Is it any wonder that the rich and wondrous covet this mix of heart-pounding decadence and environmental responsibility? Is it also any wonder that the low-slung, futuristic 918 has spawned its share of shocking tales?

Live the high life vicariously through the 10 mind-blowing Porsche 918 true stories below.

via CarBuzz.com

1. Will Trade Private Island for Porsche 918 Spyder

Want your own private island? A couple years ago a guy named Emilio Cirelli offered up his own private island in trade. If you’ve got a Porsche 918 going spare, you can make his dreams (and yours?) come true. The island? It’s in Florida, so no Caribbean daydreams there. It’s listed at just over $1 million in value. Since the Spyder originally retailed for around that price and has been discontinued, Cirelli would most likely wind up on the winning end of that deal. True story.

2. He Stole a Porsche 918 in Broad Daylight. From a Dealership.

A 22-year old man was able to live the dream of driving the Porsche 918 for six hours after he stole it from the showroom floor. The man, Francisco Gonzalez-Velazquez, took off with the machine from a dealership in Salt Lake City, Utah in 2015. He was later caught by the police, but if you’re picturing a dramatic chase like something out of the Fast and Furious films, don’t. In this true story, the guy was driving slowly when the cops pulled him over. He surrendered instantly and the car was still in mint condition.

via CBC News

3. He Wanted Porsche to Pay Him Back Nine Times What His Car Was Worth

Michael Wekerle, a star of the Canadian Shark Tank knockoff show Dragon’s Den, bought a Porsche 918 as the culmination of a lifelong dream. One problem? The car suddenly burst into flames and burned to a beautifully engineered cinder. Claiming the auto was defective, he sued Porsche for $9.4 million. That’s nine times the car’s original purchase price. One little wrinkle in his lawsuit? Witnesses say the 918 fire started when Wekerle filled its tank to overflowing at a gas station. You can’t make this stuff up.

via: CarBuzz.com

4. Porsche 918 Spyder Has Actual Balls

If you owned a hybrid supercar, would you let somebody fill it up with balls? For Canadian car tuning company SR Auto Group, the answer was a big “yes.” They hatched the idea of filling a Porsche 918 Spyder with plastic balls for charity. Strange but true. They let people guess how many balls the car held as a way to increase donations to their local food bank. The prize? Alas, not a free Porsche. Sadly, the winner only got a Liberty Walk Lamborghini Aventador. What a gigantic letdown.

via CarNewsChina.com

5. Oops! Girlfriend Crashes Porsche 918 in China

Here’s a true story about the Porsche 918 with a heartwarming conclusion. A guy let his girlfriend take the million dollar auto for a spin. What a way to score relationship points, right? Well, while the owner was sitting back in the passenger seat and thinking about how awesome she was going to think he was, they hit a little snag. Namely, the girl mistook the throttle for the brake and piled the supercar into a tree. Ouch. The two were on their way back from a shopping trip in the eastern city of Shanghai. After the crash, the car’s owner was reportedly calm. Rather than reading her the riot act, he told the driver it was no big deal, since he was planning to replace it with a Bugatti Veyron anyway. Oh yeah, he’s a multi-millionaire. That helps.

via YouTube.com

6. Thanks for the Test Drive. Now About That Front End…

How would you feel if you took a Porsche 918 for a test drive and crashed it? That’s just what Walter Rohlr (no kidding, that’s his name) did. If you’ve never heard of him, he’s won two World Rally Championship titles and he’s actually part of Porsche’s development team. He’s held that position for 25 years, but the 918 just proved too much for the 68 year old. He lost control of the muscle machine on a test track and slammed it into a wall. As a representative of the company, he was quick to say the crash had nothing whatsoever to do with any defect in the car. Was it driver error then? Let’s not be hasty. According to Rohlr, a flaw in the track itself bears the blame.

via Stuff.co.nz

7. Hold My Beer

There’s nothing like the feeling of turning a crowd of people green with envy as you rev up your new $1 million Porsche 918. A beautiful girl in the front seat, no shirt, a pair of shades, and metal horns round out the experience. Of course when you crash the car a moment later and everyone laughs at you as you turn red with embarrassment, the feeling fades a bit. In a video that has since been pulled from Instagram, the unknown driver revved the engine, popped the clutch, and almost plowed into a crowd of bystanders. Moments later, he smashed into the back end of a parked 4WD vehicle. He probably wasn’t feeling quite as chipper as he slunk away with a crumpled hood and steam hissing from the car’s innards.

8. The Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups of Porsche Driving

There’s nothing quite like that moment when you accidentally back your million dollar Porsche 918 Spyder into someone else’s $90,000 Porsche 911. Unless it’s the moment just after that when the owner of the car that costs 1/10th as much seems more agitated about it than you. Of course, if you can afford a 918, you probably aren’t that worried about putting a dent in the fender, whereas the guy who owns the 911 might have mortgaged his house to pay for it. Luckily there was no damage to either car.

9. A Porsche 918 Got Beat by a Nissan Patrol, Really?

You wouldn’t think a supercar that delivers 944 pound-feet of torque would lose a race to a Nissan SUV. In a 2017 episode of Grand Tour though, that’s exactly what happened. Turns out the Nissan Patrol actually has a good reason for beating the 918 — it had 1900 horsepower under the hood. The soccer-mom vehicle packed an R35 Nissan GT-R VR38 drivetrain and a 4.1 liter engine, put together by T1 Race Development. So it’s not exactly the average drive-the-dogs-to-the-park model.

10. Canada Wants You to Buy a Porsche 918 Spyder

The government of Ontario would like to extend a heartfelt incentive to induce you to buy a Porsche 918. In truth, this is probably one of those, “Whoops, we didn’t see that side effect of our well-intended law coming” moments. The Ontario Government gives car buyers a tax break equal to about 3% of the value of any hybrid auto. The goal? To incentivize environmentally friendly spending habits. They didn’t see this coming though: that means anyone who bought the hybrid Porsche 918 Spyder got a nice $$5,500 credit. They’ve plugged that loophole now, limiting the credit to $3,000 total. In the meantime, five millionaires got a nice bonus with their supercars.

The post 10 Mind Blowing Stories About the Porsche 918 appeared first on FactoryTwoFour.

Although Channing Tatum makes it look easy, stripping is actually hard work. With the panel fitting done on our Porsche backdate, it was time to strip all the paint off the ’88 Carrera and get back to beautiful steel. I knew this would be an annoying and tedious job. I didn’t know just how taxing it would prove to be.

This car was originally delivered from the factory in a beautiful black; then sometime in the 90’s some wahoo decided to ditch the class and go for a cherry bomb red instead. To be clear, this was not guards red or any other Porsche red. This was just some off-the-shelf red. Also of note, several women commented on how the paint was “glittery,” and until then I had never realized that men love glitter too – we just call it metal flake because it sounds more hardcore. It’s still glitter. Any-who, the red had to go. But because I’m being overly anal about this car, I wanted to find a way to retain the galvanization that was applied to the whole shell in the factory.

In 1977, Porsche began galvanized all 911 bodies completely to prevent rust. This was a major innovation for the time, and one that means a 70% of all 911s ever produced are still on road. I wasn’t eager to loose this longevity-boosting protective plating from my project car, so I had to strip off the paint the hard way. Normally, you would just sand or media blast the entire car down to bare metal, but these abrasive techniques would have also scraped off the thin layer of zinc that stops rust from forming on the bare metal. Thus I was stuck with using messy, time consuming, and noxious paint stripper.

All the available strippers I tried were seriously nasty. They reek of ammonia and eat through work gloves like they are made of chimichangas. To work with this stuff requires a couple layers of gloves, including fabric on the outer layer, and breathing protection. Without the latter, you’ll find yourself with a case of sniffles for hours and without gloves you’ll quickly realize how aggressive this chemical concoction is.  It immediately starts burning when it touches your skin, and should you choose to ignore that obvious alarm bell for several minutes you’ll find that your skin will bubble up just like the paint on the body is, turn hard like a callous, and eventually burst hours later. It then hurts for days – ask me how I know. Seriously, wear protection.

Counter-intuitively, Aircraft Stripper is the kind you want to buy. It is easily the most effective with the least set up time. Scuff up your paint with some kind of sanding pad and apply the stripper. Wait 15-30 minutes and scrape off with a plastic scrapper and you should be down to bare metal. Because I had two layers of paint (plus primer), and because whoever did the red paint job decided to go crazy with the thickness, it took me several passes on every panel to get down to metal. I spent, no joke, about 2 months stripping the paint off during nights and weekends. Sanding or media blasting would have been so much faster and easier – but now I’m done and my zinc layer is still intact and ready to protect my metal from any rock chips or scrapes.

There’s a certain Mad Max quality to the car right now, and I wish it wasn’t disassembled so I could take it out around town a little bit to enjoy it’s naked splendor. I’ll be sure to sneak in a quick blast around the block just to drive it with no paint, no doors, no glass, and no interior. Hopefully video of that soon…

If you would like to follow the nitty gritty details of this build, they are 
posted on a Porsche technical forum here.

The post Porsche Backdate Pt 7: Stripping is hard work appeared first on FactoryTwoFour.

Well here we are, at the moment when we turn the 80’s-tastic fat bottomed 911 of our backdate project into a svelte 70’s star with sleek lines and subtle curves. I am, of course, speaking of the moment(s) wherein I get rid of the huge impact bumpers our project came with and replace them with the new fiberglass face and tail. It’s about time.

We’ve been some time getting here. First tearing the car apart, then refreshing the brakes and suspension, to that dreaded surprise rust repair, and now to this fun stuff. Making our 911 look the part of a dead sexy 1970’s sports car. It’s not necessarily an easy task however. This isn’t exactly a bolt-on procedure. Fiberglass is notoriously finicky to fit well – pieces need to be massaged, formed, bent, coaxed, and politely asked to fit properly. There is also a huge variance between suppliers of these bumpers, and if you want any chance of keeping your wits and hair during the process you need to start with the best possible.

For Porsche backdate projects, the best are TRE Motorsports. This Van Nuys, California based shop cranks out some of the finest custom Porsches in the world. Once you start even flirting with the idea of getting a 911, you’ll hear about TRE and see examples of their work. They will kindly sell you everything from brake upgrades to full 2.7 RS backdate bodykits (what I bought). From racing to posing, there’s something here for your Porsche. A quick look around the forums confirms that their pieces are some of the highest quality you can find, and their service and know-how are second to none.

I picked up the full fiberglass bodykit and lovingly carted it back to my garage and my waiting 911. Job #1 was installing the iconic ducktail. The simple switch from 80’s whaletail to 70’s ducktail (what is it with Porsche and animal names?) was a massive visual change, and one I think for the better. Now while this seems like it should be a simple bolt-on process, it is not. All fiberglass body panels, regardless of car or make, need massaging and tweaking. From differences in production and curing to every car being idiosyncratic with it’s own history. So with that, I was off and sanding the leading edge of my ducktail to make a more perfect panel gap between it and the rear windscreen. This process was as simple as lightly installing it, checking where it was rubbing against the body, then sanding that section back until it fit like a glove. Step two, still at the rear of our project, was the rear bumper.

This was a more challenging step, and for better or worse I invented my own solutions as I went along. Off came the huge 80’s impact bumpers and muffler, on went the svelte bumper. Not content with this upgrade, I chose to fiberglass over the existing exhaust hole in the bumper to create a flush look. My planned exhaust will be running under the bumper, so no cutout is required. Finishing off the rear was a set of racing tie-downs to secure the ducktail to the bumper, and give the 911 massive street cred.

Next up was the hood. I needed to replace my hood because older 911s had longer front fenders (more on that in a moment) and longer hoods to match. Replacing the hood also aided in weight reduction – as did replacing both those Miami Vice bumpers. All in, the weight savings on the body were very significant. The hood went straight on, but will need a little persuasion with heat and some weight to get the curve to match my car’s perfectly. This nicely bolt-on fiberglass piece was the front bumper to finally give my car that beautiful RS look, replete with front tie-downs as well.

Lastly, there was some metal work to be done. Because the 1970’s cars had longer fenders (with their turn signal housing directly attached to the side fender) than my 80’s car, I needed to attach some fender extensions to recreate the period correct bumpers. I gave this the ol’ college try, I really did. And I failed hard.I couldn’t get my head around to weld these extension pieces on without having major modifications to either the fenders or the extensions themselves. Finally after much hammering,welding, and cursing, I ran crying back to TRE for assistance. They graciously offered to weld up these pieces for me so I could be sure the face of my dream car came out right. I drove up to their shop (yes, without a muffler. It was awesome), browsed all the wonderful Porsche pornography that is always being worked on or is parked outside, and left my baby in their care. When they were done, I came to pick up the car and was greeted with the face of the 2.7 RS. My 2.7 RS. At this point, I want to make love to my car. My ratty, stripped of paint, sunroof held in by duct tape car. She was beautiful, if mismatched and in-progress.

Now while structurally she is looking the part, there is still some body patching, finessing, and painting to be done before she is supermodel hot. So that’s what I’m tackling next – stripping, grinding, blending, and prepping. I might even find some time to work on the car too…

If you would like to follow the nitty gritty details of this build, they are 
posted on a Porsche technical forum here.

The post Porsche Backdate Pt 6: Bustin’ Ass on Fiberglass appeared first on FactoryTwoFour.

Well, Dream Racing in Las Vegas has exactly what you need to experience your dreams while awake – boasting the largest super-car fleet in North America, they offer a truly unprecedented experience. I visited Dream Racing a while back together with F24’s Grant and Alvin. When we pulled up and walked along the stunning assortment of some of the most exclusive vehicles in the world, Grant dropped a classic one-liner that encapsulated the experience pretty well: “…*sigh*…is this what love feels like?”

I did a little bit of calling around to other groups that offer a similar experience in Vegas, or at least claim to, and concluded that Dream Racing offers a better experience, where you simply get more — other groups either don’t offer focused training in a simulator, or have vehicles with an additional set of controls for your driving coach, essentially inhibiting your experience. In addition to this, Dream Racing allows safe overtaking anywhere on the track, whereas other providers only have one or two “zones” where this is allowed. I mean, in that case, whats even the point??

A big thank you to Alec from Dream Racing, who accompanied us throughout the day, and gave us the inside scoop. First, we got a rundown of how our day was looking: spend some time studying the track, both on paper and in a VR simulator, measured to the millimeter to replicate the Dream Racing track. With the coaching of a former pro driver, who offered some hilarious  and accurate —  check the below snapchat clip — advice when driving these cars, we would prepare ourselves for driving the real thing.

After spending time in the simulator, we headed to the changing room to throw on our race suits, and on to the stables. They have a bay of just street cars, and a whole other one with track car. Think stripped out Lamborghinis that make you feel like you’re sitting in a fighter jet cockpit – unlabeled lights, buttons, switches as far as the eye could see, but still nothing but a carbon fiber panel and elastic loop in-place of a door-handle. “It saves about 6.7 lbs or so,” Alec mentioned as he saw me knocking it with my knuckles. It was pretty flexible.

Then he said, “You guys ready to pick your rides?” For me, it was a situation straight out of my 10-year-old self’s dreams — except it was happening. The selection was endless and the choice was difficult, so all of us we spent nearly half an hour thinking. But in the end we each knew exactly what fit our personality.

Grant chose a 573 horsepower Acura NSX hybrid, Alvin the Ferrari 488, and for me it was a no-brainer, I had to pick one straight off my childhood bedroom wall. My choice had to be a Lamborghini. The triple black Lamborghini Huracan boasts a guttural, naturally aspirated 600 horsepower V-10, and for me it was the perfect bull to grab by the horns.

After an immersive walk-through of our respective vehicles, and a breakdown of what be aware of while on the track from Dream Racing’s copilots and coaches, we were pumped.  We got the drone in the air, GoPros rolling, and gave Grant the thumbs up, and promptly heard what sounded like a jet engine firing up.  Check a visual summary of the insane experience in detail below:

Each lap we could hear the Acura getting louder and louder — the tires screeching at the limit, and the hybrid engine howling. Finally, Grant pulled into the pit, got out of the car wide-eyed but with the biggest smile I had seen on him in a minute — almost like he had been partying with various stimulants for the last 10 hours at an deep house club in Brooklyn. “Dude…dude…its so fast. It’s SO fast. How?!” he managed to get out as we saw his coach in the background trying to hide a grin and give us a quick thumbs up.

I thought I was prepared for the Huracan: I had driven 911s way too fast up canyon roads, been in an SLR on the Autobahn… hell, I commute on a sports-bike. I thought I knew fast, but  I was sorely mistaken in this instance — the lateral grip this vehicle had, was absolutely insane. It was straight out of my dream as a child, and I couldn’t help but laugh as I took turns tighter and tighter with each lap, the Lamborghini unflinching no matter “how-high-in-the-hundreds” fast I went into turn 1.  The back would get a little wild when you really pushed it, but that’s part of the fun. Getting the hang of how to make the vehicle hold the drift and then regain traction was doable after a surprisingly few number of laps (although I did blow it once in a large cloud of tire-smoke and a few seconds of serious vertigo…shhh)  — especially in “Corsa” mode.

We all had our minds blown by the vehicles, the very knowledgeable and helpful staff, and the the environment and training Dream Racing provides to really help you experience what these vehicles are capable of. In short, get your butt to Dream Racing if you want to make your dreams come true, and really experience what these vehicles have to offer.

The post Dream Racing Gave Us A Track & the Supercars Of Our Dreams appeared first on FactoryTwoFour.

It’s been a while since I did an update on our faithful project car. It is certainly not for lack of effort on it. Indeed, work is done of the FactoryTwoFour Porsche at least 4 days a week. No, the delay has been in some serious, and seriously unexpected, rust repair. And I’m not talking about garden variety surface rust or a dime-sized hole in a fender. I’m talking about the only thing holding the suspension’s torsion bars in place was the rubber undercoating. All the metal that was supposed to be surrounded by said undercoating was completely gone. I had been driving around like that. Fun.

Turns out this large and integral piece of metal the runs across the car directly below the fuel tank – called the suspension pan – is a actually a maintenance item on 911s! It is normal operating procedure to dismantle the front, cut out 50% of the trunk floor, and weld in a replacement every 100,000 miles. If you say so Ingolstadt. This was a major project, one that involved much more work and time than I had budgeted. I also had to learn metal work, how to weld, how to apply undercoating. Although it took 3 months, it was an absolute blast. See, that is why I am doing this project – not to wind up with a cool car, but to teach myself new skills and learn about how things work and go together. So far, the project is providing plenty of that.

To access what I thought was a much smaller repair, I first emptied the gas tank. This involved a small bucket that would quickly fill to brimming, then I’d slosh gasoline everywhere as I tried to bring out from the underneath the chassis and pour it into a bigger painter’s bucket waiting nearby. It is an Virgin Mary sized miracle that I didn’t go up in a fireball or pass out from fumes. Dead brain cells notwithstanding, the job got done and I removed the fuel tank.

Although this provided line of site to all of the metal pan, everything was layered in undercoating making simple observational diagnosis impossible. Nope, it would take cutting to find the head of this rust beast. The more I probed, the more clear it became how serious and how long this hole must have been manifesting itself for. The driver’s side was connected to nothing but hopes and dreams. The passenger side was bolted to just enough metal to make a silver dollar. The whole front pan would have to go…

No worries however. See, Porsche 911s have been around for so long, sold so many, and changed so little between generations that one can basically construct an entire car from all the parts that are available from various sellers. And this is all brand new parts too. So I fired up the interwebs and ordered a pan for a shockingly little $216, as well as the ancillary pieces needed to do the repair and some weld-thru primer.

Speaking of which, I now had to learn how to weld well enough to fix a structural element on a vehicle I have every intention of breaching triple digit speeds with. Excellent. But that is what this project is all about. This Porsche isn’t a car. It’s not even a hobby. It’s a classroom that has already taught me patience, delayed gratification, and sacrifice. And now it has taught me auto body work and welding.

3 months of test welds on scrap, metal grinding an cutting, rust excavation, and spot welding and I finally had the front pan replaced. Standing above it even now, I look down and see a skill I didn’t possess before. It is an truly awesome feeling. This was the biggest curveball (so far) on this project, and I conquered it.

Rust dealt with, I started to strip the paint off the car in preparation for it’s new coat of Grand Prix White. Here I tried sanding as well as paint stripper, and I’ve decided I’ll be sticking to the messy but low work stripper to bring the whole exterior down to bare metal. Before that though, I’ve got to do the final fitting of the RS bodykit to weed out any panel gaps or angles and find a paint shop. Until then faithful readers…

If you would like to follow the nitty gritty details of this build, they are posted on a Porsche 
technical forum here.

The post Porsche Backdate Pt 5: Junk in the Trunk appeared first on FactoryTwoFour.

The FactoryTwoFour Porsche backdate build is still in an ugly state of affairs as all the drivetrain and suspension work gets buttoned up. Now that our 911 can stop on an X and navigate speed bumps without snapping my spine, it’s time to throw on some new rims and tires to give the car that aggressive stance that it needs.

The first step in that process is wheels.  Our 1988 911 Carrera came from the factory with 16 inch Fuchs wheels when it was first sold in New Jersey. It has worn those hoops ever since. To give our Porsche a more aggressive stance while also giving us a wider tire in the rear, we threw on a pair of 17 inch replica Fuchs from Euromeister, and moved our original rears up front (the stock rears were wider than the fronts). All said, we’ve gained inches of tire contact all around and we should have better luck sticking to the road now. But tire choice will also be key for that as well.

Even for car people, tires are an especially dorky and esoteric subject. Compounds, widths, tread patterns, and speed ratings are all the kind of subjects that will bore a normally-adjusted human faster than televised golf. There are only so many online forum posts that can be read before the mind turns to wet sand, so FactoryTwoFour reached out to the very friendly people at Yokohama Tire and asked them to hold our soft and feeble hands.

While we have chosen to keep our humanity by ignoring the finer details of sidewall construction, the crew at Yokohama laugh in the face of that decision and we’re glad they did. We walked them through our sizes (16 and 17 inch rims), the intended use of our 911 (spirited canyon carving on the weekend), the driving conditions (Los Angeles with rain appearing about 4 times year) and the color (black!) I guess? Miraculously, instead of laughing at us, they patiently teased actually useful information out of us and recommended a decent side profile (/50 front, /40 rear) and tire width (225 front, 255 rear). Because this car will only see occasional use and because we have the spirit of Top Gun leading our decisions, we asked for a just-shy-of-race-spec tire. In black of course. Yokohama recommended their Advan Neova series, and we were not about to argue.

Now we’ve got the aggressive stance from the outsized rear wheels, and we’ve got super sticky rubber all around. We’ve got to fine tune the ride height for that proper punk rock look, but now it’s time to shift gears and start the physical backdate. We’re on the hunt for ’73 Porsche bumpers and body panels as our project enters the aesthetic phase. Stay tuned…

If you would like to follow the nitty gritty details of this build, they are posted on a 
Porsche technical forum here.

The post Porsche Backdate Pt 4: New Shoes appeared first on FactoryTwoFour.

If you’ve been following along with parts 1 and 2 of Project Backdate, you know that after 10 years of waiting my dream car has arrived and is a special shade of nightmare generally reserved for murderous carnies. But my dreams shan’t be denied, so it’s finally time to get stuck in and turn this disaster into my rolling fantasy. First job on the list: removing the interior, or what’s left of it after the Florida monsoons have had their dirty way with it.

Forcibly torn out are the rear seats, the remaining carpet is chucked, and the passenger seat – which isn’t even bolted down! – is hoisted out. I’ll keep the sunvisors for now, just to be classy. Not classy were the 1990’s Autozone stereo head unit and equalizer. Also binned are the spare tire and sound-deadening material from the cabin. All I’m left with are a torn driver’s seat and a crusty dash. Game on.

Before the Miami Vice bumpers and wing can go, and before any other major mods, I need to get the car registered in sunny but hippie-infested Los Angeles. That means passing arguably the most stringent emissions test in the country. My first attempt at this was a non-starter when the SMOG station technician refused to even test the car because it had an aftermarket pod filter on it (Autozone strikes again!). Good thing too, because I hadn’t even noticed the complete and utter lack of a catalytic converter on the car. So it’s off to the excellent online Porsche forums to source a factory airbox, as well as a tested and working cat.

With those items found and borrowed from a very generous local, it’s off for test attempt #2. Aaaaaaaaand it’s a FAIL. My tailpipe emissions are actually spot on and perfect, but apparently my 30 year old fuel vapor lines are leaking. With those replaced, I should pass the test with a breeze according to all the data. Another weekend spent replacing rubber hosing and then test #3. Aaaaaand it’s a FAIL. The new fuel vapor lines are working perfectly, but suddenly my emissions have doubled. What the actual hell? Okaaaaay, I ran to my garage to check all my fittings and find that I haven’t secured the factory airbox tightly enough and some air is bypassing the whole filter assembly. While this is equivalent to just running without an air filter installed, I’m grasping at straws at this point so I convince myself that was the problem and after quickly resolving it, take it in to a different testing station just to cover my bases and make sure I’m not getting scammed. Test #4 – MASSIVE FAIL. In the span of an hour, my emissions have doubled again. It is now four-fold higher than it was when I started.

It’s time for drastic measures. It’s time for outside help. It’s time for an Iranian mechanic who has a PHD in biochemistry. It’s time for Old Man Steve. I take my ailing 911 into his shop, J&S Precision Auto in Venice, CA, and we poke around for bit. Eventually we isolate an intake leak to somewhere in the front of the engine. With a handshake instead of a bill, Steve sets me off to find the leak. During disassembly of my intake system, I quickly discover some very loose hoses and clamps. Basically, every time I was messing with the intake system – from installing the factory airbox, to re-running the fuel vapor lines, to adjust the airbox connection, I was bumping and further loosing all the joints and hoses. There must have been small leaks just about everywhere.

With a firm reassembly and double-check, I take it in for Test #5. Passed with flying colors. Thank God.

After a surprisingly quick visit to the DMV a few days later, the Porsche is now legal to drive – helpful for taking it in to mechanics or body shops. And now that I can legally drive it for the first time, there’s no better time to take it off  the road and onto jack stands for a solid month as I completely rebuild and refresh the suspension, brakes, and drivetrain. In one fell swoop front and rear, I upgraded the shocks to new Bilstein units, replaced all rubber suspension bushings, slapped on upgraded steering tie rod ends from a 911 turbo, installed a bump steer kit to smooth out the steering, replaced any ball joints, and painted my sway bars (good for at least a 15hp upgrade right there).

On the brakes, it was new stainless steel lines, new rotors, new pads, and rebuilt calipers. She should stop now. For the drivetrain, this Porsche backdate is now sporting a short-shift kit from JWest Engineering, a new trans coupler for more precise shifting, and new rear axles because why the hell not?!?!

Back on the road, our backdate 911 feels tighter and more receptive to driving inputs. Good upgrades all around, but they also chewed up 20% of the budget already. Time to recoup some cash by selling some of the parts I’ve ripped out. Then I have to diagnose the loss of power at the top end and get ready for the body shop. That’s where the real spending begins…

If you would like to follow the nitty gritty details of this build, they are posted on a 
Porsche technical forum here.

The post Porsche Backdate Pt 3: The Emissions Battle appeared first on FactoryTwoFour.

There’s something about a car being delivered on the back of a flatbed tow truck that is a combination of strange feelings. On the one hand, it is the ultimate in delivery service – making sure the car is safe and doesn’t collect a single dead bug or even put on any additional miles. On the other hand, 90% of cars on tow trucks are seriously broken and in need of some love. It is with this cognitive dissonance that I greeted my new Porsche. I giddily informed the truck operator that he was delivering a massive amount of happiness and that I’d wanted this vehicle for a decade. He was nice enough to pretend to care for a whole 20 seconds.

At first sight, this 1988 911 Carrera Coupe was certainly rougher that the online listing. There were more small rust bubbles throughout the body than the single one that was photographed, including a small but worrying one on the rear window frame. While on the inside – holy shit the was half missing, all rotted, and had a unique funk of a drowned smoker. But no matter! My dream car 911 was in front of me and I wasn’t going to be brought down.

Once the car was on terra firma, I grabbed at the key and jumped in like it was Christmas morning. Nothing. No action from the battery. Who sells someone a decently expensive car and doesn’t charge up or replace the battery? I move past it.  The truck driver connects a jump pack and she starts up with the beautiful racket of a bag of hammers inside a clothes dryer set at permanent press that only an air cooled engine can make. She runs! Well, she was supposed to, but it is exciting nonetheless. I am grinning like an absolute idiot. I see the fuel gauge is sitting well below empty. Who sells someone a car and doesn’t have the decency to throw in a quarter of a tank? Still moving past it and filled with joy. The truck operator leaves as he senses I’m about to hug him and ask him to have a cry with me, and with that I’m all alone with my new Porsche.

Sit Rep: The interior is a total loss. What little carpet there is left is as good as ruined. The seats are more ripped than 1970’s Lou Ferrigno, and the dash gauges somehow all have rust on just their bottom bezels. This car has seen some water. After a panicked rummage through the floors and carpet, I’m sure this isn’t a Hurricane Sandy or flood car. The water damage is too light and the floor is sound. It looks like the sunroof has been left open for one or more Florida rainy seasons. A look around the sunroof shows that it has been totally scavenged and just the metal cover is being “securely” held into this German precision sports car with a wedge of cardboard. Moving outside, beyond the half-dozen rust bubbles, the front bodykit has a decent crack from too many valet curb kisses and all the black rubber trim is looking seriously tired.

This is all fine and mostly what I signed up for – why pay for nice exterior panels or interior carpet when I’m going to replace most of it anyway? All I needed – and paid a hefty inspection to ensure – was a strong engine and running gear. And my test drives did not reveal exactly that. Shifts are good, low end pull is strong, and the handling is on point. But on full bore, when I crest 4000 RPM, our little 911 looses all power and starts coughing and trying to find its place either in fuel delivery or timing. This is not good. I can look the other way on a dead battery, or an empty gas tank, and even on a mostly missing sunroof system. But now engine trouble on a car I had independently inspected? My cool was officially gone.

I can’t blame the seller, it is his job to offload the car. I can, and do blame the Florida shop I paid decent coin to for an unbiased walkthrough and opinion on the car since I couldn’t see it in person before I bought it. After an angry exchange of words over email and phone with the shop, they refunded my money in exchange for not being named here. I will just say this: if I needed any Porsche work done in the Miami area, I wouldn’t be going to any shops that rhyme with Bertex Auto.

With the worrying development of engine trouble right in front of me, there’s nothing for it but to get stuck in and get to work. This full Porsche backdate project where I turn this run-of-the-mill 1988 911 into a very special 1972 RS should take me about a year and cost anywhere from $10,000 to infinity dollars. My goal is to be smart and crafty and come in at a total out-of-pocket of  that low end $10K by doing the work myself and selling as many parts off the car as possible.

The full order of operations will be as follows:

• Renew/upgrade the suspension
• Renew the braking system
• Renew/upgrade the drivetrain
• Disassemble the car down to a rolling shell
• Install the backdated RS body panels and remove rust
• Send the shell off to paint
• Renew the engine while it is out of the car
• Drop the engine back into the freshly painted car
• Install a new interior and all final assembly

Along the way, there will be lots of broken knuckles, bruised egos, and too much fun. In the next post I’ll be tackling the suspension and brakes, and remove that crusty interior. Let the work begin!

You can read the next part of this series here.

The post Porsche Backdate Pt 2: The Sadness appeared first on FactoryTwoFour.

“To sleep, perchance to dream.” And dream I have. For 10 years I’ve fantasized about owning an old Porsche. A decade spent saving, skipping vacations, earning more, and acquiring both the tools and knowledge required. While you were out actually living,I was arranging my life to own one of the of these beasts. A full third of my life that I’ve dedicated to shopping around, looking on forums, collecting details and procedures, and even banning myself from the For Sale ads because I’ve picked up the phone too many times when I wasn’t ready. Well I’m ready now.

When I first fell for Porsches, like any normal human being I couldn’t tell the difference between them. All I knew is that they looked new for a really long time, then they suddenly looked very old (whenever a new bodystyle came out), then eventually look very old and classic. Over my years of lusting and wanting I gradually began to fall more and more in love with the vintage and classic cars, more so than ny computerized new car.

It was then that I came across what would soon become an obsession – the 1972 RS 2.7. Held by manysweatervest-wearing old white men as the quintessential Porsche, the 2.7 adorns bedroom walls the world over as the pinnacle of what a race-ready street Porsche can be. When I first saw one online, it was lust. When I drank in its presence in person, it was love. This stripped out and paired down racer that was the meticulously reduced essence of this sports car brand had to be in my life.

Unfortunately, the reality is the few hundred examples of the RS that were made were commanding $500,00 when I first learned about the car, and routinely trade hands for 1.2-1.5 million dollars today. I had patience for acquiring this toy, but not that kind of patience. Luckily for me, I stumbled across an increasingly popular practice called “backdating”.

Basically, and luckily for me, Porsche 911s changed (comparatively) very little from their introduction in 1964 up to 1989. For all intents and purposes, the bodyshell stayed the same while the engine and driving characteristics got better and better – while the bumpers got bigger and bigger. Some engineering psychopath discovered that with very little effort and just a dash of metal fabrication one could turn any 911 from these two and a half decades into a RS 2.7 clone. Falling down the rabbit hole, I discovered (for very boring reasons only an anorak cares about) that just 3 years were the best platform for backdating – 1987-1989. If I wanted to do this right, it would have to be in this range of years. With this knowledge and a fantasy shopping list in hand, I started saving and dreaming.

10 years of fantasizing finally came to an end last month. The savings were there, the career was there, and the garage full of tools was there. Bummer for me then that during this decade the value of old Porsches basically doubled from a range of $12k-$18k  to today’s market of $20k-$30k. With my life in place and the market value showing no signs of slowing down, the time was now to pull the trigger before the price climbed any higher.

Now because I already planned on swapping out much of the bodywork and interior, my major concern when shopping around was a strong drivetrain. In fact I was actively looking for an ugly and haggard car, because why pay a premium for something I’m going to rip off anyway? When I started browsing the Porsche forums, it didn’t take long to zero-in on 2 cars as serious possibilities. The first was a tidy black-on-black example that was described as a 20-footer – as in it looked pretty good as long as you were at least 20 feet away. This car was about 2 hours away from my home in Los Angeles and was going for the top of my personal price range, $27k. The second 911 in Florida was much more abused with a cracked period body kit and an utterly destroyed interior. It was also far cheaper at $22.5K advertised. After talking to both sellers, my wallet won out and I opted for the ugly tree Florida car. A bit of haggling and negotiations later, we agreed on $21k plus some thrown-in goodies and parts I’d be buying anyway. I contacted a vouched-for Florida Porsche shop and had the seller take the car in for a pre-purchase inspection. Vertex Auto confirmed to me the seller’s story – basically that it is pretty ugly, but it runs well – so sight-unseen I sent purchased the car of my dreams and had it shipped across the country.

From the moment in time I decided I was now ready to pay for and rebuild a Porsche to the actual purchase bank transfer, only 9 days had elapsed. I told you I was antsy to get a 911 in my life.

As my 1988 Porsche 911 Carrera made its transcontinental journey, I did some further digital window shopping and spec’d out my budget for this project. I expect to spend an additional $10k (we’ll see how this works out) out of pocket on parts and paint. Admittedly, this is a widely ambitious figure (about half of typical), but I plan to do 80% of the work myself. If it doesn’t require a welder, a dyno, or a paint gun I want to do it myself. Here’s hoping…

But hope was in short supply when the car finally arrived – I knew my 911 wouldn’t be pretty, but I didn’t think it would be fugly. Nor would it start when it came off the truck. So much for running well. Thus began my first week of Porsche ownership when my dreamcar turned into a nightmare…

You can read the next part of this series here

The post Porsche Backdate Pt 1: We bought a Porsche to rebuild! appeared first on FactoryTwoFour.

If you’re not the kind to necessarily tune in to auto racing, let me start by explaining that Le Mans is nothing like the cookie-cutter sameness of NASCAR, the Indy 500, or F1. I totally get that to an outsider, all those cars look the same, drive the same, and the races tend to be uneventful multi-hour speeches from the announcers about how epic it would be if X would happen, yet X never happens. Not to fear, because endurance racing and Le Mans in particular are nothing like that.

The FIA World Endurance Championship series, of which the Le Mans race is the crown jewel, is a fantastic race series made of up several different classes of cars. Long story short, this means you’ll see a Corvette battling a Ferrari battling a space-age “prototype” car bred for racing. What these mixed classes mean is that not all the cars are moving at the same pace, yet they are all on the same track at the same time. This pace discrepancy inevitably leads to the ultra-fast prototypes having to work their way through the slower field, and the everyday cars having to race in their class while also dodging faster cars. This traffic-factor makes for some incredible moves and racing in general.

Even when zoomed into a single class, the racing the last few years has been incredibly close and exciting. Check out this crazy finish from a very similar 24 hour race from last month at the Nurburgring. Those last 20 minutes were epic racing and full of drama. Or how about one of the all-time great battles a few year ago at Sebring. These clips are classic endurance car racing, and Le Mans is the big daddy of them all.

Now that I’ve got you amped up, I have to bring you back down with the realization that watching an European 24hr auto race is no easy feat in every country. If you’re in an racing junky country like the UK or Germany, it should be a breeze to catch the action. If, like us, you are in the United States of Freedom, watching Le Mans is an exercise in internet sleuthing and patching together different streams of online feeds.FOX Sports Go will be streaming the race if you qualify to view it in your area, and there’s always a smattering of online streams you can find the day of. One of the best ways is also the most old school. Radio Le Mans consistently has the best commentary on endurance racing, and streaming them on your phone allows you to continue with your normal Saturday and Sunday while staying up to date on the race.

However you do it, make sure you tune in to this race. Ford is back after 50 years to eat Ferrari’s lunch. Porsche is defending last year’s title against an always-hungry Audi. And you haven’t seen anything until you’ve seen night racing on a 200mph track…

The post You Should Definitely Be Watching Le Mans This Weekend appeared first on FactoryTwoFour.

Renting seems the natural solution to this dilemma, but again you are paying good money to walk into another of the prime drawbacks of supercars – they can’t be exploited pushed explored to within 10% of their abilities on public roads. Enter the Xtreme Xperience.

Not only does this company put you in the seat of some of the greatest supercars on the planet right now, but they deliver that supercar to a track for you. Then they put a professional driver in the passenger seat to help you wring the absolute bejeezus out of your steed. You’re welcome.

Ferrari, Porsche, Lambo,GT-R, McLaren – they are all here and yours for 3 of the quickest laps you can manage around your local track. The travelling octane circus that is the Xtreme Xperience brings these rides to tracks around the country, along with their stable of professional drivers. All you need to do is show up, register for your cars, and get down to turning tires into vapor. And when you’re done depreciating the exotic metal, you just walk away and let them deal with it. This is the way our founding fathers wanted it.

The vast majority of people selected more than one car to drive during the day, and I highly suggest you do the same. They also sell onboard video packages, as well as upgraded insurance in case you are prone to a lead foot and a slow head. The staff are all extremely helpful, and if you’re paying attention you can genuinely leave the day as a faster and more capable driver.

So what would you like to do with your next splurging Saturday? Spend a day at Disneyland fighting off disease-ridden sticky children or hot lapping a supercar at your local track? That’s a call only you can make esé. But you’ll find me at the track enjoying these expensive toys without a worry in the world.

The post Xtreme Xperience Provides an Extreme Experience appeared first on FactoryTwoFour.