It was the US Grand Prix this weekend from Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas. The time difference meant practice/quali sessions and the race started late in the day for UKers, giving a few hours to escape the computer and get my hands dirty.
I spent the daylight on Saturday rebuilding a door lock and window regulator on the stopgap Skoda TDI, bought to use while setting the wife’s recent insurance write-off (Skoda is actually an excellent drive), but today was all about Porsche Cayenne winter tyres.
I’ve had the winters on standby for a while. In keeping with my budget rock ‘n’ roll Porsche lifestyle, they were a proper screaming bargain. Part-worn 255 55 18 Pirelli M&S Scorpions, over 18″ Cayenne Turbo wheels. I bought the wheels on eBay for £100 during the summer, tyres were a ludicrous £30 (eBay) plus maybe £30 travel to get them. So a full set of winters in perfect condition for £160, plus a few quid to fit: call it £200.
The mild October and early November has allowed me to eke the last few miles out of the 19″ P-Zeros the Big Pig wore at purchase. The tyres weren’t new when I had it, but I’ve had about 5k miles of spirited driving on what was left: it’s about what I was expecting and I’m happy at that. The 265 50 19 Pirellis are not quite down to the wear bars, but they’ve likely done enough, as they’ve become increasingly squirrely towards the end of their life. We’ll seek out new ones for next year.
For now, I’ll run these ice driving bargains towards the stops and report back on grip. I’ve just bought another set of 18″ Cayenne rims and am planning to fit some new but cheapish SUV winters from a name not commonly seen on Porsche. I’m all about maxing the value for money on this Big Pig, and Youtube videos of the tyres in question on crazy Polish snowchargers look good.
Two things of note can be seen in these pics. One is the best tool in the standard tool kit: the locating pin for tyre changes. Everyone should get one of these, no matter what the car! Makes changing ten-ton Cayenne wheels a lot easier. The other just visible on top of the house is the dormer of the loft conversion: the reason I’ve been slaving and not blogging all year! Almost done now and it’s really wicked. You can also see the rusty roof of the lean-to garage that’s coming down next year: I plan to tie it to the Cayenne and shove the car in drive.
Cayenne continues to be wicked (of course) and a welcoming seat at the end of a long day’s work. I know a few blog fans are thinking of trying one, and to all I say “do it!” It makes sense to retain access to something small and diesel for long-haul solo boring jobs, but the Cayenne makes bigger work easy, and I’m slowly working through the allegedly costly maintenance items. Plugs and coils done: battery, starter and brake discs next.
Roll on next Spring’s Essen TechnoClassica road trip – the Cayenne will be four up, at least.
Better known as Le Corbusier, Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris was a pioneer of modern architecture. While Le Corbusier’s designs for urban living may no longer be attuned to 21st century inner city pressures, his ideas continue to influence designers and artists, almost fifty years after his death.
Le Corbusier had much to say on colour. “If the house is white all over, the shapes of things stand out without any possible ambiguity; the volume of things will appear clear cut; the colour of things is categorical. The white of whitewash is absolute. Everything stands out against it and is displayed absolutely: black against white, frank and truthful. Put in objects that are unsuitable or in bad taste, and you can’t miss them. You might call it the X-ray of beauty, a permanent court of judgement, the eye of truth.”
Le Corbusier’s eye of truth is currently being cast upon Thomas Flohr’s Safari car, awaiting fresh paint in the Tuthill Porsche bodyshop. Last seen on Safari 2011, the silver 911 had a rough start to the event, being abandoned at the mid-way point when the crew decided to call it a day. Tuthills carried the car along on the event – Francis’ experience suggesting this would be prudent – and it eventually donated the front section of its roll cage to the Waldegård car, allowing it to complete the rally after a fairly big off as the rally reached its final days.
Now fully repaired with a brand new and latest-version roll cage installed by the fabrication team at Wardington, Thomas’ superb 911 has been rubbed down by hand, ahead of a full respray in the same silver colour. The off-white shade may not tally with the master, but Le Corbusier’s musings on using a single monochromatic colour to highlight pure shapes and bad taste rings true.
The finished Safari cage in a simple, bare 911 shell is a structure of enduring fascination and beauty. Don’t you think? Maybe just me.
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After the week just finished, it was a relief to snatch a few hours off this morning and point our Porsche Cayenne’s nose towards Warwickshire, to collect another load of bricks for next year’s garage build. The way this thing hauls a trailer full of reclaim bricks is incredible, making century-old bricks my latest eBay obsession.
So far in November we’ve had a painful VAT return, slow going on the building front and a ton of catching up on copywriting, but Wednesday night took the biscuit, with a call from Mrs G to say someone had crashed into her sweet little CR-V. I drove to the scene to find a head-on smash between CR-V and builder’s van: CR-V destroyed and wife in some discomfort. The CR-V had done its job well, deploying ample airbags and absorbing a pretty big hit, but an ambulance ride and a long night in the emergency department followed.
She’s off work for a few days while aches and pains subside. We freelancers can’t stay home forever, so the next problem was what car to stick her in when she’s feeling up to it. The Cayenne has proved so good that I’ve sold my ‘spare’ cars: Subaru, MX5, M3 about to go and Landcruiser will be next. Obvious write-offs like this usually settle fast, so there seems little point in a courtesy car. Off to eBay I went, looking at alternatives.
Nothing good on eBay, so I decided to stick her in the M3 for a few days and buy another SUV when the insurance cheque arrives. That decision made, I spent Thursday evening in college a little burnt out, emerging back into the winter chill at 10pm to drive home. Sliding into the Cayenne, it started with a misfire. Not too unusual when damp, a slight misfire from cold usually clears. Ten miles later, the miss was just the same. I texted a Cayenne mate “Misfire. Coil packs?” Consensus this was likely culprit. I’d order a new one next day, as I couldn’t have another car go down.
Next morning was just as cold, and the miss was just as wrong. I ordered eight coil packs and a set of plugs. Dropped the kids at school and drove the fifty miles on seven cylinders. Still managed to top the ton, though. No limp-home mode on Cayenne. I stuck the Cayenne on a friend’s Porsche PIWIS, which showed cylinder number three was misfiring. Time to take some bits off.
Getting to Cayenne coil packs is not too tricky. Top engine plastics come off when the engine support is removed: it’s a bit of simple spannering. Number three coil pack had quite a long crack, and more than one other had the same. The plugs were not over tight and looked a bit worn, so new ones would give it a boost. I also ordered wiper blades – been meaning to for weeks.
The plugs and packs didn’t arrive until late afternoon, so it was dark by the time I was finished. My cross-country drive to avoid the Friday night motorway traffic was a revelation – transformed the Cayenne from an impressive 4×4 needing Tiptronic downflicks to press on, into a rev-loving mega beast, attacking all comers.
We ripped up more Tarmac than a truckload of road protesters and I’ve been looking for cane-it opportunities ever since. Pizza run last night, brick run today, failed brick run yesterday: all good fun. Tickover is now smoother than the aforementioned prom queen’s anatomy: everyone needs a Cayenne!
Apart from my wife that is, as I just bought her a bargain Skoda Fabia TDI estate to run around in while we’re waiting for the next thing. Turned out the seller also owned a 993 and was considering adding a Cayenne. It’s a small Porsche world, you know.
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An interesting conversation tonight about WEVO’s 915 GateShift kit versus the classic WEVO shifter.
After years of using a WEVO shifter in my own 911, I recommend the beautifully engineered WEVO shifter as the number one upgrade on any impact-bumper Porsche 911 running a 915 transmission (seen below on a Tuthill rally build). Surprisingly, the man who invented, designed and manufactures both products says different.
“At Windrush, we say the best upgrade for the 915 is the internal gate of the WEVO GateShift kit”, says Hayden Burvill. “The internal architecture of the 915 is such that extra control of the shift rail mechanism can greatly reduce the risk of a potential missed shift.
“Chassis twist, drivers hanging on the shift lever and the unmanaged freedom of the internals of the 915 mean that you can mis-select gears without feeling any real tactile warning. The GateShift kit (below) installs a “spoiler” between the gear planes, creating an obstruction that will warn you that the gear you are heading for is not here! You stay in neutral, not selecting a potentially destructive ratio.
“The driver with a steady hand and smooth shifting style will hardly notice it is there. It’s dormant: only coming into effect when you inadvertently cut the corners of the shift pattern.
“For those who have driven with the GateShift kit, I believe very few would ever build another 915 without one. We drove ours for a long time with a completely stock shifter, only the stock coupler had new round hole aftermarket bushes. It was wonderful, we have since added a WEVO 915 Classic Shifter (base detail below), mostly for the reduced lever travel.”
Quite the revelation. Turns out you can also fit WEVO’s GateShift without removing the transmission. You learn something new every day! Despite Hayden’s wisdom, I still place my shifter at the top of the upgrade list, and have never felt the need for a GateShift. But, were money no object, I would have the WEVO lot!
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I’ve had a good week of car sales, with my MX5 and Subaru Outback going to new homes quickly on eBay. I’m selling as too many cars and two home extensions eating cash! The MX5 needed a decent polish before departure, and I’d set today aside to get stuck into it. The weather was excellent, so I did it outside the back gates.
My M3 (above in MOT last weekend by Rob at Racing Restorations) was hurriedly polished after its respray last year and it looks crap. I had a few run-ins with the paint shop we used during and after the work, so I decided to sort it myself. I’m no stranger to polishers, having started my career as a valeter. I have an air-powered CP dual action sander/polisher, but air is a pain to polish with, so I went hunting for an electric machine.
I eventually nabbed an almost unused DAS Pro 6 dual-action polisher kit with Mezerna polishes on eBay and stashed it with a bunch of pads and other compounds in the garage. Not paint corrected the M3 as yet, but I dragged the DAS 6 Pro out for the Mazda this morning.
Our Miata is solid Mazda Red, so had oxidised quite a bit over the summer. It took about two hours to compound it using the dual action machine polisher, a foam pad and Meguiars Ultimate Compound, before finishing with hand-applied Zymol glaze. It came up an absolute treat: so good I felt like keeping it! The new owner will adore it for sure.
The MX is not leaving until next week, so I put that away under cover. The sun was still lovely, so I dragged out the hosepipe and washed the Cayenne, which has been doing sterling service shifting all sorts of building materials, with the trailer and without.
It’s the first time I’ve washed the Big Pig myself and it came up OK, but I was reminded of numerous marks in the paint. In its previous life, my V8 had vinyl signwriting over it, and there was still some vinyl adhesive and a lot of rub marks where solvent was used to shift glue. I’ve been meaning to sort this since buying it. It was time to hit the Cayenne.
I dried it with compressed air, a Meguiars water magnet drying cloth and some microfibre towels. I decided not to clay the paint, just wiped the panels down with Autoglym Intensive Tar Remover, which also removed the last bits of vinyl adhesive. It’s good stuff.
I had forgotten what a relief it is to abandon the phone and Internet and just escape into cleaning a car, so the job was quite enjoyable. I tried a few different polishes on the Basalt Black metallic paint, eventually settling on Menzerna Fast Gloss FG500 with a hard foam polishing pad as the best combination.
I used Farecla G3 scratch remover on a separate hard pad for the longer scratches down the NS (from hedges down our country lanes), and also for fingernail scratches around the tailgate release and driver’s door handle. The tar remover did a good job taking wax off where the DA caught the edge of plastic trim: no need to mask off the edges etc as I wasn’t going too hard and the dual action polisher is quite safe.
I didn’t go all-out for a perfect finish – I was working outside with just an afternoon’s worth of light and no clay treatment, so not much point – but the Fast Gloss on a moderate polisher speed gave a great finish quite easily. Once buffed with some microfibres, I topped it off with hand-applied Dodo Juice Blue Velvet hard wax, specially made for dark paint. Just put it on with your hands and wax off with a soft terry cloth.
I’m not going to turn this into a Detailer’s World anorak photo fest: you’ll have to gauge the shine from my iPhone pics. I’m really delighted with the result: thumbs up for the DAS 6 Pro Dual Action polisher and having a load of different polishes to try. Excellent!
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While at Autofarm last Friday, I caught up with the Signal Yellow Porsche 911S restoration repatriated from Eire a while back and had a chance to meet the owner. Chris is a really nice guy, been a 911 man for years and currently owns a 993 Turbo, amongst other things. He’s doing some of the work himself at Autofarm’s workshops.
I’m sure we’ll feature more of Chris and his Porsche later on, but what a lovely car this is, and great work being done to preserve the fabric of the spotless 911. Much of the paint and trim is still original and only minor rust repairs have been needed.
Undisturbed factory touches are always nice to see, and usually unheard of on a classic Porsche this clean. The landmark score of an important European football match (7-1) is preserved on the inside of one rear quarter panel – you don’t get better dating points than that!
Speaking of dating points, I’ve had no response from Porsche Cars GB to my request last April for build date and details on our Project 924 Turbo. I’ll check whether my cheque’s been cashed before getting cross about it.
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