Blimey, it’s been a while. I apologise, as I enjoy everyone else's threads very much.
Firstly, a confessional. The odometer showed just 750 miles following the engine rebuild. Shame on me. Although I am a lucky boy and have put a pretty decent cumulative mileage on fun cars in 2016, including the McLaren MP12 spider, more on which for another thread. I think the period of time during which the S was off the road in the engine remediation phase impacted my familiarity so it wasn’t often the ‘first choice’.
Although I now have a nice garage to keep the car in, I had not owned that over a previous winter, so did not know if it would remain dry or be a moisture trap. Turns out because it’s modern block built with good airflow it’s been drizabone, which has been nice for my GT3. So it was off to Historit for the winter. I’d met these guys when I went to look at Bicester Heritage on one occasion. If you’ve not been it’s worth a look as the development of the site, including the on-site, and local experts, is impressive as the following may show. Local Porsche specialists include Autofarm, Tuthills and Neil Bainbridge.
Historit use an old aircraft hanger. Trust me, there’s some nice metal under the covers including all the holy grail Porches.
One of the onsite businesses is
http://www.autowaxworks.co.uk/ I asked the Historit guys about them and they recommended Charles….who is a former paintwork specialist, so knows what he is dealing with. I have never spent money before on making a car shiny, but I thought it would be worth making sure the car kept it’s exterior condition, underneath and on top. Turns out the underside didn’t need any new protection; Mark had it waxoiled or similar before I bought it and it’s still as new beneath. How refreshing to have a tradesman say ‘doesn’t need doing Guv’. On the topside Charles got his whizzy machines out and made it shiny. Which is nice but won’t last unless something else happens so he then put two coats of one of these new “Ceramic sealants” on the car. This stuff if you want to read up on it.
http://gtechniq.com/products/auto/perfe ... stal-serum
Suffice to say the car looks great.
Of course then there’s the annual maintenance. There were a few minor things that needed doing (headlamp aim, washer jets, MOT, oil change) and that sort of thing. Turns out Autofarm use Historit and are there very frequently shuffling cars around. I’m always keen to use “well reputed specialists” and I think for my car it adds to the professional provenance and gives an opportunity to get fresh eyes on the car to spot issues and remediate. Unfortunately the day before it went to Autofarm I received the following message from Historit:
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"In accordance with your instructions you will recall your immaculate Porsche is regularly exercised by us.
This was scheduled for your 911 yesterday, but I'm sorry to say the car failed to start. The battery is charged, this was not the issue, the starter motor would not turn.
As the ignition light did not dim when the key was turned perhaps it is possible that the ignition switch is at fault, rather than the starter motor. However we did try gently rocking the car whilst in gear I case the starter motor was stuck, but to no effect. We are unaware of any security isolation you may have installed on your vehicle.
I also noted that the driver’s door will not open from within the car, nor does the window on that side function. In accordance with our normal practice the widow is half open.
The passenger window can be lowered from the driver's door but not raised from that switch, only being fully operational from the passenger door switch its self."
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DOH! Oh well, will just give Autofarm more to do.
Turns out there was a break in a wire behind the ignition switch that was fixed, the motor in the window had seized due to moisture, the door handle had seized due to lack of use, all of which was fixed with tlc and labour charge. They also found that the brake fluid was overfilled, the overflow pipe wasn’t long enough to exit the car properly. And while it was there, the CDI box broke. Now I did strongly consider getting one off our DDK bretheren’s digital boxes but at £350 for an exchange box I just did that. Then they reset the geo, serviced and retuned the engine and a myriad of other detail things.
Yes, as usual the bill ended up massive. Isn’t it amazing that a car that should already be in as good as new condition needs fettling. I am quite sure more use would help that…after all parts seize through inaction really. So I am looking forward to driving the damn thing a lot more in 2016 cos otherwise it’s £6 a mile in maintenance. Ha!
Finally, I had a word with Josh Sadler about the car and the market as I asked Autofarm to issue me a new valuation certificate. Josh confirmed what I suspect we all know…the market has been quiet and flat over the winter period, but, there are signs of increased action (in more modern porsches you only need to see JZMs stock turnover for validation of that…) as Spring arrives. I was delighted when he told me that my car is one of the best he has seen.
The bill