Love.... hate Options

[Marv's3.6six]

So I have had a love hate relationship with my car over the last few years. Most of the local So Cal guys know my little speeder. My car is very much a hot rod car NOTHING is stock on the car, it is all rodded up with a big 6 and custom 915 close ratio trans.... and therein lies the problem. For more than a year the tranny has been cantankerous it had had a hit and miss relationship with wanting to go into 3rd gear, the 2 to 3 shift was F***ed up, about 20% of the time it did not want to shift 2-3.... a major bummer and caused many F words to escape my mouth while driving.

Enter AutoWerkes in Huntington Beach. I have been a long term customer with them, great guys, Bruce, Johnny and Phil. About a month ago I took the car to them to have its gallons of oil changed... I also asked could you please look into my shifting woes. Well they gave it a go, made an adjustment and it was marginally better, not much but some. I retrieved the car from them and went about an extensive test drive, constantly rowing thru the gears all over the HB and Long Beach area. I counted every missed shift then came home and wrote a detailed synopsis of the drive, I explained exactly how the 2-3 shift would fail. During the drive I could not when it was going to fail and the only thing that was consistent was HOW it failed.

Autowerkes asked my to bring the car back in, armed with the exact details of what happened when it failed it gave them something more concrete to work with. After a weeks time, they not much closer, I will surmise here that due to the fact that NO parts are stock on the car that the Wevo shifter to Patrick Motorsports linkages to the Velios 915 shifter all must have tolerances that are not quite factory. Phil @ Autowerkes asked me to leave the car a bit longer which was fine as I was heading off to Yosemite and Mammoth for a week, no problem leaving the car. Well I get home from vaca and Phil says come on in because he has done about as much as he can without removing the trans and looking inside. When I get there Phil says lets go for a drive, (me fingers crossed) I jump in w/ Phil and off we go.... I could not believe the car, I was so wowed as our 15min drive there were ZERO failures, whoop de f n do I am happy. So here is the kicker as I said earlier I am a long time customer, Phil gives me an invoice for $5 for a new seal. I said ok, now give me the invoice for the labor... he said there was none... I was floored, I said that is not fair to you guys, how much time do you have in it, he said somewhere in the range of 5-6 hours. Their shop rate is $140 an hour, again I said it is not fair to you guys, please charge me a fair rate for your time. I will say that my final invoice was much more than $5. What a great bunch of Porsche loving guys. I am so happy, I have now driven the car every day since I picked her up and not one single 2-3 failure. Autowerkes Porsche in Huntington Beach rocks!

[Root_Werks]

That is one sharp looking 914-6!

914's have seemingly always had a bit of love/hate with owners. Part of the fun of ownership I guess?