Live data from Hacker News

A few things to know before stealing my 914

hagerty.com

161–170 of 428 posts

Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914

#161
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 first car was also a 914 that the father of a friend of mine had sitting in his garage. The transmission was shot (no first gear) and the suspension had given out but I bought it anyway for $800 and put about $2000 into fixing it.

It was a really fun car to drive although it also shared many of the same quirks as mentioned in this story.

Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914

#162
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on the state. Most of the ones that do exist are concerned with things like “do you have seat belts? are there rear view mirrors? do the turn signals work? is the check engine light on?” Classic/antique vehicles are also often exempt.

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

Unless the Official Emissions Test rules state that the tech performing the test has to start it, and that it can't be failed unless the emissions are too high when it's running...

Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Is the electric conversion still a thing? I want an eclectic car with no monitors, no software updates, no surveillance (none of the new electric car offers that - they are calling home for updates and god knows why way too often, and they have bigger monitors than my 14" work laptop).

This x 100. My next car will probably have to be electric but I need it to be bare bones, serviceable and FOSS. DIY might be the only option

Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most automatic transmissions are horrible because most cars are horrible. Good cars have good transmissions, regardless of transmission style. The ZF8 is an excellent transmission that's seen everywhere. PDK does justice to the most performant modern Porsches in a way that manuals struggle to keep up with. Even relatively small volume DCTs like the one in the 4C are pretty great these days.

ZF8 seems to be used by Audi only for cars sold in America? btw. ZF means Zahnradfabrik Friedrichshafen. Which is owned by the Zeppelin Foundation. Which was founded to support the built of Zeppelin Luftschiffe and social purposes. Weird story. And the Zeppelin Foundation was for a long time owner of Cherry. The company behind most mechanical keyboard switches. They should've kept that, growing business area - mechan…

The ZF8 is in plenty of euro Audis as well, but only the big, expensive stuff since it's a longitudinal gearbox. The more common, smaller Audis would be on the MQB transverse platform that can't use the ZF8. And Audi has been using a dual clutch on some of their lower-end MLB cars.

Anything A6/Q7 and up is a ZF8 if it's an automatic.

Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Is the electric conversion still a thing? I want an eclectic car with no monitors, no software updates, no surveillance (none of the new electric car offers that - they are calling home for updates and god knows why way too often, and they have bigger monitors than my 14" work laptop).

>>none of the new electric car offers that

Eh? I literally got a brand new electric VW e-Up last week, it's exactly that. It even still has analog dials, and VW provides a mount for your phone instead of an "infotainment" system. The height of sophistication is DAB radio and heated front window and seats.

I highly recommend it, it's a hoot - and with 150 miles range and rapid charging capability it's more than enough for all my needs.

That's the dashboard in it, it's as "bare minimum" as it gets: https://media.drivingelectric.com/image/private/s--7PGbPUr6-...

Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914

#167

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…

At a previous job, I had to do a penetration test on a platform, and I had the same thing. Any SQL errors would just crash the back end entirely and I'd have to wait for them to bring it back up manually, which could take a long time since I was on the US West coast and they were based in the UK.

Among all the other security issues they had (easily gained a root shell via template injection, multiple XSS issues, CSRF, basically everything in the OWASP Top 10), to call their security posture Swiss cheese would be an understatement.

A couple months after my test, the entire project was scrapped.

Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914

#168
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…

I have an electric converted 914 if you want to pick it up. It’s even in need of a few battery packs so it won’t all be done before you get your hands on it.

Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the electric conversion still a thing? I want an eclectic car with no monitors, no software updates, no surveillance (none of the new electric car offers that - they are calling home for updates and god knows why way too often, and they have bigger monitors than my 14" work laptop).

Ford will sell you an electric crate engine for $4k [1]. At that point, I think it's up to you to supply the other parts of the system. I assume that at this point there are enough wrecks of Model S/X/3/Y that you should be able to pick up electric motors from them at junkyards. The thing I really worry about with electric swaps is battery. You could have a Note 7 situation on your hands _real easy_ if you're not car…

"Note 7 situation"—I don't understand this reference, can you explain?

Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Is the electric conversion still a thing? I want an eclectic car with no monitors, no software updates, no surveillance (none of the new electric car offers that - they are calling home for updates and god knows why way too often, and they have bigger monitors than my 14" work laptop).

Most any vehicle with "telematics" available made in the last ~10 years is calling home with your location and a variety of information like cabin and outdoor air temperature, whether the wipers and headlights are on, etc. The data is sold to third parties, with varying levels of anonymization. This happens regardless of whether you're paying for a subscription to their telematics, whether you have a GPS navigation system optioned, etc.

I know this because a friend worked for a company trying to monetize that data for weather forecasting.

If you want to disable this nonsense, just unplug the cellular antenna and connect it to a dummy load.

Post reply on HN