On a recent business trip back East I was fortunate enough to have at my disposal, a 2015 Subaru WRX. I’ve always had feelings for the WRX, especially since the 2015 design came on the scene. At first I disliked the design. However, slowly it grew on me. The last WRX I drove was a…
Picking A Car That Evokes That Feeling – Part 2 (VW Golf)
I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for German automobiles. I blame my parents. I got my introduction to Volkswagen and Audi at an early age. I didn’t actualize as a kid that VW and Audi were brands under the same company back then, but I did notice that the windows on the…
Using A Skate To Educate (Myself)
After weeks of planning, and getting parts, I finally got down to some maintenance of my kid’s roller-blades. This is part of a series of my use of small technical projects, to bolster confidence in tackling large automotive ones. YouTube, common-sense, and a bit of courage have been instrumental on this journey. My desire to…
Power Steering Fluid Transfusion
Once again I got the opportunity to assist on an automotive project that I had no experience doing before. I got to help with a power steering fluid transfusion. Power steering is the reason your arms don’t fall of from exhaustion, after doing a three-point turn. Some of you late Gen-Xers and earlier drivers may…
Picking A Car That Evokes That Feeling – Part 1 (BMW 3 Series (E46))
When you get enough car experience in life, you viscerally know what cars look good to you and what cars don’t. Then there’s a third category. This is for the cars that just look stunning, to you. A respectable selection from this category may be luxury or even supercars. However, even among those, you’ll find…
Why Do I Want This Car?
Happy New Year! Yesterday, I broke my cars-I-can’t-possibly-afford-pre-retirement diet, by watching this video on arguably one of my favorite Porsches this side of 2000. Yes, it’s the mildly, cost-prohibitive 2016 Porsche 911 R. This would be a good time for a 15-minute break. That should give you enough time for this video and the rest of…
My Porsche 959
It can be remarkable in life what we lose, what we let go, and what we keep. I got my white, Porsche 959, scale 1/36, in the late 1980s from my mentor, as a gift. Made in Macau, not Stuttgart. I don’t think he had met anyone in his life who loved Porsches more than I…
If You Don’t Own a Sports Car, Share One
When I became Organizer of the Modern Sports Cars of Arizona, Meetup group, back in July 2015, I didn’t have a vehicle of any kind. I didn’t really need a car back East, and I wouldn’t have another one for at least six months. So, I rented a Mustang from the folks at San Tan…
What’s A Serpentine Belt Tool?
That was my response to a question, a fellow MSCAer, posed to me. This was not too long after I committed to assisting her in replacing the serpentine belt on her ride. Now, to know what a serpentine belt tool is, you really need to know what a serpentine belt is. And you don’t really know what a…
Using A Train To Train (Part Two)
I got the train running. As it turned out, all it really needed were fresh batteries. The wire I severed was one of the lead wires to the battery. Once I re-soldered that, it was good as new. It’s been decades since I soldered anything, and I was clearly rusty. In any case, it felt…