It's about damn time - Al's 964 thread

[misteralz]

April 2016... had the gorilla been shot yet? I can't remember. But the xenophobes were getting noisier. 2016's European road trip wasn't going to be with a pal, it was going to be with the family while we still could do it with relative ease. Plus reasons.
The reasons? Well, my wife had been offered a secondment in the Netherlands. Two years. The boys were four and six. Now or never.











































Yeah, I converted a builder's T4 to a camper. It was horrible but the boys loved it. More to the point, they loved Europe. Well, NL and Germany. They could take or leave Belgium. Decision made.

[misteralz]

This is important, honest. Or at least it is later on. We spent the summer worrying whether or not it was going to happen, thanks to the xenophobes. In September we got confirmation everything was going to be fine, and can we be there mid-November? Wow. Possibly. So it's just a secondment, it's not permanent. We're not selling up. This makes things easier and difficulter. We're not selling the house, but we're not leaving it empty because that ruins houses. Okay, we're renting it out. But we're not renting the field, because my big garage is in there. We've got two months to sort out our house to get it 'rentable', we've got to get our nice but not really worth shipping there and back stuff stored safely, we've got to empty the wee garage so any potential tenants can use it. We've got to find a house to rent in NL, schools for the boys, learn about importing vehicles, decide what's staying, find out what the deal with our livestock is... and we've got a week in the October holidays in Malta because we really didn't think this was happening. Oh, and I need to weld up all the holes in the 914. Because I am *definitely* going to get that finished over there, because an orange LHD '70s open-topped Porsche is perfect for the Netherlands. Perfect.































We even managed to get to Budel on a house-hunting trip. I'm exhausted just writing this - I have no idea where I got the energy from.

[misteralz]

Sometime in mid-November the 914 got shipped away. The 964, after an evening's blast, got tucked up in the big garage along with most of our possessions, and the next morning we took the T4 and the GTI - plus a few things we couldn't do without - down to North Shields. We left our keys with someone we trusted. Past tense...

[misteralz]

2017. We're back for a wedding. Old old stomping ground rather than old stomping ground, but we head north afterwards for a few days. I get the 964 out, and a few of us convoy around the Highlands for a bit. It's ace.


















My trusted pal brings the 964 over a couple of months later and we do a mini Skandi road trip. Fairly sure he's taken it into Porsche for an oil change the week or month beforehand as well. I could check the book, but I can't be bothered and it's unimportant anyway. We've got a ferry booked, and it's leaving Kiel at 1700.
NRW and Holstein disappear very quickly at 140 - it's midweek and the roads are quiet. We arrive in Kiel ridiculously early and realise neither of us have brought towels. IKEA is literally right off the road to the docks. We manage to only buy two towels, then sit in the cafe feeling smug whilst scoffing our first meatballs of the trip.

[misteralz]

Where were we? Just off the boat in Góteborg. I have no idea how to do umlauts on an actual keyboard. I could write 'Gothenburg', but I'm occasionally pretentious so I won't. My Swedish isn't great, but I know how to ask for passport stamps. I'd asked in German leaving Kiel, and the boy couldn't believe I wanted them. He also didn't have any, so stamped it with one that was obviously for HGV manifests instead. Result.
Anyway. Schengen. Straight off the boat and immediately into Gothenburg's (fine. Humph) morning traffic. I immediately like Sweden. We head North-ish, past Torslanda, to something that's not there anymore.

[misteralz]

I think I did a thread on that, but I can't remember. Anyway, it was good. Light and airy, cool exhibits, good and reasonably-priced cafe. Volvo 66 and 343 acknowledged, but dumped in a dark corner like the unloved curse word sons they are.
Now, this was just a mini road trip. We only had a few days and I'd done pretty much no research at all. I'd emailed Koenigsegg about the possibility of a factory tour and received the politest 'fúck off, peasant' in return. Shant be dropping into Ängelholm, then. I didn't have the time, unfortunately, to head a few hours north and explore the car graveyard at Båstnäs. What to do?







Pop into Porsche Göteborg, of course. Buy a litre of oil and see if we can get the skinny on interesting roads round and about? We wander in and it's like the Marie Celeste. Seriously, there's not a single soul in there. What makes it weirder is that there's filming going on. Or will be. Or has been. There's a proper camera rig just in the door, boom mics, the lot. And nobody there. I pick up a copy of Christophorus and nope the hell out of there. I'll find interesting roads myself. And I do.

[misteralz]

It cleared up later that afternoon - it wasn't always that dreich. We try to stay off the motorway as much as possible - not because it's terrible or anything, the tarmac's perfect and the shape of the exit signs makes me smile - but because I want to hug the coast as much as possible. I've been back to Sweden a couple of times since - above Göteborg is much more 'interesting'. Hillier, woodier, rockier. I didn't know that then, and get rolling hills, dunes, and machair. Eventually I've had enough of driving for the day, and we find a proper red bunkhouse on the beach. There's no internet, they don't take cards, and I have literally never seen a Kroner in my life. A crisp fifty Euro note gets us a wooden shack for the night, but not bedding or towels. We have sleeping bags and that trip to IKEA the previous afternoon was fortuitous, I guess.
We wander a few k to the nearest town and buy all the pastries and a couple of tinnies each.

























The whisky? Pinched from a pal who always flakes on road trips. There's a running joke that his Quarter Cask is better travelled than he is.


Because it is.

[misteralz]

Next morning there's something I really want to do. In fact, it was the whole backbone of the trip. Naturally I have absolutely no pictures. Fine. More hugging the coast until we can't anymore as there's a city in the way, so we head in the direction of the airport.




Salzburg colours will never not be cool. Except for the black wheels. Black wheels suck. Anyway. Porsche Malmö.

"Saga Noren's car? Yeah, it's been here but we wouldn't have it on display. It's not a nice car."

Oh. The boy in the showroom is a proper enthusiast, has a Guards Red 3.2, is interested in the 964, gives me a plate frame and another copy of Christophorus to apologise for the fact he can't sell me a litre of oil. Time to go and cosplay as an autistic Swedish detective in the opening credits of The Bridge, then.

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqNgJHKxK-0[/video]

[misteralz]

The Øresund Bridge is ridiculously cool. I could do 130 over it, but sometimes you just want to drink it all in. I sit at 110 and all too soon we think we're in the middle of Copenhagen. I do not (ever) want to be in the middle of Copenhagen. But that's where you think you've ended up once the Øresund Bridge plunges into the sea and becomes a tunnel. Which is fine except it makes your gps shít itself. Doing my standard 'keep right unless overtaking' we end up heading north-ish towards Roskilde because that was somewhere I'd heard of. I've since driven the breadth of Fyn one and a half times, and this was a lucky escape. We end up literally running out of road, so double back to the Super Brugsen for fish balls and petrol. Then head back to the end of the road.










Sjællands Odde ferry queue aesthetic.

[misteralz]

A couple of hours later we're in Århus, having found a campsite just out of town. Beach, beers, sleep.







Cool retro stuff. The next morning the 964 takes two goes to fire which is mildly worrying, but it did fire, so whatever. We're up early and away before eight, in order to get to Billund for ten. Yes, I am a child.

















The next bit? The Shell station in Kruså? Well. I was up for heading a couple of ks up the coast, camping a night in Kollund. It was late afternoon. Google reckoned home was six and a half hours away.





Without wishing to sound too much like Lady Whistledown, but dear reader, I did it in five.

[misteralz]

Brought home a decent haul of stickers, gave it a wash, then it headed back to Scotland. The big problems start in 2018...













...until next year.

[misteralz]

2018. Time to do something I've been wanting to do for absolutely years. I've been a member of the DDK since I bought the 914. Sigh. This year I'm joining them at Le Mans Classic in my 964. I cannot wait. Late June rolls around and the 964 comes back to me and immediately starts being a misfirey bawbag. The standard first port of call with 964s is to swap the DME relay. I've got a spare, but also a spare spare because double redundancy either properly and definitively rules out a problem or makes you question whether both spares are bad as well. Hmmm. I try to convince myself that it's better but I'm really not sure it is. I take it for petrol 200m down the road and it won't restart. We push it home. Popping the decklid reveals nothing untoward, but feeling about reveals the ignition amplifiers are RED HOT. I douse them in aerosol brake cleaner and try a start again. It fires immediately and settles happily. Do I want to do this at every petrol stop? No. Do I want to do this if I stall in traffic somewhere around the Antwerp ring road? Ohhhh helllssss no. Screw it, I'm off to bed. The next morning I head to the motor factor in town and pick up a couple of new ignition amplifiers. It won't start at all now. FFS. I swap the old ones back in and it fires. I try to take the (possibly) defective amplifiers back but 'no, we don't do refunds or return on electrical components, sucks to be you eh?'. I end up chatting with some old mechanic boy who's at the counter getting parts, who asks if I've checked the caps and rotor arms? No, but only because the history suggests they were replaced a few thousand k ago...
















I took the GTI to Le Mans. B-|

[misteralz]

This is where the story gets a bit rubbish, thanks to the great SD card corruption event of December 2018 taking a year's worth of pics and throwing them into the ether. I've gotten better at backing stuff up now. Anyway, upon returning from Le Mans after ordering a fresh set of caps and rotors before leaving, they still haven't arrived despite the promised next day delivery. I cancel the order and seek a refund. The money's back in my account ten minutes later. I head to the motor factor again, letting them know I've been done over by a 'specialist' and won't stray again.

"We don't have them in stock. come back at 1."

I do. By two I'm booting it off the ramp onto the A9 and doing 130. By eight I'm parking up in Böblingen.

I was going to come back this way, so I guess this has just been a several hundred mile detour. C'est la vie. I'd add pictures, but SD card death...

The V8 hotel used to be reasonably priced. Christ, everything used to be reasonably-priced. Anyway. Couple of evenings mooching about Motorworld, drinking lovely Dunkelweizen, eating flammkuchen, and a day at the Porsche Museum again inbetween? Great. We headed back via the Unimog Museum as well, because who doesn't love a Unimog?
Coming home, Karlsruhe was a nightmare for traffic. The outside temperature was high 30s, and I was starting to get concerned about oil temperature again. My phone had even stopped charging due to temperature.
I can't remeber if I'd dealt with the secondary oil cooler at this point? I think I had, but sometimes there's residual stress, y'know? We'd almost cleared Karlsruhe and the oil gauge was halfway up, maybe a bit more. I know not to worry about that now - it sits rock solid on the lo-hi mark in nearly 40 degree heat these days. Some nasty smells made me stress so I peeled off the almost autobahn to try and hit some country roads. Instead I hit the refinery. And lost the clutch.

[misteralz]

I figure there are two options here. One is phone for a recovery truck and wait insert-deity-of-your-choice-knows how long for a flatbed to turn up. The other is to abandon it for half an hour, go for a walk, come back once it's cooled down a bit, pump the pedal and hope for the best, and if the best doesn't turn up then it's option one time. I choose option two.
Half an hour later half a dozen pumps get me enough clutch to engage first, and with decent rev matching I get to third and join the now freelier-moving traffic. I get to fifth and pull over at the next Shell station, which is unfortunately a Serways. I hate this particular petrol station, but I fill up with 102 anyway. Five minutes later I'm back on the autobahn, in fifth, and remain in fifth for the next three hours and 240 miles until the Dutch border. Annoyingly I have to navigate Venlo as the snelweg is closed, but I get home fine.
The next morning we get the back of the car high in the air and manage to get some air out of the clutch line. It's going home again in the afternoon. I ask my 'trusted' friend if he'd do a proper pressure bleed of the hydraulics when he gets back. A week later I get a picture of a reasonably skelped clutch plate. Not what I asked for! But in for a penny, in for a pound, eh?

[misteralz]

So the engine's out, there's a fresh clutch disc, cover plate, and DMF attached to it. Nice.

And that's all that happens. For a full year.

"I'd like to take it to the Historic Grand Prix at Zandvoort in 2019" says I. New bushes in the clutch fork get fitted. Great. Probably needed, to be fair. Still not a car back together.

"I'd like to take it to Le Mans Classic in 2020" says I. Yeah, I know, and yes, that deadline was missed as well.

I get on Shiply in one of the covid windows. I send an ultimatum.

"It's gonna cost me 'x' to get the 964 Shiplied to me, which it needs to be by September because I don't want to pay import tax on something I own, which I will have to do if it's not registered by the 31st of December. The ferry is 1/2'x', which man-mathsing means we can do a pilgrimage we've been meaning to do for years. Also, please check the valve clearances and change the plugs while the engine's still out as it's easier then..."

One week later I get a message. I've already booked the ferry.





It's outside his house having been comprehensively detailed by a mutual friend. I buy him a fresh bottle of Quarter Cask as a thank you.