Daddy's got a new pair of shoes!

Next day delivery from tireRack at no extra charge? Yes please!

Yay wreck rebuild

I just saved myself $30 by finding my missing headlight mount hanging on or dear life on the bottom of the passenger radiator! Hooray!

Porsche Becker CR210

For all of those fellow porsche owners out there who think the factory stereo is the bomb: Let me introduce you to the Porsche/Becker radio code decoder tool:
Porsche Resetting Radio Code

So I tried this two nights ago and got a code that didn't seem to work. So I went back to RennTech Forums and posted my problem to Loren, an Admin there, who sent back the EXACT SAME code I got form the java decoder!

So may thanks to Loren, and his imense patients and resources for getting these codes (no idea where from) but even more thanks to him for writing the Lost Radio Code FAQ which prompted me to read the owners manual and figure out how to actually enter the radio code so that it would unlock the radio!

So thank you internet once again!

First drive (kind of)

I did it! took the Porsche out for a, kind of, first drive.

It was a terrible day to go on a shakedown run but we didn't run into any problems so I think it was a success! Temperature was a little about freezing and it rained all morning. Roads were heavy with salt/gravel that they LOVE to spread down here in the south-west corner of Wisconsin.

Amazingly the nearly bald tires and occasional encounter with ice gave the car no problems. Traction control and ABS are functional. The airbag light that now has a light bulb in in unfortunately is lit up all the time.

Engine temps never rose above half on the gauge. Oil pressure stayed above 3 bar the whole time (was hovering around 2 bar on the drive home from SC). Tires held air. The car smelled hot and oily by the time we got back to the garage and the high+rough idle had returned which is disappointing.
I noticed that the car still has a bit of a miss when accelerating between 3-4k RPM which I am hoping is related to the same problem as the high idle.
It is on the project list!!

Cheers,
Gabe

Nothing a little JBQuik can't fix!

I feel Porsche fanatics cringing already!!

Carpets

Anybody who has bought a used car has probably dealt with nasty carpets. Most cars I've had have had some sort of holes, stains, stinks, etc. this time Leann is going all out. We tried the can foam sprays (good results in the past) but they didn't cut it this time around.
Bring in the big dogs! Introducing the Rug Doctor!

Spark plug access?

Yeah, next time around this will be easy! Only because all of the rusted fasteners have snapped and are being replaced with nice metric stainless fasteners from BelMetric!
Below is the reverse of removal except for the bumper cover.

Discoveries

So in purchasing a salvage title vehicle you always are assuming a certain amount of risk. I have owned salvage titled cars most oft life, some are spotless, others have obvious damage that doesn't affect the usefulness of the vehicle, and now I have a vehicle that has damage an problems.
On the drive home with this Porsche the handling was useless and tons of vibration coming from the travel. It also wandered quite bad though it is unclear if that was loose suspension or the stupid big tires I had.
This leads us to the dissection of the front end.
Picture 1- bent passenger front control arm.
Picture 2- JBWelded front upright. Also visible I'd the brake line coil and of you look close enough you notice the brake caliper is not mounted straight.
Also known is some clicking from the front strut mounts.

COP tester

This is the coil and ignition tester that I purchased recently (from some crazy website here). I have wanted one of these for quite some time but never bothered till now. I'm glad I did too! After changing the spark plugs I fired up the Porsche and ran around testing the coils and sure enough one was not firing. I swapped coils and got all 6 on line.
Now I need to test the BMW coils!

Trial post for the blogger app!!

Just trying this out for doing project updates directly from the garage!!! Wheeeee