Not that many of you (both of you? Someone? Anyone?) would have noticed, but the over-hyped roller skate that is the 10KHop has been suspiciously absent from track days and Porsche Club gatherings by the bay.
There is good reason for this. It’s been unwell.
I sent the car off to a reasonably well known, vertically challenged tuner of Porsches to have the 2.7 ECU re programmed. After 5 weeks I got it back and it ran like…like…well, it hardly ran. It coughed and spluttered like an asthmatic wino yelling into a beer can.
In a fit of pique I returned it, but was told that there was nothing more that could be done.
Anyhoo, while I contemplated my next move, I decided to carry out a threat that I had been brandishing since I got the car…a colour change!
I had heard of a different “vinyl” process where, rather than wrapping a car they spray the car…with vinyl. Seriously.
After a lot more homework, myriad phone calls and with a deal of trepidation I spluttered and popped my way down to a dishevelled shed in Seaford (!). I chose my colour, climbed in to an Uber and left.
The interim photos sent to me were very encouraging…just what I wanted.
So it was with great anticipation that I went to collect the car. Anticipation turned to disappointment. Whereas it was certainly very orange and certainly nice and glossy, there was a certain, how do we put it, sparkliness to it. The spray-man had made a unilateral decision to mix in some “pearl effect”. WTF?? The result was not only a sparkliness, but the colour became significantly lighter as a consequence.
I took it home, hoping the colour would grow on me. Familial and friendly consensus was that it was not what was envisaged.
Upshot? It is to go back to have a non-sparkly top coat of darker orange applied.
Frustrating.
Until such time as that happens, I have been researching how to remedy the car’s aforementioned bronchial constriction. I discovered that my present ECU (for the 2.7) is the same ECU as applies to the 3.4 from a 911!! No, really. And there’s a crowd I have found in Florida who can fix it for me. A contact put me onto them. He did a similar transplant, had similar woes and tried them out. He got the bits back, whacked them in the car and “BANG!” away it went!!
So I got Stuie to take out the ECU and the immobiliser and I have sent these, together with both keys and the respective VIN numbers (for car and for new motor) across to TrumpLand so they can re-program the ECU. Yee Ha! (I hope).
In the meantime, the ever patient Mr Drummond has fitted a rowdy, high-performance manifold/muffler from a 3.4 Cayman and… wait for it…a slippery diff. Quaife no less. Yee Ha again.
Pity the PCV competition part of the year is over.
More soon!
By Robbo (Ian Roberts)