Drive Your Porsche

You may not get this in time but if you do, Sunday, September 19th is Drive Your 356 Day! This is an international event celebrating Ferry Porsches’ birthday. Barb and I will probably drive the ’63 sunroof Coupe which we are getting ready for the drive to Sedona, AZ for the West Coat Holiday (Sept. 30-Oct 3) or we may drive the ’57 Carrera Coupe which is now running and running strong. the sound of a 356 Carrera is like no other sports car. Or we could take out the Twin Grille Roadster (but Barb would have to be the driver!). There is still the ’58 Coupe Race Car to pick from, but probably not the best choice for Sunday driving in town. It is great to have all our 356’s running and tough to choose which to drive; it has been a long time since all work!

Years ago, Road and Track reprinted an article on flashing your high beams. As I remember it, 356 owners only initiate a flash at other 356 drivers. All other Porsches and Sports Cars must initiate the flash to the 356. While this custom has disappeared and you only get an occasional wave, I still follow the R & T protocol. However, I do flash at neat Hot Rods and pretty girls.

Porsche and Pastry

If you missed Ferry’s birthday or not, plan to drive your 356 or other to the 356RESTORE for Porsches and Pastries on Saturday, October 23rd. Our daughter-in-law, Jennifer, who was an excecutive Pastry Chef at Minneapolis Hilton wants to try out some pastry recipes here in the high altitude. We will start at 10:00 AM and there will be plenty of good pastries and maybe a few rides in the Carrera. But I probably won’t let Jennifer drive the Carrera as she is already faster than I am in the Race Car.

Progress

Jim H picked up his ’64 Coupe after we did some paint repair. This was the 50th 356 Porsche we had restored in the last seven years. We took some pictures with the number 50 and a wreath on the hood (like the factory 500th 356 picture) but it was too dark for this newsletter. However, the picture hangs on our wall. Actually, we finished Jim’s 356 last year and he did the final assembly; by now we are on 54.

We’ve got Cal’s Speedster 99% done, installed my Speedster engine and should fire it up this week. I’ll have to borrow a muffler from another 356. Cal is running late on his engine but will be ready by next Spring.

As I indicated, we got the carb problems solved on the Carrera (Thanks Les Long!) and it runs strong. We may enter this in the historic race next year.

The New Jersey Speedster has be loosely assembled to determine the condition of parts and what parts are needed. Les Long is doing the engine and we have an appointment at Autoweave in mid October. We should wrap up the unusual project by the year end.

My Speedster should be back from the paint shop this week and then the reassembly fun starts. (It really is fun, my favorite part of restoration). We disassembled the Vail ’64 Coupe and took it to Blast Tech. It looks like moderate metal work wo we should finish this on by year end also. This is my last customer commitment dso next year will be primarily shop cars.

We also finished and returned Fireball Knowalski’s Race Car. Besides the dramatic fire damage, the door was also bent in the middle. Fireball said they couldn’t get magnetic race numbers to stick on the door and suspected heavy bondo. As a result, I dercided to replace the door with one of my good spares. We compared the weight of the doors and his weighed seven pounds more than the replacement! Glad we didn’t have his door blasted, it would have taken hours to get the bondo off. Plus the door is probably unrepairable. Normally