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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

#321

Post by mikepavone »

Melatonic wrote: post #268
tricky wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello to a fellow member of the "my first car was a Porsche" club. Mine was a $400 924 that broke at least once a week. Good times.

I had an early 944 - it basically had all of the negatives of the 924 and only a few positives :-D

I don't know about that. More powerful engine, 4 wheel disc brakes (rather than 2 disc, 2 drum setup on a base 924) and the switch to electronic fuel injection instead of K-Jetronic all seem like decent upgrades to me. I had an '83 944 as my daily driver for a couple of years and for a poorly maintained 25 year old sports car it wasn't so bad.

The combination of an interference engine and a super-long manually tensioned timing belt was rather unfortunate though. I never had an issue with my belt, but adjusting the tension was very stressful. Especially since I was too cheap to buy the proper expensive tool and was using one of the crappy "cricket" ones.

Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914

#322

Post by zitterbewegung »

EastSmith wrote: post #147
Eric_WVGG wrote: post #76

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).

Yea electric conversion is a thing and according to Rich rebuilds they are making better kits instead of wiring everything manually.

But like all car projects it’s a money pit. Expect to spend $50k in parts and labor. And it may or may not be street legal for that price.

Driving the vehicle in places where you don’t have cell service or where it can be cold would be a bad idea if the conversion breaks down. Or just get a satellite phone and AAA.

Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914

#323

Post by probably_wrong »

Havoc wrote: post #319

Fine writing. Frankly I'm more intrigued by the fact that this seems to have gotten an easy #1 spot on hn. Writing about sketchy clutches on old cars does not generally attract wide hn acclaim. I'd love to hear opinions as to what made the difference...clearly something here is different.

I think it's a combination of factors: it is technical, it is funny, it is well written, it resonates with anyone who had to deal with "quirky" hardware, car or not (a.k.a. "that PC that only boots if you press and hold CapsLock"), plus the fact that the weekend is almost here.

Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914

#324

Post by Melatonic »

mikepavone wrote: post #321
Melatonic wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had an early 944 - it basically had all of the negatives of the 924 and only a few positives :-D

I don't know about that. More powerful engine, 4 wheel disc brakes (rather than 2 disc, 2 drum setup on a base 924) and the switch to electronic fuel injection instead of K-Jetronic all seem like decent upgrades to me. I had an '83 944 as my daily driver for a couple of years and for a poorly maintained 25 year old sports car it wasn't so bad. The combination of an interference engine and a super-long manually tensio…

968 FTW

I still want to buy a later model 90s one, throw an LS7 in there, and overhaul the interior. Would be an amazing vehicle.

Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914

#325

Post by fragmede »

bombcar wrote: post #90
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

Exactly, the more the device can assume the operator is trained the simpler it is - so truck transmissions are closer to the "Platonic Transmission Form" if you will than fancy car transmissions. The Deuce doesn't even have synchronizers, you're expected to double clutch and handle that part yourself.

They make automatic semi trucks these days, so depending on your POV, that's either closer or futher from the platonic ideal for transmission layout.

Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914

#326

Post by denimboy »

abruzzi wrote: post #320

914s had an engine and transmission from the VW Bus. Since the VW Bus had a rear engine setup the shift rod was straight into the very front of the transaxle. IIRC, when they reversed the transmission to put the engine in front of the transmission, the shift input eas now in the very rear so the shift rod started in the middle/front of the car, had to transit back, around the engine and transaxle assembly then comple…

914 had a type 4 engine which it shared with the type 2 VW bus. However the transmission was completely different from the bus. The 914 had 5 speeds and the bus only had 4.

A lot of the article is about "you'll never find 2nd" which is in large part to the weird shifting pattern. Reverse is where first usually is, first is where second usually is and the rest are in a kind of off by one pattern from there. This was actually considered a feature since supposedly it allows the driver to make the shift from first to second faster.

The vagueness of the stick is very true and something every 914 owner can relate to. Those first couple weeks you spend some time hunting for the right slot. I went from first to fifth many times before a muscle memory was developed and I didn't have to think about it.

Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914

#327

Post by elihu »

EastSmith wrote: post #147
Eric_WVGG wrote: post #76

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).

It's still a thing. It's a lot of work though and it pretty much never makes financial sense versus just buying a used Leaf or something. But it's one way to get a car that's exactly what you want.

I'm currently working on converting a Mazda RX-8.

Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914

#328

Post by remram »

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…

I feel like there's an analogue to the CAP theorem for code, where you can have an un-exploitable application if you don't need it to keep running in the presence of unusual requests.

Secure, Available, Unattended, choose any 2? You can have a secure&available app but you need to keep patching it. You can have an available&unattended app but it won't be secure. Or you can have a secure&unattended app, it will just need to crash a lot.

Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914

#329

Post by city41 »

protomyth wrote: post #107
ehnto wrote: post #37

Speaking of security through obscurity, my car is a 96 Nissan and it's had a few attempts on it. It's easy enough to steal, but it's getting hard enough for me to find replacement parts that I'd be surprised if thieves have everything, so I take some bits of the car with me if it's sitting for a while. I have a quick release wheel to deter the average opportunist from breaking my glass and ignition barrel, and with s…

It's not about being perfect when it comes to car security, it's about being too much of a pain in the ass, so they'll give up and move on. Yeah, my Dad had a Ford F-100 that had a gear shift that would come out. He drove it to work and took the gear shift inside and left it in his locker. Not the best location (a town in Oregon in the 70's), but he never had any trouble with someone stealing his ride out of the park…

Nowadays it seems just having a manual transmission is enough to deter most thieves. I once took my car to get the oil changed and I had to drive it into and out of the bay as no employee knew how.

Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914

#330

Post by jimnotgym »

EastSmith wrote: post #147
Eric_WVGG wrote: post #76

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).

It definitely is a thing for classic cars. These people even have a discovery channel show about them. They look awesome, and are within easy electric range of my house!

https://www.electricclassiccars.co.uk

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