The shite ownership cycle

neilbardsley · Post by **neilbardsley** » Sat Aug 20, 2022 10:44 am

I think Steve has a very quick 914 which is maybe on MFI? Plus maybe builds 2l cup motors?

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g3ngs2 · Post by **g3ngs2** » Sat Aug 20, 2022 11:10 am

That may have been the orange with flares and a cage that was up on the ramp when I was down there.

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23e Heure · Post by **23e Heure** » Sat Aug 20, 2022 11:22 am

If you are close to Jaz, don’t spend any more time thinking about alternatives.

Old cars? Most certainly! Steve owns drives and races from 356 onwards.

I’ve known him 20 years now, he’s had my cars in at various times, and I’ve always been happy.
I would use Jaz more often, but when Steve moved premises from Wembley to St Albans it made it a bit of a trek from south London…

g3ngs2 · Post by **g3ngs2** » Sat Aug 20, 2022 11:46 am

Yup will be the most likely option proximity, the realisation that there's a lot of air cooled in there and the recommendations.

The place where it's at right now are in the process of getting it going, I'm assuming something unseated during their pokings and proddings.

As soon as that's done I'll be going to get it. Looking forward to a spirited exchange of perspectives on their invoice...

Jaz is about 1.5 miles away, so if you're up at Jaz, or anyone else is, always welcome to swing by or find a spot to work.

(There's an idea Airbnb meets Wework... Airwork

? Classic car friendly work spaces at no charge so you can get your car done at the place you want, crack on with what you need to do in the day and then collect it later on without the faff of doubling up on trips)

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sisu · Post by **sisu** » Sat Aug 27, 2022 2:49 pm

gridgway wrote: ↑Wed Aug 10, 2022 11:39 am I've no specific complaints about the people doing the work as they are all good people and there are circumstances that always seems to mean it takes ages. I accept all that, I just wanted to have a late night rant that there's always something that seems to be in the way of the fun driving part! I would have a go at the MFI myself, but I don't really have the time and suspect that DIY will be a lot of trial end error, especially the error part Would be fun though.

Hey ho, deep breath, find one of the specialists and have a nice day out getting the MFI tuned.

MFI is a cam pushing a pump to a specific time for the camshafts of the engine. There is one for T , for E and for S/RS engines and then the pump is calibrated to match the profile of the engine and CC. Unlike an EFI where you can electronically change a fuel/air/spark duration for the air pump volume that is your engine and use the lambda probe in the exhaust to taste the fuel/air ratio and tell the ignition, fuel metering to change with ambient air temp, fuel quality, engine temp, air volume or general condition of your engine. It is then set to a closed loop and the engine control unit then adjusts these within a set of parameters, so if air is X and throttle position is Y and the Lambda is Z you should have this set of performance numbers for the fuel to work or your engine. If it is lower/higher then you have something not working and so it will reduce the timing or fuel to a set value.

MFI has only a certain amount of adjustment. That is why we don't have MFI anymore.
The solenoid valve just dumps raw fuel in the intake stack as a cold start. The Mechanical thermostat, that works off the exhaust heat, that one will enrich the pump during warmup and then lean it out as the engine warms up but this does not monitor the quality of the exhaust, you can also get issues with placement of this if as well as the metal used. The snap that people love with the MFI is due to it not matching the burn rate in the combustion chamber, something that a knock sensor does. Your only means of calibration is using a sniffer sensor in the exhaust and then adjusting the cam rod length.
But the rod adjustment, cam and pulse rate are all "mapped" for a parameter not something you can extend. So if your fuel has ethanol or your engine is different or even better in terms of compression ratio due to machining that is not in the table. Then its going to have flat spots or issues because the fuel/air ratio is out. A carb uses vacuum and MFi is set.

Winston Teague · Post by **Winston Teague** » Sat Aug 27, 2022 3:42 pm

23e Heure wrote: ↑Sat Aug 20, 2022 11:22 am If you are close to Jaz, don’t spend any more time thinking about alternatives.

Old cars? Most certainly! Steve owns drives and races from 356 onwards.

I’ve known him 20 years now, he’s had my cars in at various times, and I’ve always been happy.
I would use Jaz more often, but when Steve moved premises from Wembley to St Albans it made it a bit of a trek from south London…

Herein lies the rub, The decent, trusted fettler is "a bit of a trek" away.......use a car shifter, 1 way (to get the faulty motor to the trusted fettler, collect car when done and drive it home.....the cost of 1 car move is sooooo easily mopped up in dicking about when the local bloke does an unsatisfactory job of it. South London to St Albans......pah.....Tenbury Wells to Billericay......early train from Worcester, Billericay at 10.30, fun visit to PRS, home by 5.30.....

sisu · Post by **sisu** » Fri Sep 02, 2022 9:40 pm

How did this work out? To me this is why I don't own a boat anymore.

yoda · Post by **yoda** » Sat Sep 03, 2022 2:40 pm

Another vote for Jaz. Been using Steve since the 90s and never had anything but good experiences on quite a few cars including MFI 911s.

Graham - I sympathise with your situation but a good specialist will look after you and your car.

jeremyg · Post by **jeremyg** » Sun Sep 04, 2022 1:50 pm

In a similar vein …. Not being very technically savvy I tend to avoid the shite ownership experiences of tyre kickers and payment problems, and I’ve put my trust in recommended dealers, whilst even so acknowledging of course that there are some rogues out there.

Our recent (eventually positive) experience comes to mind …

On our French road trip in July in our recently bought 996GT3, we discovered a rather annoying and worrying fault. On the first day we began to notice a knocking and rattling coming (it seemed) from under the car. Now I knew that Porsche had limited weight by doing away with sound deadening material in the GT3, but this noise was new and very noticeable at speeds up to 50mph.

I checked it out at the services as best I could but couldn’t see anything untoward. We made it to the channel tunnel without anything drastic happening, but we were dead worried, having a round trip of a couple of thousand miles to go!

We drove off the shuttle and mercifully the sound had gone.

After about half an hour we began hearing it again when travelling at slower speeds, but we could feel absolutely nothing wrong with the car’s handling so we threw caution to the wind and had a great drive down on the autoroute. As soon as we slowed for the toll, there it was again. We pulled into our hotel for the night, puzzled and more than a little apprehensive. We’d let tomorrow decide..

Next morning we started off - and it was gone! But It started again about 30 minutes later..

Basically, as the journey went on, and right until we reached our destination, we realised that these noises only manifested themselves after about half an hour’s driving. Thinking back, I probably hadn’t used it for journeys much longer than that between taking delivery of the car from Williams Crawford and setting off for France. I had heard the noises before, but it was all a new driving experience to me anyway, and with the wonderfully sonorous Mezger engine, I put it all down to the raw and elemental sort of car it’s meant to be!

But now we were realising these noises only occurred after half an hours driving, and so it couldn’t be inherently part of the car’s intended operation.

We didn’t use the car much after we’d arrived in Provence as we all piled into my daughter’s Dacia SUV hire car to go anywhere.

Before our return trip I phoned Williams Crawford and spoke to the chief technician who quite rightly said it would need to be up on a ramp to properly inspect it and of course that if I was in any way concerned then I should take it to the nearest Porsche garage.

That wasn’t going to happen though - it was a few hours away and the temperatures were 38/40 at that time, and the pool was far more attractive - and the car was driving fine (apart from the bloody noises)..

So we drove back - with the noises just the same, no better, no worse. …

When we arrived back I phoned Adrian Crawford and sent him some video of the noises filmed from inside the car and he quickly said to book it in and they’d sort it out.

I’m about 2 hours from Williams Crawford - I started using them in Plymouth as I used to live in Cornwall, but have kept on because, well, I like them and rate them - and, point of story, I can also if I’m lucky arrange to have their courtesy car, which I then did as I left them to get to the bottom of the problem.

It took a few days but the invoice tells the tale - that first they tested it (presumably for over half an hour) and heard the noises, investigated and replaced the ant-roll bar d bushes, and re-tested. Noise still there. (After 30 mins driving presumably) they tracked the noise to the top front strut mounts area on both sides, and so removed both front shocks and replaced the top mounts.

More testing, noise still there.

They then replaced the shocks with Bilstein B16s, carried out ride height adjustment, and… at last, noise gone!

They went on to retest/set the geometry, four wheel alignment check etc.

A bill of over 2k, all covered on the buyer’s warranty that Williams Crawford give on pre-used cars.

And the car now drives fabulously.

Now of course they’re not the only good ones - I’ve heard of good things about JAZ too. But getting recommendations from people is a really good way to have more enlightenment - and less shite!

g3ngs2 · Post by **g3ngs2** » Sun Sep 04, 2022 8:13 pm

You're not wrong.... all booked in to Jaz (and after a little back and forth "amicably" resolved with the other garage - pity as one of the guys down there is truly first rate in other areas but affiliated with the garage)

911hillclimber · Post by **911hillclimber** » Sun Sep 04, 2022 10:52 pm

This kind of feed-back is invaluable for many reasons, and credit where credit is due.

gridgway · Post by **gridgway** » Tue Sep 06, 2022 1:01 pm

sisu wrote: ↑Fri Sep 02, 2022 9:40 pm How did this work out? To me this is why I don't own a boat anymore.

Good question! I've been distracted with my hectic race schedule for two weekends

I've hopefully lined up a (very highly skilled) friend to have a look and give a prognosis on what's needed (or if it's simple just adjust it).
I'll report back when I have made the next step.

gridgway · Post by **gridgway** » Sat Sep 17, 2022 7:29 am

An update...

We made a lot of good progress yesterday doing some setup of the MFI. There was one specific linkage that was the wrong length. Then after that it was all running very lean which we richened up on the main rack.

The result is transformational! A joy to drive even if not perfect.

The space cam is worn a bit, so the next step to get perfection is to have the pump refurbed with a new cam.

I'll drive it as much as I can before the salt arrives and see whether I feel the need to improve it further over the winter.

Graham

hot66 · Post by **hot66** » Sat Sep 17, 2022 9:53 am

Who was that with Graham ? Was it the rod from pump to linkage that was wrong ?

gridgway · Post by **gridgway** » Mon Sep 19, 2022 7:13 pm

Yes, it was James, so I think the pump was "open" when the butterflies were closed.

So today< I was attending to a small fuel leak from the bottom of the filter. I got the filter housing and filter second hand and it came with a banjo fitting rather than the push on fitting it's supposed to have. It of course didn't seal very well, the bottom of the filter housing where the "nut" is was a bit mashed. So I have decided to et a new filter and the proper fitting. Ordered from Design911. Then I'll have to fit it with a replacement fuel hose to the pump is it's the right length for the banjo fitting, but too short to loop underneath for the proper fitting. There seems always to be something!

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