The work starts

This morning I went down to Dieter's (the home page does something funky that only works in IE.. grr.. Go here if you use a different browser). I signed the estimate and made a downpayment. Steve says he's got a bunch of time blocked off, so if no strange, hard to find part needs to be ordered from Weissach, the work should progress quickly.

I know I've probably said this before, but it's too useful a lesson that everyone wanting to build a track car should take to heart. Use me as the example of why it's true. I was told early on "If you want to build a race car, buy someone else's". They've already sorted everything and more than likely will have spent a good deal more doing it than what you can buy the car for.

I thought i could prove that pearl of wisdom wrong, since i figured, all i needed was parts, labor was free (read: diy). And even if I had not taken the car down to have the work finished off, by the time i'm done with the body work, I would still have been at the price that you can find a well sorted RS clone in good condition.

So unlike people that have everything done by their local shop, I'll probably come out about even on equity vs. expenditure, but I could have had the whole thing 3 years ago instead of what is likely to be at least another year from now.

All that said, i cannot wait to get the car back on the road. It was so much fun to drive before, and it'll only get better from here.

A month or two and those tires are toast

Had it towed to Dieter's Motorsports last Monday. A couple of days later Steve Grosekemper delivered the bad news:

The 1969 911 is a misfit. Basically, when i did my research originally, i determined i wanted long-wheel base, pre-impact bumper (and 400lb weight gain), and I thought that meant that 69-73 would all be good. Well, turns out the 69 was used to learn a lot of things, all of which were changed in 70. Mostly elctrical, true, but that's my whole problem. From 70 on they all have a 14 pin blug for the engine. Sure the pins changed, but re-pinning a couple of things is nothing compared to what has to be done in the 69.

Then add to that:

• that something is wrong with the tranny I was sold


• that the way I ran the harness won't do, since the engine will shear that off
• that the oil lines currently rub against the tire, most likely because they are too short


• the wires I've run forward to the smugglers box, really should have been run to fuse panel


• the 69 gauges, unlike all later models pretty much require the dash to come out to access

So I'm looking at over a month before i see the car again and when I do, a nice happy bill will want to be paid in order to return my baby to me

But then i'll have more power at the rear wheels than i really should have given the tires that fit in the wells.

About towels and throwing them in

Don't let the lack of updates fool you into thinking that nothing has happened. It's just that after a day of working on the car without great revelations, writing about it doesn't rise to the forefront of my mind.

Last I wrote we had two things remaining:

1) Fuel supply

This is solved. Amazingly.. A new hose adapter and some different sized hoses later, i got the pieces needed. I then proceeded to take a bath in gasoline trying to make the connections. Note: It's nearly impossible to attach supply hoses to a full tank of gasoline that's partially gravity fed without spilling some gas. Lying underneath it while this happens isn't fun. But it's done

2) Electrical

Spent quite some time staring at wiring diagrams, docs from the net and the engine bay. Finally I decided that I'm going to leave this to a professional, lest I damage the electronics futzing with something I can't wrap my head around.

On the 10th, i'm towing the car to Dieter's here in SD, handing the completion of the job to the expert hands of Steve Grosekemper. Here's hoping that in a couple of weeks (more than 6 months after the start of this journey), I will finally get to see how impossible that torque will be to handle on a 2300lb chassis.