|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Activities
Nor'easter News
Car Care
Membership
Other Cool Stuff
Sponsors & Advertisers
|
Porsche
Club of America
Out
In The Passing Lane
|
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||
 On
the road and in the air best describes my last month. During that time
I flew twice to the west coast, once to Seattle and once to Los Angeles,
and made driving trips to Allentown, PA, and Mont-Tremblant and Bowmanville,
Canada. That totaled nearly 75 hours of travel time and approximately 9000
miles covered.
I wish that I could say the time passed quickly, but that’s impossible these days, especially if you’re driving or flying. You have to arrive early at airports to clear security, and the wait at border crossings stretches on much longer than it once did. The inevitable traffic jam is guaranteed to lengthen a driving trip and test your patience. Our Allentown trip stretched on in both directions due to construction delays in Bridgeport and Stanford, CT, and worsened significantly when we sat in a 17 mile long jam up on I-78 in New Jersey only to clear the jam and meet up with the same vehicles a couple of miles later at the toll booths in Pennsylvania. Our Tremblant trip was largely devoid of traffic tie-ups, except for the crazy drivers in Montreal, but our return trip required a nearly 25 minute pause at US customs. My trip to Seattle featured a one-hour weather delayed departure and forty-five minute wait for luggage to arrive. Then I wandered around a bit looking for my rental car due to an absence of good signage in the newly opened Seattle air terminal used by American Airlines. The lowlight of that trip was a young child screaming nearly the entire 5-hour flight just a couple of rows behind me (her parents somehow incapable of exercising any control over the situation). I pushed in a clutch pedal maybe 50,000 times (slight exaggeration!), stepped on the brakes even more times, cursed silently a number of times about the crazy drivers around me, read several books to fill the time on my flights, ate marginal airline food (despite being in first class on both trips), and endured numerous delays that tested my limited patience. Plus I slept on beds that left me with backaches, struggled to find hotel bathrooms in the dark, and waited for slow to arrive elevators. Who says traveling is fun? We did enjoy our trip to Tremblant, the track’s great fun to drive and we didn’t have any noise restriction issues with which to deal. The village was hopping with large crowds on hand to enjoy the annual jazz festival. On my trip to Seattle I read “The Gold-Plated Porsche”, a newly released book authored by Porsche Club member Stephan Wilkinson. He spent two and a half years restoring an ’83 911 SC in an old barn behind his New York home, doing most all of the work himself. He spent a lot of money, made numerous mistakes along the way, and thoroughly enjoyed himself. I suspect many of you have seen his car at a Watkins Glen DE event, not aware of what went into creating this highly tuned track car. In fact he mentions that a Jim Lewis (I suspect he’s referring to NER’s Jim Lewis) was his first DE instructor at the track. I can highly recommend the book, it is informative, entertaining, insightful, and captures the fun we all share in our ownership of a Porsche. After reading the book you’ll want to sign up for a DE event, or maybe even decide to search out a project car! While in Seattle I searched out a bookstore to replenish my reading material, and purchased a copy of a British car magazine devoted to Porsche, “GT Purely Porsche.” I wish I could spend a summer in Great Britain with my track car. In one side bar in the magazine is a promo for a track day at Magny Cours, site of this year’s French F1 Grand Prix event. The cost is 245 British pounds (about $445) plus another 50 pounds for each additional driver. Elsewhere is a listing of track events throughout Europe. On that list are events at Spa, Nurburgring, Goodwood, Brands Hatch, Silverstone, Donington Park, Oulton Park, Magny Cours, Hungaroring and Jerez. Those lucky Europeans get to play on fabulous F1 tracks, and numerous tracks with great racing histories. Another article details three friends trip to the Nurburgring in their identical 996 GT3 RS’s (awesome Porsche’s not available in the US). I’d love to drive Spa or the Nurburgring in my Cup Car! Elsewhere in the publication is an interesting article detailing brake fade problems that are cropping up in Porsche’s equipped with the PCCB ceramic brake technology, when those cars are used in track events. I’d heard of failures, but hadn’t seen anything in writing detailing the possible reasons for the failures of these $9000 brake systems. The article summarizes several different theories as to the failures, concluding that overheating and stone chip damage are the most likely culprits. A number of owners (principally GT2 owners) are removing the ceramic systems and replacing them with traditional steel items, as replacing failed ceramic systems is prohibitively expensive. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Copyright
1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 PCA/NER
Year 2000 Web Site Design by www.sitesofboston.com |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
