 | Chris Welty die op een andere site die ik per toeval tegenkwam schreef: The Things We Do For Love
There is nothing like spring for reminding me how much I love
911s. There is no other car on earth quite like it, and owning one had
always been one of my dreams. Having a 911, however, can frequently be
a little less than dream-like. Readers of this column are familiar
with my experiences at Watkins Glen, and my adventure with a blown CD
box in the middle of Indiana, but actually these are not the kinds of
things I am referring to. All cars break down from time to time, and I
am convinced that a cared-for 911 is far more reliable than any other
car.
No, the things I am talking about are in many ways rather peculiar to
the 911, and some of them can only be experienced by someone who
drives a 911 all the time. I suppose it is only fair to admit that
owning a 911, for me, implies both owning much older ones and
maintaining them myself. I have, therefore, no first-hand knowledge of
what owning a new 911 is like, though normally that wouldn't stop me
from writing about it anyway.
First of all, if you own a 911 you better learn to love oil. You
better learn to really just adore oil. You should love to see it,
breath it, get it on your hands, face, clothes, floor, kids, and
especially under your fingernails. You also better love buying it,
often. Very often. All the time. Consider having a local gas station
install an oil pump so you can just pull in and fill it up (and, of
course, love doing it)..
Loving oil is not really that hard a thing to do. An oil stained floor
is obviously very attractive, and the oil itself, standing in
beautiful spectral pools that shimmer like a gateway to some dark and
magical other world, is one of those natural wonders that continues to
surpass all of mans efforts to create beauty.
Be careful, however, that you don't start loving oil, and the sight of
it, so much that you avoid purchasing kitty litter, or some other
thing that will absorb oil off the floor. Despite the visual splendor,
oil is, like most true art, fairly dangerous and objectionable in a
number of ways, and generally a good thing to clean up.
This brings me to my next point. It is probably 0K not to love kitty
litter so much as long as, like me, you gain an appreciation for
cardboard.
I love cardboard. It is such a wonderful brown color. I love
particularly the corrugations, and I really hate non corrugated card
board, it is entirely useless, and has no character whatsoever.
My garage floor is essentially paved with nice brown corrugated
cardboard, which is decorated with numerous lovely dark spots of
fragrant oil. This kind of deviant artistic appreciation is
characteristic of the true-hearted 911 owner. It would be hard to
accurately convey my elation when I get brand new cardboard, and I
imagine how it might look after a few drops of oil have leaked onto
it.
I often find humor in novice 911 owners who worry when they notice
their cars leaking oil. I suppose they don't have any cardboard that
needs spotting, and they probably don't realize that leaking oil keeps
the heat exchangers from rusting, and is also a sign that you actually
have oil in the car. This may come as something of a surprise, but
aside from the obvious decorative and rust preventing properties of
oil, it also fills a fairly important role in the engine as a
lubricant! Oil is an amazing substance, and there are plenty of good
reasons to love it.
One of the truly unique design features of 911s is the lack of what in
more recent years has come to be called "climate control." Climate
control is one of those 90's politically correct terms; you have to
call a guy with no legs "challenged", and you have to call a car with
a heating system "climate controlled." Conversly you call a guy with
two legs "unchallenged", and you call a car with no heat "cold."
Most 911 owners don't bother driving their cars when it is cold and
will give explanations usually relating cold weather to rust. These
kinds of excuses are actually lame attemps to avoid saying that their
cars are climatically challenged. Clearly the true 911 owner knows
that there is enough oil leaking to prevent any rust from forming,
regardless of weather conditions.
Shivering in the drivers seat is certainly one of the more romantic
parts of driving a 911, but families, spouses, and
people-you-are-trying-to-impress usually aren't too fond of the
experience. My autonomic nervous system has a built-in mechanism that
forces the words, "How could you be cold?" out of my mouth as soon as
my internal body temperature drops below 97 degrees.
This feature is particularly enhanced in SCs, where fairly
unsympathetic Porsche engineers added a blower fan on the engine that
would blow air over the heat exchangers regardless of engine speed.
The fan they chose, however, lasts about two months, and when not
working actually inhibits the airflow from the engine fan over the
heat exchangers and into the passenger compartment. This has the
effect of making the "improved" SC heating system colder than the
unimproved heating system on earlier cars, and of course I love it.
For the benefit of slightly less enthusiastic passengers suffering
from hypothermia, I have developed a neat little trick that usually
brings on the heat in SCs: open the sunroof. If you have a 911SC
without a sunroof then turn it into a "track car" (or sell it to
someone who will) and get one that does so you can have heat. That
is, heat for your passengers.
The sunroof trick only works when the car is moving and the windows
are closed, and the rest of the heating system has to be intact. I'm
a lot better at obfuscating than explaining things (which is why I
became a college professor), but the reason this works is actually
quite similar to the reason planes fly. The fast-moving air going
past the sunroof sucks air out of your car, and if the heater vents
are open it will draw air over the heat exchangers, which is what the
non-functional heater fan was supposed to do in the first place.
This, obviously, creates a multi-dimensional time/space vortex through
which the particles of cold air are transubstantiated into particles
of warm air from another universe. The result is an increase in
entropy which is manifested as heat in your car.
The sunroof trick also has the advantage of making people think you're
nuts. "I'm freezing! Why are you opening the sunroof?" You just smile
enigmatically in response and watch their expression as they suddenly
warm up.
This takes us full circle, because the expression of wonder at the
flow of warm air is usually replaced by a wrinkled nose and the
standard, "What's that smell?"
If your car is leaking properly, then the heat exchangers should have
a nice sealing coat of oil on them, and when this oil heats up it
produces the peculiar odor of burning oil, a fragrance that warms the
cockles of the true 911 owner's heart, and sours the nostrils of
various non-believers. Tobacco smokers can probably understand this
experience, although I don't let anyone smoke in my car since I can't
stand the smell.
All in all, a 911 owner, like the cars themselves, are a singular
breed. Where others see problems and compromise, we see endearing
qualities that make the experiencing of driving a 911 that much more
enjoyable. | |
