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President’s Remarks January 10, is the date for our Porsche Holiday Party this year. A good dinner with friends, Porsche door prizes and some well deserved Awards will be the highlight of the evening. Welcome to Stuttgart Motorwerks Inc. as our clubs newest advertiser and supporter. They are "The Import Repair Specialists". You will find them at 251A Classic Car Court SW in Cedar Rapids. Owner Gary Zaugg runs a well equipped shop and is already familiar to several of our members. You can call Gary at 319-362-6516 Are you glad the elections are finally over? Well, not so fast. We must select officers for next year. On the ballot you will see those who have been nominated and agree to serve. Please feel free to cast a write-in vote for your own candidate. The emailed questionnaire was a great success. With 26% of the members participating we received very valuable information for planning our activities next year, including a few surprises! Look forward to an interesting year of expanded social events, scenic travel, autocrosses, drivers schools, tech sessions and travel to Porsche events in adjoining states. Opportunities abound! The club will be appointing
additional officers as Autocross Instructors, Safety Officers, Club Directors,
and perhaps an Evil Rallymeister! You may have already indicated your desire
to participate in response to the questionnaire. If not, please contact me
personally about the things you would like to do or about activities you feel
the club would enjoy. John Dyson
After Holiday Party in January!! You will have plenty of opportunity to win fabulous door prizes and there will be an awards presentation. But, we all know that the best part of any Porsche party is the chance to socialize with our fellow Porsche enthusiasts! The party cost is $20.00 per person. You may make your party reservations by contacting Tanya Dideriksen. Please send payment, meal choice, and the names of those attending to Tanya at 2335 Mulberry St., Unit 6, Coralville, IA 52241 no later than January 3, 2003. Or contact her at 319-338-8403 with any questions.
CIA Interest*Questionnaire Summary 23 of approximately 98 members responded to this email
Uncoupled Driving back from the 2002 Porsche Parade in Boise "we" had a flat tire. Usually, no big deal, but this time it was an interesting experience to say the least. We left Boise on Saturday afternoon shortly after completing another futile effort at the Bosch Tech Quiz. (I never seem to remember the firing order of the engine or the MSRP of a 928 in 1979…). The weather was good as we left Idaho and the mountain scenery was beautiful. I was driving our Porsche, while my wife drove the support vehicle (Suburban - so who says life is fair) with our daughters (7 and 3 year old daughters) and 17-year-old nephew, Brian. Those of you with Porsches and families will recognize the occasional need to have something else to travel in as a family. We had an uneventful drive to our overnight destination in Cheyenne, Wyoming. We left late Sunday morning after breakfast and a fuel stop. I gave Brian the wheel so he could get some open road experience in this most powerful of cars. What could be safer than the open road of western Nebraska to experience the power and handling of a high performance automobile? We drove caravan-style with Mary leading the way. Brian and I had a cooler to keep our water and soda ice-cold and some cds to listen to when the conversation dragged. The conversation was stimulating, enjoyable and never stopped as we talked about driving performance cars, vehicle handling, engines, football, college and ethics (what a combination!). Suddenly, I heard a loud “thump” from the left rear of the car. I jumped and my initial reaction was “what did you drive over?” With a horrified look on his face, he said excitedly “nothing, I didn’t hit anything!” I’m sure he thought he did some horrendous and un-repairable damage to the car. Amazingly enough to me as passenger, the car felt about the same as before the noise as I was trying to quickly assess the situation and form a plan of action. The car was not pulling to either side nor did I notice a change in ride character. Brian indicated he was not having any difficulty with controlling the car. All the gauges were within their normal operating position and there were no warning lights coming on in the dash. It still didn’t seem right to me. Thumps don’t just occur without a reason. I grabbed the walkie-talkie radios we used to communicate between vehicles and told Mary I thought we had lost a tire, but everything else was okay. We were going to pull off the road onto the shoulder when it was safe, to assess the situation. What I found utterly amazed me - the left rear tire was completely bald and worn through the steel belts running through the middle of the tread. The rest of the tire was intact and we had run perhaps a half-mile (from the noise) on the sidewalls but had not damaged the rims. The three remaining tires looked about the same as when we had left Boise the day before. How do I know that? Well, let me back up a little and tell you that I had checked over the car on Friday afternoon in preparation for our journey home. I did the “penny” check on the tires at the wear bars and there was about 3-4/32nds of tread depth on the back tires and about 6-7/32nds of tread depth on the front tires. Both sides were approximately equal. I did make the mental note that we should replace the rear tires after we got back or this fall if there were not other autocross competitions. Now back to the situation at hand. Here was a tire in front of me with no obvious indication of any tread having ever been on the face of the tire and there were prickly steel belts sticking out from the middle. Also to my surprise, the side walls were so stiff that we hadn’t even gotten close to driving on and damaging the rims between going flat and pulling off the road to stop. The next order of business was to replace the flat tire with the temporary spare. As we came to a stop on the side of the road, I guided Brian to get the right half of the car on the gravel adjacent to the tall weeds. With traffic including double-trailer semis moving at 80+mph, I didn’t want my butt sticking out any further into the road than absolutely necessary. I can just imagine what the passersby were thinking: “Betcha that turbo is helping him now.” So, we jack the car up, replace the flat tire with the space saver spare and plug the inflator into the power outlet. Have you ever seen the space-saver spare inflate? What a trip to watch! (Okay, okay, I realize it was a small part that amazed me.) As the air pressure builds up inside the tire, the tire unfolds from itself to a full size balloon style tire. Although we didn’t try too hard, we couldn’t fit the flat tire into the Porsche so we put it into the Suburban and headed off to Kearney, Nebraska in search of an 18” performance tire. Kearney was about 10 miles east of where we stopped. It was now about 15 minutes to five on Sunday afternoon. My wife had called AAA for advice, but they were unable to give her a location that would carry a replacement tire. Driving at about 50 miles per hour on the interstate with everyone else going 80+mph was unnerving to say the least. By the way, Brian asked if I would drive as he could use a break. We stopped at the first tire shop we saw, but, of course, they were closed. So, we walked next door to a gas station to seek a phone book. We called several stores but all were closed with the exception of Wal-Mart, which didn’t have anything larger than a 16” tire in stock. Mary noticed an ad in the yellow pages with a phone number for someone willing to do on-site, fieldwork for agricultural equipment. I was skeptical but she was persistent and called only to be told, “We could help, if it was a Porsche tractor.” Let’s assess the situation: we had a flat tire with only the temporary spare now on the car; we could not locate any 18” tires, let alone a reasonable replacement; it was now about 5:45PM on Sunday and we had about 400 miles to get home. The irony of this was we have a tire at home that would fit. A couple of years ago we had a flat front tire on a V-car. (I don’t think it is permissible to mention the name of that other car in this publication, is it?) We were able to buy a new tire to get home, but since it didn’t match the other three, we got a true replacement once we got home and now have this “orphan” tire. Back to our story: So, what did we do? We did what any family unit traveling with two small children and a teenager would do: we went to a restaurant to eat because they were all hungry. We even asked our waiter if he knew of a tire store that was open. He didn’t, but once he knew we were car enthusiasts he told us where he has his tire work done (they were closed, too) and then went on to extol the benefits of driving a Cadillac Catera. After careful deliberation, we decided to stay overnight and either get a tire the next morning or rent a U-haul car trailer to tow the Porsche home. Mary and the kids went for a swim in the hotel’s pool while Brian and I continued our discussions from this afternoon. The next morning I got up and went in search of a tire. The first place I stopped at told me they didn’t have anything like what I needed in stock, but they could order a tire and they’d have it in 2-3 days. As I continued to talk to the guy helping me, it turned out that even if they had a tire they couldn’t mount it as their tire mounting machine was only able to fit 17” rims and smaller. From there I went to a U-haul dealer to see about renting a trailer. They didn’t have one at their agency but were sure they could get one by late afternoon or tomorrow to get us back on the road home. The next tire place I stopped at did have a mounting machine that could handle rims and tires up to 19”. (I was told the owner had recently purchased a new Corvette and wanted to make sure they could change the tires when needed.) But again, no tire in stock and ordering one could take up to a week to arrive. He also suggested driving the 150 or so miles to Omaha on the temporary spare where he was sure I’d have no trouble locating or mounting a matching tire. Okay, so oh-for-three so far. Just down the street I noticed a combination storage place and U-haul dealer. As you might guess, at this point I was not feeling too good about getting home today. But, I thought with little to lose, I’d see what they have available. The receptionist said she’d get the owner/manager as he does all of the U-haul work. “What kind of car are you going to trailer?’ he asked “Porsche” said I. “What kind of vehicle are you going to tow it with?” he asked “Suburban” “Has it got a chassis mounted class III hitch?” “Yes, but I’ll need a ball mount.” “Where are you going?” “Iowa City” “I just came through there about two weeks ago, returning from Kenosha, Wisconsin. I belong to the AMC Club and we had our annual meeting and racing there this year.” I thought to myself, this was a person who understood breakdowns! It is my impression that in the 1960s and 70s that AMC must have used the British automobile industry as a benchmark for reliability. He brightened my day. “I got the right sized trailer out in back and we can hook it up to your truck now, if you want.” He quoted me the price and said he’d hold it for me. I told him I wanted to get the car, packed up and checked out of the hotel before we attached the trailer. I returned with my family and the Porsche. We got the trailer attached to the Suburban so the lights worked correctly and then the Porsche safely and securely mounted to the trailer. Now all we had to do was to get home. My trailering experience was limited to once with a very small unit hauling old wood about 15 miles. This, however, was more than anyone else in the group, so I got to drive. As it is probably obvious by my preferred choice in cars, I like small, maneuverable and lots of horsepower. Our Suburban has acceptable acceleration and marginal brakes when empty. Now, I was behind the wheel of a fully loaded Suburban with an additional twenty feet of trailer and an extra 5000 pounds! We pulled out of the U-haul lot like a train leaves the station. We got to Interstate 80 and eventually made it up to cruising speed and just allowed very long distances to brake and stop. The rest of the trip was uneventful except for the occasional semi-trailer rig passing us at 75+ mph. I had to wonder every now and then when I felt the “wind and wash” effects of the rig, “Who was driving the Suburban.” It didn’t feel like I was. We got the car off the trailer and to some service we trusted in town. The trailer went back to U-haul. We put a new set of rear tires on the Porsche and after discussing the events with some friends had the alignment checked on the car. It turns out the “toe-in” adjustment for the left rear was out of specification by several degrees. This probably explains the extreme tire wear on that side, but nowhere else. Each time the tire made a complete circle we shaved a minute amount of tread off and wore the tire out prematurely. It was as if we were using sandpaper on the tread surface. After over 1000 miles it wore away the tread. I don’t remember any particular event associated with damage to the tire or wheel that would affect the alignment. I didn’t hit any curbs or even go off the road on the side, but we did participate in the Parade Autocross, a couple of days before we left Boise. I guess that qualifies for “spirited driving” but, we’ll save that story for another time…
Get Hooked Up! If you have e-mail and are not getting notices of Porsche Club events, please update your e-mail address by contacting: john-dyson@uiowa or jmdyson@mchsi.com or, phone 319-337-5367 or 319-335-9843. If you have a FAX number we can send information by that method. There are times that we might need to contact you about an upcoming event that we don’t have time to send a mailing. Please consider getting this information to us.
The Club’s Website In addition to being newsletter editor, I also keep up the Central Iowa Region’s website. If you wish to look at the site, go to, http://www.pca.org/cia/ If you have any ideas for the site or contributions please let me know at jasonw@ninesixtyeight.com. Please visit our website, http://www.pca.org/cia/ Check out the pictures of past events, marketplace items, and our upcoming events calendar and information.
For Sale: 1971 914-6 . Red/blk. Orginal factory six, fresh updated engine to 2.4S specs by Bruch Motorwerke. Side shifer, sport exhaust. No rust, very clean- fast and fun and loud! 15" Fuchs. 84K miles. $18000. Stu Lehr, 515 208-1121, photon4@aol.com
1973 914
Color: bright orange
1982 911SC
Targa - Champagne w/ brown leather interior. Excellent condition inside and
out with only 78,000 miles. This car has never been driven in the winter to my
knowledge and hardly sees any rain. I have had all recent maintenance performed
by Drew Gangle at Bruch Motorwerke. Call or send an e-mail for more info.
Asking $17,000.
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