to stand there for several hours before the engine would actually catch. The next day began early. Despite our starting problems, we awoke optimistic. It would be John's first day of driving, and I was looking forward to "the boot", a section of The Glen which the Nascar boys refuse to drive, probably because it requires some driving ability. We arrived at The Glen, and gave the car the once-over to be sure. The Rockin' Red Run group was to go out first, so I gave John the salute and headed out to the staging area to wait, with engine running, for the start of the day. A flag worker began to wave us out. My heart began to increase its pace. My gloved hands gripped the wheel a little tighter, and as the car in front of me began to move I gradually let out the clutch pedal and fed smooth power. The car came to instant life and I pursued the traffic out of the paddock staging area and onto pit lane. The roaring of unmuffled cars before and after me only served to heighten my anticipation. My foot hit the floor. I was in ecstasy. The RPMs rose faster and faster and the acceleration gently pressed me into my seat. My cheeks rippled and I began to drool. I rogered main engine throttle-up and initiated SRB separation. I was engulfed in the musical beauty of those six horizontally opposed air-cooled cylinders playing in perfect harmony. All was right with the world. War, oppression, hunger, and all the rest of society's ills had been eliminated. I was at peace, and so very alive. Evolution, however, has dictated that such moments must be fleeting, for otherwise we would never even eat. According to these natural laws, my brief and idyllic bliss ended suddenly with a loud clunk, after which the concert rose sharply in volume without the accompanying acceleration. I love 911s. I love 911s. I pulled sharply over into one of the hot pits. My first reaction was to think I'd run over something. I jumped out and a quick inspection reveal no tattered remains of a flag worker. I then checked underneath and saw the problem: the driver's side CV joint had fallen off the differential. It was difficult to inspect it closely since the car is lowered, the exhaust was hot, and there were cars passing a few inches away that were just getting up a full head of steam for entrance onto the track. I spat and cursed and gestured rudely, reality once again asserting itself in my mind as I remembered senseless wars, political insurrection, the cries of the wretched, and how much time I'd spent in the freakin' garage this weekend. I got a friendly tow back into the paddock and once again borrowed my spot inside (I ended up using the spot far more than the nice guy who had gotten to The Glen early to scope it out). The crowds, of course, converged. I was particularly averse to revealing the problem this time, because I knew in my heart the cause. I had broken one of the basic rules of CV-joint rebuilding: always retighten the CV bolts after you have driven about a hundred miles or one track run group. I had rebuilt the CVs about a month ago and had never rechecked the bolts. I jacked up the car and slid underneath to avoid scrutiny. Miraculously, all the bolts had remained. One was clearly bent, however, and the gasket had fallen off. I reported this to John, who immediately became despondent. It seemed as if he would not get to drive. Despite John's depression, I was completely confident. I knew that most people bring their entire garages to track events, so I searched around the paddock and found both the bolt and the gasket I needed. I tightened the bolts, and we got the car back out just as they were letting John's group out onto the track. He returned jubilant, and fired up for the rest of the weekend. There was to be no more driving until after lunch, so we revisited the chicken man and gorged ourselves within plain sight of the gorge. This irony was lost on the chicken man, although so was most of the english language, as he thrilled us with stories of how the Nascar boys like their chicken. We pretended we thought he was truly entertaining, and later wondered whether his parents were related. Back at the track, we re-checked the CV bolts, and I went out for what was effectively my first run of the day. After facing the prospects of electrocution getting the car to start, flooring the throttle through the esses didn't phase me one bit. I screamed a bit, sure, but I didn't let up. When the oil temperature got too high even for synthetic oil in a car I wished would just blow up, I came in. The brakes were starting to feel a little soft, anyway. I was just pulling into the paddock area when I remembered that a few nights previous I had removed the connector on the cold-start valve for some testing. Wondering if perhaps I had forgotten to re-attach it, which would conveniently explain and repair the hard-starting problem, I jumped out, opened the engine lid, and reached my hand back around behind the air cleaner. I love 911s. I love 911s. It's hard to love a car when you are hot, sweaty, frustrated, and your left arm has just been sear-sizzled to perfection. I'm pretty sure that's when I put on the orange duct tape. The orange duct tape was left-over from when I used to track my blood-orange 911. Now that I was using the SC, which was ostensibly silver, the tape had lain unused in the bottom of my "track stuff" box that gets loaded into the trunk by default when I go to the track. I took off my white magnetic numbers and using long strips of tape, made big, door-sized orange numbers on each side. I then highlighted the rear fenders with some tape. Passers-by made horrible faces at the sight. I knew in my heart that was the way Picasso, or Mozart, had felt. John returned from his latest ride and smirked. "I like the pin-striping." When the car had cooled down a bit, I gingerly reached back and re-connected the cold-start valve. It had, indeed, been disconnected. This was time for celebration. "What does the cold-start valve have to do with starting it when it's hot?" Mr. Voice-of-doom asked. I glared at him defiantly as we began the two-man starting process. After proving empirically that the cold-start valve is appropriately NOT called the "cold/hot start valve", I threw up my hands in frustration. Electronic starting was at least an improvement, even if it did have to crank for several weeks. John hopped in with his instructor and prepared to go out for his second run. I waved him out and smiled thinking there was no way anything else could go wrong.