Out In The Wind Again http://mydrive.roadfly.com/blog/harbilly/ en-us Webligo BlogHoster So two years ago I passed the P-car along, gratis, to a deserving home. After 20 years of Porsche daily driving I do miss it. Now I can be found scooting around in old Toyota vans. They're neat. And on my bike, of course. The one with the engine. So long car folk. To quote Stan from family guy, van ownership is 'sweet'. You just don't go fast and the cornering bags. http://mydrive.roadfly.com/blog/harbilly/1686/ I fell at work.Now I can't ride the mountain bike for the next several months.So I have had to insure the P-car again (smarter than insuring the Harley for the winter).This makes two winters in a row that I have had to drive the car in the muck, snow, salt and grime.I don't mind doing it when I WANT to do it but I hate HAVING to do it.Yes, it has Z speed rated all seasons (the rubber is a bit too hard for them to work well in the snow) and yes, my targa top is waterproof BUT I have been driving a targa for coming up on 20 years as a summer car - you know, top off, warm winds, palm trees, vacations in California and so on. This enforced use of the car in winter is kind of frosting me off.Frosting me off.Ha Ha.Get it?Frosting! Frost! Winter!Not funny, right?Oh well.Anyways: Ho Ho Ho.Merry Christmas from Canada. http://mydrive.roadfly.com/blog/harbilly/1216/ I parked it at the end of October.Today I went and peeked under the car cover.It's still there.If the snow goes away perhaps I'll drive it for a week during he Christmas Break. http://mydrive.roadfly.com/blog/harbilly/1210/ So the indie replaced my windscreen with one imported from Georgia (ours, not theirs) and it has a built in antenna. If this was my pristine 79 I would have made him pull it out. Since it is my 81, with parts already re-painted, I really couldn't care less. I probably should, though. http://mydrive.roadfly.com/blog/harbilly/1081/ I was just thinking about the Beverly Hills Motoring Products cover I bought for my 79 targa. I bought it back in about 1991 and ordered it with pockets for both left and right hand side mirrors even though that car only had a mirror on the driver's side. This seemed dumb at the time but when I replaced the 79 with an 81 targa in 1997 - and the 'new' car came with two mirrors, boy was I glad I had ordered a cover with two pockets.There is a lesson here somewhere, but I'm not sure about how to put it in words. http://mydrive.roadfly.com/blog/harbilly/1011/ There is a thread on what was your first car and what was your best car. Well, this is what I typed in (more or less): I miss my 1973 bronze Chevy Vega. It had that Camaro grill with all the grey plastic rectangley openings (or did those Camaros have a Vega grill?) Anyways, it also had a hooker header (not headers--- only one) and a Holly 2 barrel. I drove it from the dealer to the shop and had the aluminum block sleeved with steel so the pistons wouldn't destroy the cylinders right away. Since I was in there I did a thing or two to the guts of the engine. Then I cut out the factory curve above the rear tires, put on fender flares and changed the tires and wheels. I also monkeyed a bit with the suspension. By risking life and being VERY stupid I once beat a Corvette in a 50 mile mtn race -- all twists and with no real straights until the end. Well, at least I WAS winning until the %$#@# rubber clamp mounted rad blew back out of the mounts (combination of engine compartment heat on the rubber and the wind blowing in against the rad on the final bit of road (the straight bit) - the Vega was moving at a speed no Vega should ever even have approached). Then the rad hit the fan and I was done. Sigh. I fixed it and wired the rad so it couldn't 'pop' out anymore. That Vega was a PIG though considering the thing was 2.4L. I probably only miss it cuz of the fuzzy dash!! Which reminds me...... Whatever happened to 1974 anyways? I miss IT more than the car. It wasn't so bad!! Anywho..... Then I bought my first P-Car. '79 targa. It was better. No radiator and the fan is in the back!! bill ps. Street racing is bad now and it was bad then and I don't endorse it. In fact, it looks pretty darn stupid from the vantage point I have now; that of being able to look back on it from more than 30 years later.But then, Mazda seems to advertise in ways that promote it. zoom zoom. http://mydrive.roadfly.com/blog/harbilly/947/ 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! http://mydrive.roadfly.com/blog/harbilly/927/ The good weather is back. The top is off. The roads aren't crowded. The scenery is fine. My hand is a lot better and I find myself whistling Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah on the morning ride to work. The West Coast really IS Shangra La. http://mydrive.roadfly.com/blog/harbilly/899/ So I shouldn't have lost it on the jump.My Norco is fine.I have a broken hand. My Doc won't let me ride the Harley or the Norco so I had to re-up the insurance on the 911 - which I had let lapse on April 7 because I wanted to spend a month or so on the bicycle just to tune up my flab.Oh well. Now I have discovered that there are too many curves between my house and my buddy's house in Maple Ridge and, with 911 steering requiring positive inputs, my hand is really tired and sore after about 15 minutes. SighIt isn't supposed to hurt your body to drive a Porsche.Your wallet maybe, but not your body........... http://mydrive.roadfly.com/blog/harbilly/856/ My 911 isn't a micro-sized, canola oil burning dinky toy.Sure, it IS a SMALL car but it's still human sized. So why does my van driving colleague come late to work and, knowing that my parking spot is close to the building door AND that I pull all the way forward in my space, regularly cram her rotten van into the void behind my car, thus doing a 'two-fer' in the spot? To make matters worse, yes - it gets worse, she usually leaves about the thickness of a cigarette paper between our bumpers.If a bird lands on the roof of her heinously parked van, or the wind blows above 3mph, that breadbox moves enough to scrape the rubber on my bumper, - it's that close. But I have a plan. I'm gonna get a big damn, wicked, pointy bike toting trailer hitch on the weekend........ and set the spikey bit right at her eye level. Then she can stop or not, pull in tight or go away - this way, I figure, no matter what she decides to do at least I'll get some entertainment value out of it. I'll just carry a broom so I can sweep the glass out of the way when I need to go home.... http://mydrive.roadfly.com/blog/harbilly/805/ What????? Flowers are up for heaven's sake. I just cleaned the car and now it is crusted in salt and goo again. What a bummer. At least the Z speed rated all-seasons worked well (in 2 inches of snow) which was a surprise considering how hard the rubber is on high speed tires. Which, I just realized, gives me some ideas for condoms that some women (though none I know) might appreciate....... http://mydrive.roadfly.com/blog/harbilly/759/ I've found an omission in the provided literature. Porsche AG doesn't deal with the electric window lift in the owners' manual maintenance section. They ought to have included a line that says 'lubricate every 25 years'. The thing drops quickly but now rises in a somewhat hesitant manner. At least I know now what I'll be doing next weekend. And since I'll have the upholstery off I guess I'll move the plastic liner material which the repair shop let fall in front of the door mounted speaker when the driver's side window was replaced two years ago. That little bit of light blue plastic just needs to be glued back up on to the steel door frame. I'ts a job I've been putting off for ages. And I suppose, since I'll be working on the car anyways, that I might as well clean and lubricate the power antenna while I'm at it. Lately it's become a bit sticky. All of this brings to mind the phrase which, since 1913, has been the favourite of the Morton Salt Girl. If you don't know it, you can look it up pretty easily. http://mydrive.roadfly.com/blog/harbilly/682/ I guess it's still winter in Vancouver. I had to be late in the city last night and noticed a real lack of P-Cars on the streets.....but eveywhere I looked the sedate and inoffensive paved thoroughfares of the city were being mashed under the offroad tires of H3s. The bloody things really were everywhere, slowly prowling from bagel shop to bar to upscale boutique in some kind of choreographed dance of the big wallet morons. What are their stockbroker/lawyer/junior exec drivers thinking? Do they worry that society will crumble over the course of one long 3 Martini lunch and that they will have to convoy their way out of a broken city, forced to take to the creek beds to find their way over gravelly hills to safety? Isn't a military derivative for a family car kind of stupid in a cobblestone and brie filled downtown core? At least I get to rip home on a freeway, or a twisty secondary highway, so that my car gets to do, each and every day, exactly what it was designed to do. http://mydrive.roadfly.com/blog/harbilly/653/ The older targas have too much glorious Porsche noise (exhaust rumble, engine bass) to allow the safe use of my iPod. And, of course, if I take the top off I add so much wind noise to the mix that I have to push the headphone volume to dangerous levels. I might not let this stop me from using the iPod in the car though. Not when it gives me such an excellent excuse for having 'not heard' what has been said by the occupant of the right hand seat. http://mydrive.roadfly.com/blog/harbilly/632/ A %@#$ Nissan threw a rock into my windscreen and cracked it yesterday.They're working on the highway near my place so rocks abound. And I wasn't following too closely. Now I have to go get glass. Great. The windscreens come in two sizes because the cars are somewhat 'handmade' and things vary. The last time this happened the guys decided to use the smaller size and, of course, it leaked. The work had to be redone. Two appointments; two days shot. Rats. I really don't want to go through this again. I don't like this bad feeling I now have about the inconvenience and the wasted time involved here. And I know what I'm talking about because I've had that feeling before...... but that, mind you, was when I was contemplating a second marriage. http://mydrive.roadfly.com/blog/harbilly/594/ One word: Meguiars. I don't work for them, sell it, own shares in it or make a penny from it. I've used a bunch of firms' products and many are good but that numbered system that Meguiars has going works great. I'm still using a few of the old tan bottles but I've mostly switched to the new red bottles. I care about this sort of thing because my car is red and predates clearcoats and we all know how feeble the old reds were (are) when it comes to oxidizing and related deterioration.By hand I go through 3 steps ending with Show Car Glaze and #26 wax (I don't know what this is now but its got some yellow, some Brazillian Carnuba, some UV stuff and so on). The finish comes right back beatifully.I only wish there was a similar process to bring back my 20-something physique. Of course, perhaps if I drank less beer............... http://mydrive.roadfly.com/blog/harbilly/589/ Targas don't have to leak --- but they want to. Lots of guys change the seals every few years ($$$$) while others swear by glycerin on the rubber bits. So long as you have the parts aligned right, though, the real secret is this ----- ---- simply unclamp (but do not completely disengage) the roof locking mechanism whilst the car is parked in your garage!Let the seals expand baby! That's it.I struggled with this one for years.I know this (now) and have been doing it for nearly a decade. The same philosopy works, you know, in lots of places -- a little freedom for your kids, a shorter tether on your employees.It's all good. And it's amazing what good stuff this can engender. Don't apply this policy to elected officials, however. http://mydrive.roadfly.com/blog/harbilly/581/ Yuk. I rode my mountain bike to work again today. I don't know why I do this every year. I get the bug and start riding. I miss the nice 911 ride and the sound system. And now, even worse, my ass hurts. http://mydrive.roadfly.com/blog/harbilly/578/ My apologies to Ferry Porsche.It wasn't the stitching or the design. The water migrating through the targa roof was on account of something else.All that actually needed to be done was to reglue the left top seal.Good thing I had that 'ultra black' silicone rubber in a tube handy.The disappointing thing is that the glue that held the bloody seal in place only lasted 25 years.Doesn't anyone make anything to last anymore??? http://mydrive.roadfly.com/blog/harbilly/563/ I don't want to offend anyone but my first 911 had all this light leakage from the backs of the instruments on the dash which lit up the leg area of the front passenger seat.My current 911 doesn't have this option installed.Sigh. http://mydrive.roadfly.com/blog/harbilly/548/