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Porsche Club of America
The Northeast Region

By Tom Tate
NOR'EASTER Online - June 2002

Finally, the weather is nice enough to take the 356 out for weekend errands. Not to the dump (it wouldn't carry enough anyway), but to the hardware store, the grocery store, and this last weekend to the inspection station for a Mass. sticker. It's fun to take the Speedster in because that car is always older that the fellow doing the inspecting.

Twenty-five years ago I used to get questions as to the cars origin, was it a Karmann Ghia or some sort of VW? Or was it a replica? Then about ' 82 it was " how fast will it go?" or "how much horsepower?” When the collector car market peaked in '87 the only question asked was " what's it worth? "

Now days the questions seem to be of a more personal nature. People want to know how long I've had the car and what its history has been. The kid (he was probably 35) at the inspection station wanted to take a look at the engine and needed an explanation on what a horizontally opposed engine should look like. He was not to be deterred from his duties and insisted on a full safety check.

With a 44-year-old car there is always a little explanation that goes along with any inspection. The first item on every list is lights and so it's time to start the story about how electricity started and why the good doctor used 6 volts instead of 12 volts. I usually explain that the early horseless carriages had lanterns that were powered by candles and this is a step up from that level, just not a very big step. If it lights up the chart on the back wall at all I'm usually home free. Turn signals are another area that can go either way, for me or against me. The same 6 volts that light the candles up front are expected to heat up a bimetallic strip inside a 44 year old blinker canister to interrupt current flow to the far ends of the car causing the 12 watt bulbs to blink. Think about that for a moment. Yes, I said 12-watt bulbs. Think about the light that you are currently using to read this article in the NOR’EASTER. In the normal home the average room in lit by 300-400 watts of electrical energy. We're talking 12 watts here. It takes about 3 seconds to heat up the circuit breaker to operating temperature and then it interrupts the circuit every 3 seconds. So from the time that I turn on the blinker to the end of the first blink it's 6 seconds before the candle goes out and it starts to look like a signal of some sort. Now you know why I don't use the blinkers much. I figure that with the 20 year old Bursh system, which is practically an open exhaust, they'll hear me long before they see me and other drivers will be paying attention, blinker or not. I even have a old biker sticker on another car with loud exhaust that says " loud pipes save lives". But back to the inspection bay and the light test.

I guess that most cars are tested without the engine running since most modern day electrical systems have enough juice to pull that off. Anyone with a 356 knows not to try anything electrical without the engine running so as to get the benefit of the current flow from the generator. Yes, I said generator not alternator since these cars were built just after George Washington hung up his kite. The inspector said that I could turn off the engine (he let me pull it inside) until he saw what the lights looked like without the extra support the generator provided. With the engine drowning out the country music he stood at the front and waited patiently for the turn signals to do their slow motion dance. Slow but steady passed the test until he went around back to check the rear lights. Brake lights were fine, left signal fine, but right signal not in attendance. And the right front had died in the time that it took him to walk to the back of the car. so there was nothing on the right side that had been working only minutes before. Living with this car for 26 years has given me some sense of what it needs and when, so I went over to the right front turn signal, wiggled the wire going into the back of the housing inside the fender and the blinker was back in action. Passed the light test.

There have been years that I was so sure that the blinkers wouldn't work that I just told the inspector that not all cars in the '50's had turn signals. That used to work pretty well. Now days they want to see something blinking.

The only other tough test area for any Speedster are the wipers. Anyone who has ever looked carefully at the wipers has to wonder why they even bothered. The blades themselves are only 5 inches long and they cover a windshield that's only 6 inches high. Not a bad ratio until you realize that the car is 5 feet wide and the windshield goes from one side of the car to the other. No way those pretend blades (they look like real ones) are gonna cover the whole area.

Now days all the inspectors are looking for are movement, not coverage or effectiveness. The problem is twofold. Remember the 6-volt system we discussed previously? Well the wipers are driven by a 6-volt electric motor. The only thing weaker that a 6-volt light is a 6-volt motor. This thing doesn't have the torque to peel the skin off a bowl of chocolate pudding. Of course everyone knows that you shouldn't run wipers over a dry windshield, I'm not sure that the system could overcome the drag. The other problem is the linkage behind the dash. I'm sure that the design engineers at Porsche got great grades in college but the combination of rods, levers, ball joints, and sockets used to create the monkey motion needed could have sent a man to the moon (if they had thought of that in the '50's).

Now think about a little wear on each of those parts and you can understand why the area covered is about the same size as the slice of rhubarb pie they made you eat at your Grandmother's at Thanksgiving. Small. The answer for this test is to explain that the wipers have never been used in the rain (they haven't) and that I didn't want to risk scratching the windshield. So I just pull them up off the windshield (all German cars have this feature, it makes cleaning the glass easier) and turn on the one speed switch. They move quickly (well sorta) and seem to cover the whole windshield (how can you tell?). Passed.

New sticker goes on where I took the old off, before I left home. Why did I take it off at home you ask? Simple. I never seem to be able to get the car inspected before the last sticker expires. So I figure that I'm better to have no sticker that an expired sticker. An expired sticker is a ticket, while no sticker is a story waiting to be told. I haven't had to tell that story yet. There is one other reason that I remove the old sticker. Have you ever seen what they use to remove the old stickers with? It looks like a cross between a police baton and an industrial paint scraper. They could scrape the sticker off the windshield of an eighteen wheeler with both feet on the ground and the blade on the end is as wide as a squeegee used by a window washer. No thanks, I'll do it myself.

A new sticker and all is right with the world. Down the road I go with what seems like a little more authority in the exhaust note and that shiny new sticker on the windshield. I should have known the car would pass. You just have to have faith in a 44-year-old car. Keep the faith.

Porsche Club of America The Northeast Region

Porsche Club of America
The Northeast Region