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…
Using A Train To Train (Part One)
Just about any car guy (or gal) will tell you that the surest way to figure out how something works is to rebuild it. The kids inherited a Christmas train from a neighbor who moved, and I was about to toss it out figuring the train never worked. My wife stopped me and told me…
The “Why”
I’ve always loved motor-sports. It never occurred to me to what level, until a former boss saw me drop-off a stack of car and motorcycle magazines on the break-room table. He was impressed with their diversity, and his curiosity took over. I explained to him the different classes of auto and motorbike racing I enjoyed,…