Sportscar ''menopause?'' Nope!

I think it was a few months ago that I started to get that familiar itch that defied rational explanation or description! It began when I sold my very last Japanese crotch rocket, a 5th-Gen (read: 1998-2001) Honda VFR800FI ‘Interceptor’, after many months of rumination on the increasing hazards of riding a motorcycle on today’s idiot-infested highways around the young brain-dead kids who regard themselves as the exclusive center of their self-obsessed, solipsistic universe.

You know the type I refer to, surely? They’re the ones driving around in expensive cars who surreptitiously have one eye constantly glued to their smartphone, regardless of the unsafe and illegal nature of using a cellphone while driving…the ones who think that driving a cheap BMW entitles them to ignore all the road safety rules that are made only for others…and the ones who fail to understand that excessive speed and road-racing antics belong solely in puerile Hollywood action films (i.e. those of the ‘Fast & Furious’ ilk) or on the racetrack.

I’m now in my last decades of life, although within this veteran corporeal body still beats the heart of a more experienced and wiser kid. Although I still have the same urges and reactive behaviors that characterise adolescence, I am now old enough and wise enough to more fully understand life (thanks to decades of life-experience, all of which I’ve managed to survive through) far better than when I had the youthful body to match all that hormonally charged potential for mayhem and disaster that adolescence brings with it.

At any rate, once one hits the upper echelons of life, one inevitably must reflect on certain unelectable truths: such as the fact that in a typical motorcycle/automobile crash, the cycle rider is virtually guaranteed a quick induction into the Heavenly harp and wings brigade. Bones are more brittle, almost everyone above the age of 65 or so has some degree or another of osteoporosis, and even the slightest fall can initiate a series of events such as a fractured pelvis) that may well result in a fatal cerebral clot, etc., etc.

Furthermore, collision forces today are usually so well beyond what most people can even get their minds around that despite wearing the best safety helmet money can buy, if you take a hit on the noggin while riding a motorcycle, your brain is more likely than not to instantly turn into a tapioca pudding-like goo unsuited to cognition. Hence, continuing to risk a collision on today’s meaner, more careless streets and highways is a gamble that only a sucker (or a kid) might find worthwhile.

Consequently, after previously alluded-to ruminative reflection (and endless pleas by wifie for me to finally forsake the motorized two-wheeled death machines I so much love, and have ridden since early HS days), I reluctantly agreed to finally step down from the saddle, let my helmet peacefully collect dust in a corner of the garage and find a new owner for my pristine Japanese suicycle!

Thereupon began ‘the itch…’

This manifested itself in the realisation that despite the fact that I’d sworn off motorcycles (I’m not subject to overt love for blindingly fast speed…I’m waaay past that juvenile milestone, since after all, I’ve been to Mach-2 before (in blindingly fast, Mach-2.45 Convair F-106 jet aircraft, and also Mach 2.01 Concorde), so speed for speed’s sake is no longer a great big deal for me (as it seems to be with all the twat-brains who hop-up their American muscle-cars to speed recklessly about in, on city streets).

But let me explain that a bit more in detail. Some of us of the XY (that’s MALE with a capital ‘M’…no pronouns needed) persuasion simply have an obsession with beautiful expressions of technological achievement (such as motorcycles, sportscars and aircraft). It isn’t so much the need to ride them to their limits as to simply have them around to admire and tinker with. I even have a friend who is so thoroughly ‘in’ that corner that he keeps a pristinely restored Norton Commando 850 in his living room, where it shares the spotlight with his Picasso sketches and doodles.

I had an early intimation of being afflicted with this syndrome back when I got my first motorcycle (a Honda C-110 50cc job) as a sophomore in HS. Ditto for brilliantly talented Hawai’ian water-woman and surfing/free diving champion Rell Kapolioka’ehukai Sunn, who shared her bed with her very first surfboard every night as a young pre-teen. It’s THAT kind of attachment I speak of here.

But all this is merely necessary backstory (or mansplaining, if you will). The bottom line is that no sooner had I sold my last bike than I began to feel a great, looming emptiness in my life: no more sophisticated mechanical toys (borrowing an expression by wise Ratty in A.A. Milne’s classic ‘Wind in the Willows’) to play with and admire (“Believe me, my young friend, there is NOTHING...absolutely nothing…half so much worth doing as simply messing around in boats”), in my case, having a quirky, classic sportscar around to mess with.

Once the wheels began to spin in that part of my brain I call the ‘Gyro Gearloose’ lobe, the delightful truth immediately dawned on me! I may have sworn off motorcycles BUT…nothing had been said about sportscars! Eureka! A possible way out of my post-midlife quagmire! Move over, Mr. Toad of Toad Manor!

Now, I have had a fair number of sportscars in my past decades. I am not ashamed to admit that a fair number of them were FIATS of the Abarth X-1/9 and 128SL variety (two classics)! The other (and more recent iterations) have all been Porsche 914s; specifically, about four of the 914-4 type (118,000 made by VW/Porsche) and one ultra-rare 914-6 (only 3368 of which were made), which you may or may not recall was a hot-chili-pepper-flavored 914 with a 911 2.0 liter, 6 cylinder engine stuffed up its exhaust pipe.

Like a GD fool, I sold the now ultra rare ‘Six’ and another beautiful ’76 914-4 to a Japanese businessman some years ago for a very modest sum (curses eternally be upon me for that!). But ever since then, I’ve felt a latent longing for another example of this favorite sportscar, the urge for which I have tried vainly (but largely unsuccessfully) to suppress!

Thus minded, I began a recent search for a likely specimen and soon found two very nice examples for sale in Southern California (SoCal). One was a 1973 orange 914-4 with a 1.7 liter engine, that had only 43K miles total on it and received superb care from its former owner. The other one was a white 1974 914-4, 2 liter, also with less than 50K miles on the ticker.

Although either car would have sold (used and in great shape) for less than $6K just 10 years ago, the recent speculations by classic car investors has kicked the price of used Porsches (and even 914s) into the stratosphere in the same amount of time! The ‘average’ price for such a car is now on the order of $15-$20K, believe it or not! And this despite being the erstwhile ‘poor’ cousin of the vaunted Porsche 911 that so many young men cream their shorts lusting over!

Searching a bit more, I shortly found another car, a 1974 yellow 914-4 with a 1.8 liter engine that seemed to have received a reasonably good restoration, including fresh paint in the original color (Sunflower Yellow), a very special custom exhaust system, a conversion from OEM fuel injection to a dual-throat, twin Weber 40mm IDF carb system, and a restored OEM interior treatment (black). The price was more than a bit higher, unfortunately, but it looked to be a great little car. Also a ‘rust-free’, SoCal car, from the description.

Since I am now retired and just another relatively poor ‘pensioner’, I didn’t want to take out a personal loan for a car (since with my usual bad luck, I’ll probably shuffle off this earthly coil in the next 10 years or so). Rather, I pleaded with wifie to be allowed to ‘borrow’ from myself…that is, to borrow the needed money from our joint investment holdings. Unfortunately, in order to extract an agreement from ‘She Who Must Be Obeyed’, I had to make a veritable Devil’s Pact with her that included selling two of my existing vehicles (both of which I also love dearly). Curses!

However, I went ahead with my plan to buy another 914 (the 914-4 cars are known as VW/Porsches, whereas the 914-6, with its Porsche 911 2.0 liter engine, is considered a legitimate Porsche 914; see my linked article about 914s, “When Porsche Comes to Shove” for an explanation of this seeming anomaly) and finally decided on the yellow ’74 specimen.

The reason for this was that although the two first-mentioned cars were eminently desirable, the seller of those cars (a sportscar broker in SoCal) could not arrange truck transport of either one up to me here in Suckatomato. That was a BIG stumbling block, since I didn’t have the time or energy to fly down to LA to buy the car and then futz about trying to locate a shipping company to haul it north to me.

The yellow ’74, on the other hand, could be transported by its seller to me, which development finally persuaded me to go with that car. And therein, as famous 50s radio announcer Paul Harvey (nee surname Aurant) so adroitly put it, “...the rest of the story.”

All the foregoing said, here’s the sad ‘rest of the story’…

The car finally arrived on its transport truck. The driver seemed to possibly be an illegal alien since his English was almost completely unintelligible. I finally got it out of him that he was Armenian through a combination of gestures and pigeon, but when he tried to get the car off the transport truck, he seemed to have substantial difficulty getting the engine started. Seller had advised me beforehand that the car seemed a bit balky starting but assured me that “...several pumps on the accelerator suffice to get it going.”

Oh, boy! In retrospect, that should have been a BIG red flag that there might be trouble ahead, just beyond the next virtual hairpin curve but finally, the car started and he backed it off the truck. I then got in and attempted to drive it the short distance of about 50 feet into my waiting garage, but clearly it ran so rough and lacked power to the extent that it seemed to be running on only 3 out of 4 cylinders. NOT good!

Meanwhile the driver then attempted to tell me that it was a ‘COD delivery’ (‘Cash On Delivery’) transport arrangement and wanted a cheque or cash in order to turn it over to me. That was at extreme odds with the agreement the seller and I had reached, whereby he said he would pay the transport fee himself.

This explanation (again communicated with extreme difficulty, via pigeon accompanied by gestures) resulted in an impasse, until I called the seller, and the driver called his dispatcher. Both calls confirmed to the driver’s satisfaction that his dispatcher had received the promised fee, so he finally left and I was left to puzzle out exactly why the car was not running smoothly. GAAK!

It’s now been about 2 weeks since the car became my personal ‘hanger queen’, all the while resisting my modest efforts to discover exactly what caused this lack of drivability or what the cause of the problem might be.

The car originally had fuel-injection (VW/Porsche D-Tronic iteration) but whomever had owned the car before me had gutted the FI system and installed twin, dual-throat Weber 40 IDF carbs. So, removing the fitted air filters, I examined them and found slight traces of moisture on the filter support plates that are fitted on top of the car’s venturi stacks. WATER? Uh-oh!

Then I checked the oil. Another very unpleasant surprise awaited me when the dipstick revealed profuse creamy oil/water emulsion effects…the sort you commonly see on water-cooled cars that have blown a head-gasket, thereby permitting coolant to get into the sump!

Next logical diagnostic step was to drain the existing ‘oil’ and change out the oil filter, which I did…and found that instead of oil in the sump, the car seemed to be full of off-white creamy fluid (like camel milk). Oh…God!...3.5 liters full of the stuff.

Sitting down to try to figure all this out, I ran through the only possible explanations I could think of: 1) that the car had been left sitting outside during a real rain downpour (with water getting into the carbs and thereby down into the sump), or 2) that some absolute three-braincell idiot had used a water pressure-sprayer to clean out the engine compartment, thereby achieving the same disastrous effect!

Since the seller swore a holy oath that he had committed neither of these sins (and I believe him since he seems otherwise to be a very honest person, to all appearances), this suggests to me that some unknown ferschlugginer (term copyright, MAD Magazine, 1953) had done one or the other of these horrific disservices to the car between the time seller ‘bought’ the car (at an estate sale) and the time he took actual receipt of it. That seems logical (and very likely that is exactly what had happened).

So, for two weeks now I’ve been trying to coax the car (unsuccessfully) into running properly, with precious little luck. I think you can appreciate exactly how frustrating that has been, after receiving a car that was described as ‘in perfect working order’ (with no ‘as-is’ clause in the agreement, fortunately).

OK. So, the next logical step in all this would be to get a local Porsche garage to have them take a good look at what’s going on, give me their impression as to what exactly is what, and apprise me of whatever repairs may be in order.

Ironically, my ‘itch’ to get another 914 has unintentionally landed me in a sort of not-uncommon Porsche purgatory, given the elusive nature of the problem at hand here (whatever it turns out to be), and also consigned to the deepest level of hell for husbands who are in deep, DEEP doo-doo with their wives over their latest ‘late life wild seeds'' misadventure.

Frankly, I don’t need this sort of complication in my life, adding to all the other things that we Americans already face as the ‘New Year’ (whoopee! NOT!) starts off with all the promise of a possible nuclear war with Russia, a Battle Royale with China over Taiwan (and for the even bigger prize of world hegemony), and a knock-down, drag-em-out Presidential contest between two near-senile political candidates!

And, if that isn’t enough, the coming Lunar New Year (starting on 10 Feb) is the Chinese astrological ‘Year of the Dragon’, when anything short of full-out disaster and chaos promises to be the daily norm until the Dragon exits, next year!

Hence, a final word for all of you! Save yourselves while you can, eh? It’s too late for this goner! The thin ice I’ve been skating on has long since melted away…

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A POSTSCRIPT:

Since writing all of the above background, I talked to the car’s seller, who mentioned that he had taken the car into the shop for some routine service and also experienced some ‘rough, uneven’ running. Once he arrived at the shop (he said), the service department checked the car over and found that his #’s 3 & 4 spark plug wires (driver’s right side of engine) seemed to have come partly loose (from the plugs themselves). Reconnecting them appeared to ‘correct’ the rough running! Epiphany! I went out to the car and looked at those two plug/wire connections and sure enough, they seemed to not be firmly attached!

This led to some further inspection of the plug wires themselves and that prompts me to conclude that the plug wires on the car right now, having soft rubber boots, are not the correct type for use on a VW/914 engine! The original OEM wire sets had a hard rubber (polymer) sparkplug connection that penetrated through the engine’s cooling shell to securely grip the plug electrodes, and the soft rubber ones on the car were just possibly responsible for a lot of the difficulties I seemed to be having.

I’ve sent off for a correct set of the type properly used on VW/914 engines and am waiting for their arrival at this time. If this hunch turns out to be correct, and it clears up the rough running, it will certainly be an eye-opening experience that affirms that no matter how much you think you know about VW/Porsche air-sucker engines, there’s always a further surprise or two or three lurking around the corner, from time to time!

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[For some related reading about this wonderful but unlucky 60s era VW Porsche ''love-child'' that is the 914, see my other story titled ''When Porsche Comes to Shove.'' ]