Living with a Porsche 944

Today my 944 is having a good going over by the chaps at Project9. With everything I have planned, I need to know exactly what needs doing that I'm not aware of. I started this journey with this 944 fixing bits & replacing parts that were listed by JM Garage and the check they gave the car more than 18 months ago. In that time I've thoroughly enjoyed my little often over-looked gem of a Porsche. There are not many good & excellent 944s around these days, and so the plan is to refresh and restore this one so that it will continue to add miles & smiles to the 204,000 already under it's wheels. Over the course of the summer (the garage is warmer to work in) and coming winter this little Porsche of mine is going to be rejuvenated - inspired in part by what I've seen some others do to their 944s but largely due to the affection I have for this car. I don't want a 911 and I don't want to follow the sheep into a turbo. The Hoff is going to be slowly roasted...

It's been an interesting few days with the 944. New sounds, or should I say noises; new insights; and new challenges are plentiful. With the family mile muncher off the road the Porsche has been in daily duties of late acting as a family car. Which is less than ideal with no rear seat belts. My younger children find it quite comfortable back there actually. Friday past I headed down to Rye to meet a friend & client at Sumo Power. One of the top tuning workshops in the UK. Sumo Power also field a pair of Nissan GTRs in the FIA GT1 world championship and race prep a selection of Rally & Drifting cars too. The race cars are a sight to behold and the facilities quite exceptional. A great place then to hold a rolling road session on a project car. Besides the race car SP had a veritable smorgasbord of retro and performance cars to drool over. Such as a twin turbo'd Lamborghini with dry-ice cooled charge cooler: A convertible Aston Martin: A lovely Dod...

With such incredible weather this weekend it was great to stretch the legs of my 944 with two 90 mile journeys. In between the trips I topped up the Castrol oil for the first time since the big oil service last year. The engine took two litres of the good stuff. So that was well timed too.

That's right today 25 years ago a very fortunate gentleman picked up my lovely 944 from AFN in London. I still have the original order and invoice in my history file too.

A dry day in the middle of winter can only mean one thing. A last blast in the 944. Here's to 2011.

I like simple cost effective solutions to common problems. Such as the sunroof leak common to these old Porsches. I had my sunroof drains cleared last year when I bought the 944 and for the most part only experienced water ingress through the sunroof in very heavy showers - just like the ones we had the past week. As my '44 leads a privileged life in a warm, cozy garage this is not something I worry to much about. As a precaution I had begun to investigate replacement sunroof seals, and if you've ever done that you may agree that the Porsche items are over-priced IMO so I was looking into alternatives, particularly from VW. I compared a number of different profiles to that on my 944 and concluded that while the inner seal was easy to obtain for very little money per meter, the profile of the outer seal had no alternative that I could easily source. While I prodded around the sunroof opening I began to wonder just how the water was making it's way in, over the lip and ...

When your 944 is going on 25 the MOT feels a little like a lottery. However I'm really pleased that "The Hoff", as my 944 has become to be known as, passed without one advisory! My friendly tester proved once again that having the test done at a garage known personally by you has it's benefits: he noticed that the front drivers side spring had become poorly seated on the strut and promptly corrected it FOC. Had he not it would have been a fail for sure. My '44 is going wonderfully and I'm enjoying it immensely.