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A few things to know before stealing my 914

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Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914

#71

Post by throwaway0a5e »

bombcar wrote: post #52
quadrifoliate wrote: post #24

> Depress the clutch as you would in any car, and pull the knob from its secure location out of first gear. Now you will become adrift in the zone known to early Porsche owners as “Neverland” and your quest will be to find second gear. Prepare yourself for a ten-second-or-so adventure. Do not go straight forward with the shift knob, as you will only find Reverse waiting there to mock you with a shriek of high-speed g…

The Deuce and a Half has an even more interesting one, just when you think you've figured out the dog-leg you find the last two are reversed again. HN supports shift pattern unicode! Ⓡ②⑤ |–|–| ①③④

Patterns like those are really, really really common on truck transmissions.

One rail is 1st/reverse. Another rail is 2nd/3rd and the last rail is 4th or OD and direct. Whether the "fore is a lower gear than aft" holds between the 2nd and 3rd rails is a function of whether or not it's a the pair of gears that constitute "forward gear on the right rail) will either be greater or less than 1:1 depending on if it's an overdrive transmission whereas the rear position on the right rail will always be direct for reasons that boil down to "that's the sensible way to build it".

There's not much to "figure out" when you have a direct lever that goes into the shifter.

Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914

#72

Post by Rebelgecko »

jrsj wrote: post #20
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #4

He could write pretty much the same article about owning an OG Chrysler minivan, which is arguably a more historically significant vehicle but built by a make that prompts sneers about reliability and credit scores from most here, and it would just be considered trashy or prompt pearl clutching by most of the readership. Amazing the breadth of preconceived notions that can be leveraged with a badge on a grill. Having…

You might be overanalyzing a bit. I think it really comes down to sports cars being cool & vans being…vans. All the “Porsche” part really does is get more clicks (because people know what it is).

On the flip side, the sports car snobs will say that a 914 (especially the 4 cylinder version) is basically just a funky looking Volkswagen :)

Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914

#73

Post by Semaphor »

gkoberger wrote: post #42

This is one of my favorite styles of writing. I have absolutely no clue what this person is talking about and have no interest in cars, yet I read every single word. I love when people have such a deep knowledge of something that they can write an essay as unique and thoughtful as this. It reminds me of Kitchen Confidential, Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman!, or any rant about British politics by David Mitchell.

> I have absolutely no clue what this person is talking about and have no interest in cars, yet I read every single word.

I was about to write more or less the same thing. I can barely drive and never owned a car, but this article was beautiful.

Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914

#74

Post by Damogran6 »

1970 olds cutlass: Stomp, hold at 15%, crank...then stab repeatedly until it can clear itself out and maintin an idle. Good for -20 to 95 F.

1966 Fleetwood 75 - If it's sat for more than three weeks: Stab to set choke. Crank, pausing every 10 seconds...it's got a LONG way to pump the fuel and you don't want to overheat the starter. Car will then, if driven weekly, start on the first half of the first crank every time. Battery has gone 14 months without a tender or external charge and continues to start the car just fine.

Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914

#75

Post by js2 »

fabioborellini wrote: post #22

So, apparently there is no mandatory vehicle inspection in the US. Of course there isn't, it would violate the freedom to drive with an unroadworthy car.

Yes there is, it varies by state. Author is in NC, same as me. There is a state-wide safety inspection but vehicles older than 30 years are exempt:

https://www.ncdot.gov/dmv/title-registration/emissions-safet...

There's also an emissions inspection that varies by county, but vehicles older than 20 years are exempt.

https://www.ncdot.gov/dmv/title-registration/emissions-safet...

Does it make any sense to exempt older vehicles that are most likely to fail these inspections? No, of course it doesn't.

New vehicles within the most recent 3 model years are also exempt.

Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914

#76

Post by Eric_WVGG »

blastro wrote: post #11

In high school, my friends and I managed to resuscitate a 914 that had been stowed away in a garage for over a decade. We towed it to the top of a hill with a pickup truck and attempted a clutch start after we'd picked up some speed. None of us (especially me in the driver's seat) expected this to work, but amazingly it fired right up. One of my friends managed to jog alongside and jump into the car as I tried to kee…

My father had one of these just sort of gathering dust in the garage when I was growing up, utterly shocked when I turned 16 and he handed me the keys.

I still like to casually drop "oh yeah, I used to have a Porsche back when I was 16." Although I must say it was in immeasurably better shape than this one :D

I still dream of finding an old 914 and giving it an electric conversion… I'd have to do something about that rear window, though, it whips air forward when you drive with the top down.

Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914

#77

Post by DonHopkins »

cameronh90 wrote: post #63

This story reminded me of the time I was trying to exploit a web app as part of a bounty programme. Unfortunately the application was so unstable that any attempts to SQLI, or really send any kind of malformed request would simply crash the entire site for hours, presumably until an admin came and restarted the server. DoS wasn't included in the programme so I never won a bounty. I'm sure it could have been exploited…

Reminds me of the time at Sun when I tried to use XBugTool to report a bug against itself, and it got extremely angry at me, and trapped my input focus in the bug description text editor, where I vented my frustration.

http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix-haters/x-windows/xbugto...

Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914

#79

Post by kstrauser »

js2 wrote: post #68
kstrauser wrote: post #38

My first car was a 68 Mustang, which was a gorgeous heap of junk. At one point, the clutch just completely gave up and wedged itself in the “engaged” position. To get the car moving, I had to kill the engine, put it in 1st gear, and turn the key to run the starter. This pulled the whole car into enough motion to get the engine going, then I could synchro shift all I wanted until it came time to stop again. For that c…

Hah, 68 Camaro here[1]. I had the clutch linkage fail on me once in Miami Beach and managed to drive it all the way home to South Miami w/o the clutch. My recollection was that I had to push start it and managed to time all the traffic lights home so I never came to a full stop. I can't believe you managed to do that for a month. 1. https://ibb.co/CMW3SdS (I sold it over a decade ago.)

I was broke! That was my only option, so I did what I had to do. I lived in a much smaller city than you, though, so I didn’t have nearly the traffic to contend with.

Dopey young me with the car: https://imgur.com/a/hbRLpO2

Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914

#80

Post by mturmon »

jorts wrote: post #47
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no way that car would pass an emissions test.

In CA "The California Smog Check Program requires vehicles that were manufactured in 1976 or later to participate in the biennial (every two years) smog check program in participating counties." so it would be exempt based on the year that it was manufactured.

Yes. And the consequences of the pre-1976 smog exemption are all too clear to anyone driving behind an older car on the freeway.

There's no snow where I live, so these beautiful old heaps can stay on the road far longer than is healthy.

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