May. 26, 2006 - Clock Popping
This annoyance, this 'clock popping' drove me nuts back in 1991 when it first showed up in my targa. I even wrote the experts at Porsche Club, North America, about this and they were stumped. Or, perhaps more accurately, they thought I was nuts. Every so often the clock in the dash, I swear, would go 'pop'. Eventually it turned out that the instruments, which are buckets pressed into holes in the dash, have somewhat loose glass faces. With vibration and temperature changes these glass faces sometimes flex and go 'pop'. The same thing happens with my replacement 911 targa so I don't believe I have a unique problem. I've reset the gauges and wiggled them and stuff but I've got two that still go 'pop' from time to time - but light, preventative 'tapping' seems to relieve the tension and so I never hear any good loud 'pops' anymore. Like those avalanche control guys that fire mortars into the snow slopes to trigger a small controlled slide in order to reduce the chances of a bad slide that hurts people I find myself drumming on the instrument faces about once a week to let the stresses out before they build up too much.
And they say German engineering is perfectly precise!
tap pop tap pop tap popsigh!
|
