Some of you may recall that there were a couple of disasters that occurred on the way to and from WCR2010 Teeners at Tahoe. For me, it started when someone at the very start of the event started handing around a Smart Phone with pics of a bunch of guys standing around the front of a car. HEY WAIT! That's my car!!! OMFG! I had already talked to McMark on the phone to find out the progress of the NorCal Caravan and been told that they were close but that he had to go back because someone had bent a tie-rod. I had a fleeting thought when he said that that "hey, my car is in that group, I wonder..." So, now seeing it was my car I texted Mark and said "why is everyone standing around the front of my car?" He texted back "Jim owes you a Fuchs wheel." Oh crap.
As it turned out, I had another 16X6 Fuchs wheel in my truck that I had brought up for Al Weidman to use as an example for his wheel refinishing seminar. It is a newly refinished wheel that I bought off of eBay for pretty cheap but the interesting thing is that someone took an extremely rare Weisach Edition Fuchs wheel and made it into an extremely common regular Fuchs finish wheel.

Mark and Andy brought me the mangled wheel and I took that and the Weisach Edition wheel and headed for a tire store. I found one and while I was there, I met another Porsche owner and car guy Aaron Hagar - Sammy Hagar's son... He was duly invited to party in the parking lot but declined. He offered a pitcher at Cabo Wabo though...

Well the damage turned out to be much more than a wheel but curiously undetectable when you look at the car unless you look at the way the targa fits at the rear. It lays about 1/2" over the wrong direction. Oooops. Structural...

So on the advice of Alien Rick from Minnesota, I gathered comps of cars like mine that were for sale, the November '09 Excellence Valuation Edition, and my recent insurance appraisal and called in my claim. I copied all of this and brought my car down to Scott Yeaman at Yeaman Autobody in Palo Alto. Now, I have to tell you - my guess is that I passed 10,000 body shops to get my car that 90 mile trip down to Palo Alto and I am sure that many of them were very good. But none of them have Scott Yeaman. If you live in Northern California and even if you don't, consider bringing your car to Yeaman Autobody. He would not let my car go without making it right. He pulled, he tugged, he checked with lasers, he pulled some more, he considered going to his Celette Bench. It took weeks. But finally, he called and said - "it's right, come and get it."

Poor jcd914. He has been hanging his head ever since hitting that rock. Take my advice guys, no one has so many friends that they can afford to throw one away. I told this to Jim privately at the event and I say it publically here now, if I could change anything besides having it not happen, I would change the fact that he was driving. There was just no avoiding it. It happened and now, it is just about over.

Today I will be bringing it home from the body shop and putting in the windshield after redoing that forward vinyl, then I have to replace the A-arm and ball joint and align her. Then, we are back to better than before...

Thanks to everyone who has helped so far and will help with the rest...

A mangled wheel...

The inner fender by the pedal box...

Me on my way to Les Schwab Tire to meet Aaron Hagar...

More ouch...

I will add more pics tonight of the completed work and the work to come...

Gald to hear your getting it back & fixed. I wondered how that was going to turn out. I've had my fingers crossed for you Rob. Be great to hear when you have it back on the road. Congrats

Glad to hear it is getting fixed! Hope you're back on the road soon!

Ouch. Glad it is repaired.

Glad to hear it's fixed Maybe when you get it home you can snap some pictures with a few garbage cans for us

Now you need to weld those flairs on

Glad to read this and happy the car is getting all fixed up.

Progress is good! I'm looking forward to meeting you at RRC2010 - I don't suppose you'll have it back on the road for the trip?

Did you ever post why your car was so reluctant to start at WCR? I sure hope it is running now. Al.

Hey Al unfortunately no it is not running yet. When I got home I was going to throw my carbs on it. Just so I could get it running & get my break in miles done on the motor. I was putting my carbs on & that was a first for me. After talking to a few guys I decided to just put my FI back on. I the took it to a recomended shop in Eugene. The guy really knows the FI system well. Unfortunately it sat there for 6 weeks waiting to be worked on without getting worked on. There were a few 356's there ahead of me. He is going through the FI off the car. He's got the FI all set. He ordered a set of Vacumn hoses from AA. After close to a month we got the hoses but they were of course for a 1.8 . So know we are waiting on the 2.0 hoses again . Basically there hasn't been much progress in the 3 months it's been there now . I would have had the damn thing running by now with no problem. I was at the point of wanting to torch it when I got back though. So I figured to be on the safe side I would let Bruce figure it out. Plus get it back early enough in the summer to enjoy it before I sold it. Obviously that has not worked out as planned

Ouch!!! Sorry I asked, I was hoping you would say it was something simple and you have had a fun summer. I know that when it does run you will forget all about the trials and tribulations. Hope it happens before the rains. Al.

Car is home. Too dark to take off the trailer. It runs fine so that isn't a problem. In fact I could probably drive it once I get the new windshield in. The one on it is a cracked one that Scott put in so I could get home on the trailer without filling the interior with road crap.

The plan from here is to buy a tie rod and ball joint, get the refinished A-arm from Mark, assemble all of that. Align it and go! I think the plan for RRC is to fly to SLC and rent a car with Mark and???

Jamie, that vacuum hose kit from AA comes with all the hoses for all of the models. You will have extra left over. At least it used to a few years back.

Well, at least you're getting some money back from the insurance company Rob!

So I can show my face in public again?

I was afraid I was going to have to move out of state, oh the shame of it.

Seriously I am glad Scott finished the car and I am sure he did it right.

I am sure Ron will let us do the wheel weights and alignment at IPB.

Jim

I am very sorry to hear about the car damage and glad everyone is o.k. I agree with you about Scott Yeaman. His body shop give greatest service and professional skills as one will ever see. He and his crew are the ones who did the work on Sir Andy's car. That is where I will take my engineering project car when I am ready to get it repaired/painted.

Glad to see the car is getting back on the road.

Steve Hurt

Ahh... Morning. It was too dark to take it off the trailer last night. I charged the battery all night and I will pull her off this morning. If she is in a good mood, I will drive her up to the reunion... I will get pictures there with her cousins...

A special thanks to you Rick. With all the comps and the PCA Valuation, the NADA Classic Car Value, and my two year old appraisal my insurance company never even blinked. The adjuster asked Scott "what are these things worth" Scott said "you can't find a good one for less than 10 grand these days, and this one is in very-good to excellent condition." Your advice served me well...

Pics please

So far I have known Rob for 4 months, and I have never yet seen his car!!!! I don't believe it exists! maybe if he brings a 914 today, i wil believe it!
EDIT, I lied... it was too early in the AM to think clearly! rode in it to and from Sonoma for Limo day! Hope to see it again in 20 minutes!

Not going to happen. It seems the battery has given up or the connections are bad. Will not start twice. If you haven't seen my car it's your fault. It was at WCR parked at the parking lot...

Grab a bigger cup of coffee, Mark. Tee hee hee

Clean up your battery connections and see if that helps.

Holy cow Rob!

Its been 12-14 hr days 7 a week over here, I haven't been keeping up on board surfing. I had no idea of your teener trauma. Good to see things are coming around, and you're a battery away from the open road.

Today is Nancy's birthday, I took it off work and told her we could spend the day doing whatever she wanted, as she hasn't seen much of me. We slept in a little, did a 25 mile bike ride, have dinner out with both sets of our parents at 5 tonight. She decided she'd like to putter in her flower gardens, so long as I had the 914 up to full boost in time for dinner. How do you not love a woman like that? Off to the garage, found the boost leak, need to engineer a fix. And you'd better be out cleaning posts or shopping batteries.

Good to hear your car survived.

That wasn't a boulder. It was more like a big rock. Now THIS is a boulder!!

I heard about that one ElYut. I even wrote an article about it for or SVR Newsletter. Not sure if it got pub'd as I don't really read the thing... Looks like he exceeded his talent somewhere in the Angeles National Forest?

...Anybody know what happened to that poor 914?? what's the story on it???

Yup ,rotary 914 in the Angeles Forrest... there's a story about it either here, or on the club site...

It was on the Holloween run last year. He was lucky the boulder was there 'cause if not he might have gone over the cliff. Looked to be about 1000ft almost straight down.