The Collection - wrecks customer car and then calls him names!

Wow.. this is just shocking. A dealership trashes a customes gorgeous 996 and then, not only tries to low-ball him on repairs but calls him names when the customer tries to assert his rights!

This is spreading all over the web now, and the dealership is starting to lose servcie business. I say GOOD! That dealer should be kissing the customers ass ten-days to Sunday over this.

How did it happen? Well, it did not fall off a lift, one of their mechanics crashed the car during a test drive. How bad is it? well.. see for yourself (snagged these photos off the Rennlist discussion regarding this incident).

This is how the discussion starged:

I brought my '03 996 cab to the dealer for minor warranty work. On a road test, the tech got into an accident in my car. The impact was to the front right portion of the car. Headlamp assembly, hood,bumper, fender, door, radiators, wheel well plastics, wires, hoses, etc. It looks like at least $10,000 in repairs. My car has approx. 16,000 miles and was perfect in all ways before the wreck. What should I do???? I would think that it's not too much for me to ask them to buy my car for at least the market value just before the wreck. What do you think?

Supposedly, the tech driving my car was making a left hand turn against 2 lanes of traffic. From what he said, he was motioned by the driver of the oncoming car closest to him, to make his dangerous turn, and never saw the other car coming in the other lane, which resulted in the accident. The tech was ticketed for the accident.

OK, wrecks happen. They just do, but the way a dealership deals with someone is what we are talking about here. I could attempt to wax poetic regarding what jerks they are being but, instead read some of these quotes for yourself, from the owner of the car:

After today's meeting with 3 of the dealerships manager's, I don't feel any better about the situation. I told them what I wanted and they told me what they want to do for me. Basically, repair the car and give it back to me. I absolutely refused that suggestion and demanded to be made "whole". Apparently, no one in the meeting had any authority to deal with me. I allowed them to get an estimate from their body shop. And am awaiting a phone call back from the "real" GM. I will keep you informed....

But this is when the dealership just get's stupid.

Finally, after many phone calls and visits to the dealership, I received a phone call from the owner of the dealership that wrecked my 996. I got basically the same answer from him that I got from everyone else below him. "Sorry, but it was an accident, accident's happen." He still insists on having his body shop do the repairs and then and only then would he even consider a possible trade-in. Oh, and he also told me that I was acting like his 15 yr. old daughter. Is he kidding me!!

You should check out the full thread for all the details. Boiling it down though, the dealership came out of the gate playing hardball. Talking about fixing it up, giving it back and not compensating for dimished value.

Once a Porsche has been in a crash, value take a major hit. It's just the way the market works on these cars. And with $10,000+ damage to the car, that's not a minor incident a potential future buyer will ignore. No way.

These are are also packed with radiators, cooling lines, precision suspension parts, etc. Every nook and cranny on these things has some expensive part stashed away in there. It's really rather amazing. It looks pretty nasty from a cosmetic standpoing (new door, new fender, new hood to start) but the damage under there is what could really skyrocket the costs.

I'll be watching this one with interest.

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PCA Tech Day at MaxRPM

The local speed shop (owner is one of the founding members of our PCA region.. most of you guys know or heard of him.. Alex at 'MaxRPM'.

He really put on a heck of a great tech day for us at his shop. 3 hours with a number different companies including Remus, Brembo, JIC, Fikse, plus our local club detailer (Jeff). In addition, Alex had demos of the shops dynos (bike and car) along with a live DME re-map of one of the guys sweet Carrera (it belonged to Kanute - not sure about the spelling - the Austrain guy that sells Remus exhaust for the US, more on him later).

As always I took a bunch of pictures, can can be seen here on my FotoVeloce Smugmug pages.

There was a great turnout from both of the local PCA regions (PNWR and OPR).


The most informative was the talk given by Brembo. They explained the differences between their OEM and performace (GT) brake packages. They also sent into why cross-drilled rotors are the best for street application but NOT for track, and slotted rotors are great for track but really a poor choice for street apps.

They also talked about the reason the GT packages had aluminum rotor hats. On a Corvette they can save 7 lb. PER ROTOR by going with the two-piece aluminum hats. That's 28 lb. of rotating mass. That is a lot, just for rotors. They are also full-floaters. This was something I did not know. On the race applications the rotors ratter just like on high-perf bike brakes. For the street apps that add anti-rattle preload clips to them so they do not make so much noise. Lots of good info dispensed.

Remus showed us photos of thier rolling road digital sound stage they use for design of OEM exhaust systems so they can get the best sound both inside and out. So there is no drone. Often they can make the aftermarket performance system quieter inside the car but with excellent tone and performane outside. The system is supposed to very accurage at locating the source of resonance and vibration that add to exhaust noise. He also said it's great for tracking down a rattle inside the car, since it can pin-point the location to about a 1 cm square area within the cabin.

Fikse showed us how they make 3 piece wheels from big aluminum billet slugs (for the center forging) and big disks that are rolled out then heat treated for the inside/outside halves. They are also working on new 1-piece forged wheels and should have them soon. They also brought along the wheel that ALMS prototype cars are running (well, the ones that win anyway). Amazing details in the CNC machining. They back-cut the spokes to make an I-beam shape for lower weight and added stregnth. Cool stuff. They are all custom built, serial numbered (takes about 3-5 weeks) etc. So if there is a material problem down the road they know exactly who has the wheels with a specific run of forgings, as well as being able to tool up to replace bent/broken rim halves with an identical replacement part, re-assemble and send it back.

Jeff was quite detailed (pardon the pun), regarding his detailing busienss. He quite his job writting software to start a detailing business. Says he makes a lot less money and is 10x happier. Hm.. He does seem happy. It was great to the detailed run down on how to properly clay-bar your car, why you do it, and tips on not wasting the product. I thought the detailing section would be the most boring but it turned out to be one of the most interesting.

To add icing on the cake, MaxRPM hosted a BBQ, followed by dyno runs for those that signed up in advance. 10 cars signed up (mine was #8) to make the runs after lunch. 2nd to last one on the Dyno was a Viper, which laid down on really wicked run!



Last car on the dyno was a pumped out SS Camero. It was a big fuel puking pig.. laying down just 360 rear-wheel HP. Everyone's eyes were watering even with the shops exhaust fans running. It made a great deal of sound. Lots of show, not much go. The Viper on the other hand pulled a 512 at the rears. Sweet. It even shot flame out on decel (camera battery was dead at that point so I didn't capture that).

The highlight for the day, for me, was my 993 on the dyno. With 107,000 on the clock and only a minor exhaust mod, I did not expect much, and I thought I had A/F mixture issues.

Turns out my A/F ratio was just about flat from start to finish, PLUS it pulled 257 HP at the rear wheels! Calculated out to crankshaft HP that should be right around it's rated 280. Not bad for a 12 year old car with over 100,000 on the clock. Just for reference (you'll see it in the pictures) the 97 Carrera Cab (which is supposed to have 15 more HP than my early motor '95) only pulled down 202 at the wheels! Comparing dyno to dyno is just about useless but car to car. 50+ HP is a pretty big difference from the two 993's!

Well.. it was a good day. Great weather, lots of fun.

Later that day I picked up A.J. to head into the City for round 14 of the AMA Supercross. It was one HELL of a show. Coolest part was Kanute (still not sure how to spell his name) and his other Austrain buddy were on the ferry so we got to talk about KTM's, riding around the Bay Area etc. I'll ahve to look those dudes up when I get down there. He's got one bad-ass Porsche. Oh, and he's also a private pilot. Seems to me that dirt bikes, Porsches and flying planes all seem to attract the same type of people, GOOD people!

993 oil change

Now that the 964's oil has been changed, it's time to handle the change on the 993. It's quite a bit more involved than the work on the 964. Fortunatly I found a great resource on the web for an Oil Change DIY.

More to come this weekend when I tackle the work.

964 oil change.

* TO BE COMPLETED *

993 receives a front steering brace

After purchasing the car (with 18" wheels installed) I discovered that Porsche had issued a TSB on retrofitting a steering bracket brace found on the later '96 and up cars. This was required for fitting of oversize (18" wheels) on the car since it came with 16 or 17 wheels stock (depending on trim ordered at time of manufacture).

What really prompted this was after I'd installed a set of 19" wheels and found a slight wander with the 18's became quite a handful with the 19's I'd recently picked up.

Parts required for the update where not overly expensive. A backet and a pair of longer stainless bolts are all that is required. The installation it self was straight forward and took less than 1 hour including time to dig some tools out of the moving boxes and snapping a few pictures (which I'll upload at some unspecified future date).

[b]Results:[/b]
It helped. It did not cure all the wander that had occured with the 19's, but it was a definate improvement. Which of means it's a NEEDED update. I suspect the 12 year old rubber on the tie rod ends (some sort of isolator that I've never seen used before) are a bit soft and is causing the rest of the wander. I'll see how it handles once I complete the installation of JIC coilovers later this month.

Friday WSP cat and mouse

It's been a while since I've run into this sort of silliness. Sure I see plenty of them running RADAR / LIDAR traps along SR-16 but it's not that often they are stalking the traffic I'm driving in. Today was an exception.

It started off with me not paying attention as I entered Gorst (great place for them to trap speeders). Thankfuly someone well ahead of me tripped the RADAR on and I was warned well in advance. Rolled on through without a problem.

Not long after though I started reading a 1-2 bar K signal. Then it faded. A couple miles later it was back. It did not fade or grow quickly so now I was sure he was someone behind lighting up the group of cars from time to time.

Most of the people without detectors just keept bustling along at 10+ over the limit except myself and an older gent in an Auto Union. I suspect he spotted my detector in the windshield and followed suit when I hit the binders and dropped into the slow lane.

It is a 30 mile or so drive from Gorst to the bridge on SR-16. Every few miles or so the K alert would go off with 1-2 bars. I never did spot the wolf that was hunting us, just too many cars. In fact I'm not even sure why the WSP kept flipping the RADAR on/off/on/off with such a thick group of cars almost all of which were going at or very close to the limit (rare).

I'm happy I had the detector to remind me to pay more attention to my speed and not so much the standard flow of traffic in those areas they typically run traps.

On the way to the highway I was mugged by someone with a Ka instant-on unit. Never did see them either but I was well within the parameters of legal driving speeds. It was the first time I'd seen it used there (probably the local revenuers).

Just another day driving around in a Porsche. Even in metallic silver it seems to attract attention of the local PD. Now, if only the girls were so interested!

Porsche Club of America - Olympic Region Winter Tour

Weather was pretty nasty for the first PCA-OPR big tour of the year, so I did not expect much of a turnout. We did end up with a pretty decent group of cars though, basically all 911 varients (a pair of 996's, a turbo and a handfull of 911/964 varieties including a sweet black RSA).

Leaving Barnes & Noble books (first meetup point of the day) we headed north to Poulsbo where we'd meet a couple more cars (pair of 944s). Weather was still nasty, raining high wind and just plain uncooperative. Which really was a drag since I'd planned on doing some hiking with my companion after brunch. Not all hope was lost since we were heading into the part of the PNW that is largely shadowed from rain by the might Olympic Mountains.

Crossing the floating bridge on the Hood Canal was in experience. Water on the south side of the bridge was horendous. Not quite breaking onto the bridge deck but the fact they did not close the bridge was a shock to me. We tried to get a photograph of it but by the time we got the camera out of the bag it was too late.

Once on west side of the Olympic Penninsula, we headed north towards Port Hadlock, Port Ludlow and Port Townsend (turing off just before PT), returning back down the highway to 101 and finally out to the 7 Cedars Casino in Sequim.

Brunch was pretty decent. Had a nice conversation with the people at our table, and a tasty desert. I could tell my partner in crime was getting anxious to hit the road so we said our goodbyes and headed west. Way west.

Our first stop was at the Olympic National Park headquarters to see if Hurricane Ridge was open for hiking, but the signs said chains recommended at the top. Frankly I've driving my Porsche in the snow, on ice, and it does pretty good with the weight over the drive wheels but... not something I wanted to do on *this* trip so we agreed to cancel that plan.

All was not lost. Further west we headed (even got lost for a bit.. doh) to Storm King along Lake Cresscent. Sadly weather was not cooperating again. After a breif stop along the lake, we packed it in and started heading home. It had been a pretty big day already, and we had 90 miles to home so east we headed.

Discussion turned again to food (it had been nearly 6 hours since we'd eaten. It did not take much for some agreement was reached on finding a new place to eat in Port Townsend (mentioning an ice cream shop I know on the water, seemed to grease the skids). So north we headed to the top of the penninsula and what turned out to be a nice dinner on the water at 'Fins'.

We returned home at approximatly 9:00pm. I bid my friend farewell and headed home to write this blog. Only a couple of photos were taken by myself, neither of which very good so I'll spare everyone the trouble of posting them.

Until next time....