by John Glynn | Oct 16, 2009 | Classic Porsche Blog, Road Trips
Sunday had been all about enjoying the cream of US muscle car action, so Monday was back to Stuttgart’s finest. We wanted to get down town and see what was going on, plus I had some bits to find for the Varmint, so after a quick liaison with the following day’s shoot subject, we downloaded directions for the famous Porsche parts specialists at EASY San Francisco (European Auto Salvage Yard) and headed towards Emeryville.
I’d be lying if I said that we got there first time – we never get there first time. Put both of us in one method of transportation together and it is guaranteed to go tits up. Just check our flight history: 3 flights together and all either cancelled or delayed. So it was a roundabout trip with many laughs, but we arrived in the end. Took some great pics en route also: the shot of a battered-to-near-death Alfa Spider, scorching across the Bay Bridge with the SF skyline in the background, was one of the best ‘Go USA’ shots Jamie got all trip.
We arrived at EASY and pulled up behind a well-worn orange 914. Looked good to me in that CA way that the Varmint appeals: honest, done its fair share of work, now just getting driven hard for fun and loving it. We walked in and were greeted by the orange car’s owner, Rich Breazeale, son of owner Jim. A good chat ensued with Rich, and John, who is on the tools there. Jim was away in Maui, which was a shame as I had a great line to use on him: “Hey, I love what you’ve done with the place, Jim.” OK not great, but I would have laughed regardless. They didn’t have what I was looking for, but they let us have an interesting wander, and we spoke about how business was doing.
While we were there, two guys came in trying to sell cars/find buyers. One was a guy with a shoddy 944 Turbo on 19s that swore he had a trick top end on his car, and Cosworth pistons (stick-on Cossie badge near the VIN plate). He took some abuse from a regular, while the rest of us were quite nice to him in that “we’re way too nice for you, sod off you maniac” kind of way. Made no difference.
The other guy was a nice bloke with a clean 3.2 Carrera – a Cali car all its life. The car was not bad, and had a G50. It was painted in some Special Wishes custom colour that looked like Penske Blue, but was identified as Doom Blue when the guy started talking. How he was struggling to get $15K for this car was initially beyond me, as he’d advertised it “everywhere”, but I guessed he must have had fairly dull phone patter, as the car sold itself to me while I was standing there.
It was way past lunchtime, so we said our goodbyes and shot around to Rudy’s Can’t Fail Cafe. This is owned by Mike Dirnt of Green Day – felt cool eating at the bar in a bona fide rock joint. The food was OK, not amazing but it was great to get a picture of Varmint outside. Seemed like a good omen. I had a few other SF errands to do that didn’t quite come off, so we avoided failure by heading up to the mall at Dublin to get our hostess a present.
We took a wrong turn leaving the place, then swung a U- turn, flew towards an unseen stop sign, locked the fronts at the last minute and sailed right through with huge screeching and tyre smoke filling the air. Spotting a cop about 200 metres further down, we made ourselves scarce using an iPhone escape route, all at the 30 speed limit, and managed to escape without a tug. Happy days – we were delirious laughing about that one.
by John Glynn | Oct 12, 2009 | Classic Porsche Blog, Project Cars, Road Trips
It was Saturday. We were headed back to Sears Point for the CSRG races and perhaps a feature shoot if we found the right car. First things first: coffee. We followed John Gray up 680 to Peets in Pleasant Hill, and met up with Mr Bob Tilton.
Suitably re-caffeined, we fuelled up around the corner (my first time sticking fuel in the SC) and headed north. Our three-car convoy to the track was good fun. There we said hello to Cary Noel, a fellow Grupper who owns a super Silver and Blue Carrera RS rep. The weather was glorious but that is one unmercifully hot sun, so sunscreen was the order of the day. I use factor 50+: translucent-skinned Irish people are always better off playing it very safe! 40 degree heat certainly takes it out of a body.
We had our wristband press photo passes so could go wherever. We did some paddock shots just in case we decided to sell an events piece to Classic Cars magazine (decided not to bother in the end) and I ended up at the pit lane exit, about 6 feet away from Can Am cars doing 150mph+ on the entry to turn 1. Never been so dumbstruck by fear and excitement in my life; I couldn’t quite believe they had let me take pics from there. But then the camera couldn’t cope and I was only slightly better! Here’s a pic (imagine insane amounts of noise and speed):
Back in the paddock, things were really hotting up, with temps soaring way past 40 degrees. We took a load off at John Thornton’s racebox, chatted with John, Fuchs-meister Harvey Weidman and Gray for a while before he and Tilton could stand it no more and shot off for lunch at an air-conditioned pizza shack.
Sears Point Porsche
We stayed for the wicked BBQ, before deciding to try and nail some pics of John T’s very groovy Emory-built 912 racer. We gave it our best, but had left some gear in the Martimobile from the day before, and John had to go get ready to race, so we left it for another day. It’s a great car though, and was worth the effort to get the few shots Jamie did.
Lesson learnt number three: Empty all gear into the works van once back at base camp.
While Jamie went to get some tracking shots up at the top of the circuit, I headed for the grandstand to watched some racing. I came down after the Jags had finished – just before I started to melt. Sadly, one of J’s lenses had not been so lucky.
Expanded by the unmerciful heat, it had taken a minor bump while mounted to the camera body and pulled the screws out of the mount, breaking its electrical contact ring. Hard to believe, but there we were: down one lens and fading fast. We decide to say our goodbyes, head for the ranch and try a few things to re-equip ourselves for our Mopar shoot the following day. Varmint had been sitting in the sun all day so was nicely warmed up…
by John Glynn | Oct 8, 2009 | Classic Porsche Blog, Project Cars
I’ve now been back from the USA for 36 hours. Our trip took us to lots of really great locations, so there are some fascinating features to write up over the next few weeks. Not everything will make it into a magazine though, so I thought I’d tell the story of the trip via a few blog installments.
My flight over on Virgin Atlantic was great. Arriving at my buddy John Gray’s house late at night meant I didn’t get to see much of my new 911 until the next day. In daylight, there was a bit more sun damage to the paint than I had been expecting, but I wasn’t that bothered: it still looked like good value for money. Driving it was initially a little weird, as the clutch had a slight on/off action that I think has since calmed down. We soon got the hang of it, and it was an entertaining daily driver while out there.
Buying a ride rather than renting is definitely something I will do again. There were a few minor jobs we had to do to the SC while in CA, but I’ll detail that stuff in a later post.
Our first full day was a mix of settling-in stuff. After picking up some coffee at Peets, we took a spin out to Sears Point raceway, where the CSRG race weekend was taking place. Jamie and I got some press wristbands and bought our tickets (it’s a charity do, after all). The weather was properly hot – about 110 degrees – so we came back in the early afternoon and played with the Lipmobile: a Honda Cub which had just been ridden 3,800 miles from Chicago to California, by my erstwhile photographer friend and colleague. Here’s a pic:
Later on, we took a trip to the unit our host rents with a couple of other petrolhead buddies. They have some very impressive stuff there! Roommate Alex is restoring a pair of Road Runners, and was working on a ’63 Dodge Polara owned by a drummer with a successful local rockabilly band. The Polara was originally a 440, but it now had the 426 Hemi motor fitted. Talk about sweet! I could just imagine the shoot, so I pitched it via email to a UK magazine who never came back to me, which was a bit disappointing.
Here’s a pic of the Polara in the workshop. It is inch-perfect sixties drag nostalgia, with slicks on the back and a Hemi in front, all wrapped up in black with hot red trim – pretty cool! An evening in the company of big block hot rods could only be followed by dinner at Max’s Diner, with a pint of Coke float, curly fries and a world-class burger. Heaven!
That was day one, and there’s plenty more to share. I’m keeping clear of jet lag so, as it’s 1 am here, I’m hitting the sack – will continue this tomorrow.
by John Glynn | Sep 20, 2009 | Classic Porsche Blog, Project Cars
I collected my ‘new’ classic Porsche 911T project this weekend. Worked out quite well as the seller (good friend and superhero, Mr Bosman) was coming over for the Goodwood Revival, and offered to trailer it across on the ferry for me. Here was a kindness I could not refuse.
We met early today and I borrowed Bos’s trailer to bring the car to a buddy’s secret storage yard, where some nice project cars are stashed in sea containers. I wanted the T out of the way for a few months, while I get finished with the projects I have on the go, pay for this new one and get my garage building moving on apace. Once I have a better grip on my to do list, I’ll drag this out again and get properly stuck into it as a spare-time R Gruppe build.
The easiest thing for me to do (to get this back up to speed fast) would be to buy a bodily ruined SC, break it and put all the mechanical bits into this after a refurb, and I’m pretty sure that’s how I’m going to go. Rusty SCs are getting ever more common in the ‘States now, so it should be easy enough to find something mechanically sound that would otherwise be on its way to a breaker. I will put my hot rod 3 litre motor into this one – not the tired original from a scrapper.
This T is in good condition to look at, but it’s not perfect. It has serious paint issues in the luggage compartment for example, where the painter has simply painted the whole thing rather than taking stuff out. It’s not a big deal for me, as I am ripping out all this early stuff anyway (hate fiddly twin batteries and that messy-looking fusebox) and reworking the loom to run an in-dash fusebox. I will also bin the early dash column switches and run IB stuff. Same with engine bay wiring etc. Also same with suspension and brakes, though I will not run a servo. Oil system will be bespoke: a front nose cooler with a relocated tank – things like that. The oil tank that came with this is one step from scrap anyway so that has to go somewhere else.
None of this is said against my buddy, as it comes to me almost exactly as it arrived at Bos’s place from Canada. He started doing stuff, saw the work involved in getting it nice and it was just not a project he fancied finishing, so it has come to me instead. I have wanted to try early car ownership since driving one of Tuthills early rally cars many moons ago, so this should be fun to play with. I don’t want to build anything remotely factory original: it is hot rod all the way, with no “bolting back to standard” in this car’s future.
by John Glynn | Aug 23, 2009 | Classic Porsche Blog, Project Cars
Had an update from my buddy John last week on my California Porsche 911 purchase “The Varmint”: that 1980 Porsche 911 SC I bought off the San Francisco Craigslist. John Holleran had gone over it and decided a few things needed doing to make it ‘basically sound’.
The Turbo tie rods were past it; boots destroyed and binding in lock so they needed changing. The clutch release arm was fouling the SSIs hence the weirdo clutch feeling underfoot, that needed sorting. Most other stuff was OK, all except these oil leaks. Inter shaft gasket looked buggered and the crank seal didn’t seem too happy either, so they both needed doing.
John H estimated 4 hours work, plus parts, plus time to do an alignment which sounded sensible to me so I gave him the go ahead, as well as asking for an oil and trans fluid change. My amigo John also suggested we get some parts to replace some missing interior and sort some door rattles while I am over. That sounds cool to me: there are two great Porsche breakers near him and I am keen to visit both.
The car should be ready some time Monday, so am looking forward to a happy driver’s report next week. I hope the seals fix the oil leak. If not, then it could be the number 8 nose bearing shell/O-ring leaking, which is a different kettle of fish, though the problem often results in just dampness as opposed to a full-blown leak. It’s an engine out & case split job to fix it properly, though I could live with a weep for a few years no problem. Fingers crossed, then.
