Spark plug replacement

It didn't rain for half an hour this last Sunday so we seized the dry fragment of the day, popped the bonnet on the Porsche, selected the extra-deep 21mm spark plug socket, and started yanking old spark plugs out of the oily engine bay. Let me preface this by saying that, before I gapped four brand-spanking NGK plugs on a dark and stormy Saturday night, I don't think I'd ever even seen a spark plug up close.

I didn't know quite where this work would lead, but I understood the basic principles: detach the lead, unscrew the plug, screw the new one in, attach the lead. Basic spannerwork, plus a socket extender and a universal joint, which generally come in beginner-friendly toolkits like the one we've got.

If you're following along at home: you will need an extender and a universal joint. Plug 1 comes out really easily: it's right there in the front and you barely even need to crane your neck to get at it. Plugs 2-4 are a different story: there's a heatshield in the way that prevents a 21mm socket from reaching back far enough to grab the plug. Remove the three 13mm bolts holding the heatshield in place and put it aside. The suspension tower sits right beside plugs 2 and 3, but with your extender you should be able to reach them from in front; 3 is probably the most difficult to reach. You'll probably have to do some elaborate balancing act to get leverage while reaching all the way back there. Plug 4 is relatively easy to reach, but make sure you're not putting weird torque on it through the universal joint or you'll snap the porcelain insulator. Ask me how I know.

Four new plugs installed, I reattached the ("high-tension") leads and the negative terminal on the battery. It started up first time; I almost couldn't believe it. Something so simple! We inspected the old plugs afterwards and they were grimy as heck. If I had them stuck inside me I wouldn't have wanted to start either.

Earlier this year we had to get rid of Sam's 2002 Renault Clio. This was her first car, and she'd made a ton of precious memories with it, and it hurt to let it go. Rust had started to eat through the bodywork and the electrics were going increasingly unreliable, so it didn't make sense to keep it around.

Sam's long been wanting to replace it with a classic, however. Something from the 1980s or 90s, when cars had Soul and polluted gratuitously and when computers hadn't even made it to the manufacturing lines, much less the vehicles themselves. Sam had been mulling over trying to find an old Mini: fat chance. She'd also been considering a sturdy MX-5, long hailed as Always The Answer, though I don't think it spoke to her, particularly.

Then this came up on eBay, and reader, we bought it.

It's a 1980 Porsche 924. Long considered barely a Porsche at all, featuring a robust inline-four from an Audi Estate by way of a VW van, liquid cooling, and most heretically, an engine at the front. Made in Stuttgart? Don't make me laugh. Originally designed as a sports tourer for VW, the corporate winds shifted at the last minute and VW scrapped plans and opted to build the Scirocco instead (not the cool second-gen one), leaving Porsche with the distinctly un-Porschelike machine that now lives, securely wrapped in a fleece cover, in our driveway.

The good: the important stuff. The engine runs smoothly thanks to bulletproof 1970s German engineering and simple mechanical fuel injection. The electrics are all in working order: pop-up headlights, power windows, windscreen wipers. The load-bearing parts are rust-free. The bad: the upholstery is falling apart. The tacho- and odometer don't work. The tread is delaminating from the tyre. We don't have a garage.

I drove it most of the way back from Reading over the weekend. It's comfortable at highway speeds, though it's a little thirstier than the economy Skoda I'm used to. It handles terrifically, tyres notwithstanding. It's slow, and it feels a little bit like trying to ride a horse, but it's thrilling. We're going to get the interior sorted out and a set of nice tyres and start taking it to car shows.

This is a rebadge of the Citroen Ami, a funky-looking little electric vehicle—a quadricycle, not a car, which is important—released back in 2020 and about which I've heard surprisingly little. The Ami is quintessentially Citroen, which is to say: idiosyncratic. It's totally symmetrical—left/right and front/back. You can't tell if it's coming or going. It looks different, but I hesitate to say that it looks good.

The Topolino, however, supplies the panache in spades. In style and size, it hearkens to the 1950s-70s Fiat 500, down to the anchovy-tin retractable roof and total lack of grille. It's cute!

Here's the kicker, though: neither the Ami nor the Topolino are cars. They're quadricycles. It's an EU thing, limits on size and weight and top speed in exchange for reduced regulations. But the star of this particular piece of legislation, as far as I can tell, is that you can operate a quadricycle from 14 years old (dependent on the EU member state). Which is weird, right? That teens can go out and buy and drive a new Fiat?¹

1. From £99/mo, which, I knew well-heeled teens living with their parents back at DPHS who had that kind of monthly cash to spend. ↩︎