DDK - Die Deutschen Klassiker

Finally! In the in-between time we've bought a house here and I've got a Dutch driving licence. Which means I can't drive this anymore. Not for a bit, anyway.

The pilgrimage?







It was supposed to have been in my mk2. Not complaining, though. My mk5's ace.

Covid is screwing everything up. I swap the headlamp lenses, and try and get an appointment for registering it here. There are none in Amsterdam until 2021. There's a few in Fryslân next week. Happy days.



















Felt lovely to drive it again. Even if the clutch was biting on the floor. Did the inspection go well?

No.

Oh, all the numbers matched. Twin fogs and reversing lights meant no messing about was required there, either. Mirrors on both sides as well.

Tucked it back up in the garage, and headed south to Haarlem and Alpo Parts for Porsche.































Turns out you can't just change the lenses. You need to do the reflectors as well. Fortunately you can buy them new. Separately. A few days later and literally under ten minutes at the RDW and they were satisfied. The documents turned up a few days later, so I headed out and got posh plates and a fresh Umweltplakette. Although the folks at Dekra didn't want to sell me one as it'd be 30 years old soon.

By the end of October the weather's turned, and the decklid doesn't want to stay open.













Struts are cheap. Might as well take it for a test run, as that's what you do. Yeah, they work. Uncovered something else, though.









Some bassy tunes weren't hitting like they should. Thirty year old speakers are not great.
















Santa was good to me that Christmas. For too long I'd had head units pulled from the scrappies. Pulled out a whole pile of old multichanger wire as well, after accepting that I was never going to stick a ten disc Clarion unit in the frunk.

Froot?

*Insert Marina Diamandis joke or pun here.*

At this point I almost still cared about 'provenance'. Until I popped into Porsche Amsterdam for a chat with the Classic department. Porsche Aberdeen charged £200 for a yearly oil change for the 'classic' stuff. 10 litres of Mobil 1 is (was) around £80-100 if you didn't have a Costco card. A filter was 15. Paying an extra 100ish for a stamp in the book, not having to get oily, and maybe getting a shot of a Boxster for a few hours made sense, so that's what I did.

In Amsterdam it was 600€.

All the nopes. I'll take a filter while I'm here, yeah?







Service history status: Fŭcked.

Yeah, I'd vowed to keep this standard when I bought it. Because dammit, these things are good. Swapping back to ambers, and that period-correct-looking Bremen, that was all part of it. I was always half on the lookout for Design 90s. Seriously. But some things you can't leave alone. Which is where whisky pal kinda steps in, as he's resto-Caling a sixties Beetle, and asks what I'd want for the 1600 short block that's sitting on one of my workbenches back in Aberdeenshire. I jokingly reply 'a Prototipo' and think nothing more of it. A week later I receive a package from Lithuania. Fairly sure I never bought anything from there?







Check out the boxes on the passenger seat. Next stress point.

July 2021, and I can put it in for its first ever APK two months early. So I do. All its MoTs in my care it never had an advisory. That was about to change...




Okay, fair enough. I don't ever use the handbrake. Slackened off, cleaned and lubed, and adjusted back up again. All good.
The next one was more annoying. I'd already planned to do the flexis - I had a set of Hel braided lines sitting in the car that I was going to fit over the winter. Until an advisory that the flexis were 'too old'. Fine.













Had to remake a few hard lines, then went to bleed it all up again. FFS.




Sorted by the hydraulic shop in town. Ace.



But that hydraulic flush I'd asked to be done while the clutch was? Obviously wasn't.

No problem. Except I've run out of time to get it retested before we head off on our summer holidays.
I get back to it when we get home a couple of weeks later.




Pump clickers, man. Elite.









Oh FFS.






I ended up replacing the original nipples (save the two done by the hydraulic place) with stainless ones from a BMW motorbike.

APK passed.

I end up putting something like four litres of Dot4 though the system. There's a lot of hydraulics in this thing, and there's a proper procedure for bleeding everything. Following it to the letter there's not a single bubble in the system and my brakes are excellent. The clutch, less so.


























Fresh slave? Not any better. Fresh master? Not any better. I pull the pedal box, as Rennlist is full of threads on roll pin failure. I strip the pedal box, clean everything, replace the bushes and lube them up with fresh lithium grease, and obviously I replace the roll pin. You already know what the outcome's going to be.

It's a problem that will hypothetically get better with use. The more the clutch wears, the higher the bite point will become. By the time it's time to replace it, it'll be in about the right place.
Still not ideal, though.

At some point in spring 2022 I get fed up with my flaccid knob. The new one's as stiff as a (recycled skate)board.






First decent run out of the year and I get stopped by the polis. Typical.


















Other 911s out and about. That black 964? We'll come back to that. It's important.

June 2022. Le Mans Classic with the DDK? Let's try that again, shall we? I've sorted the clutch bite point by now. It was ridiculous in the end. Obviously over nearly three decades the clutch had gotten heavier and the fork bushes had gotten stiffer, meaning it required more pedal effort to disengage. The *actual pedal* was bent. Seriously. Replaced that and everything was fine again. FFS, again...
Anyway. Time for maintenance and maybe getting to the bottom of that annoying hot start issue?



Gearbox oil and the fuel pump's non-return valve replaced.

Hmmm. Pics have stopped working...

A month or so later it flies through its last yearly APK. There were a couple of advisories - a bit of play in one of the ARB drop links, and a weep in the left front shocker. I'd replaced the rear left a while back for the same reason. Later the same day my neighbour is out front, chatting to a friend of his, but merely an acquaintance of mine. I know about some of acquaintance's garage contents.

"The 964 passed its APK, without trouble."

"You have a 964? Can I see?"

Obviously. We chat Porsches for a bit, then he says he'll bring his round. I'm used to this sort of talk being shorthand for 'at some point' or, more often 'never', so I'm pleasantly surprised when something rorty and black pulls into my street an hour or so later. More Porsche chat. It's got all the things - PSS10s, buckets, cage, drilled discs, cup 1s, and a 3.8. And 300,000 km on the clock. I love it. He takes me out a run in it, then pulls in for petrol. And asks me if I want a shot?

Yes. Please and thank you.



I've driven a few 964s, mostly stock. I still maintain that they're excellent stock. They're excellenter modified.

A few weeks later and in one of Rennlist's myriad 'which suspension' threads, one of the users offers a lightly-used set of Bilstein B6s up for sale as he's upgrading. He's only over the border in NRW. I'm the second person to ask for them. The first is American and hasn't realised Germany is in Europe, so bows out. The shocks are sent to me before I've even paid for them. I luck out on a set of Eibachs for 100€ less than usual. Looks like this is happening.










Could I actually make two European classic motorsport events, in the 964, in one year? I could, couldn't I? The Spa Six Hours is in October, so I buy tickets and book accommodation.





Seal, but in French.

Covid deniers can absolutely get fùcked. It exists and it wiped me out. 2023 being the year from hell for us probably didn't help, either... but that's for another thread that I've promised I'll write.
It took me a few months doing one side at a time as my energy levels were shot.













^^^Heavily doubt.


















New bellows, bump stops, top mounts, drop links? It'd be rude not to. And a strut brace while I'm in there? Might as well.



To think, I was going to deny myself that stance. What an absolute fool.