Dailying the Porsche

The Fabia has been in the shop for the better part of a week now, cycling through a series of minutely different ABS modules that have, it turns out, been preventing the nearside front brakes from engaging at all, which explains the extremely disconcerting rightward pull we'd noticed under heavy braking.

The result being that Sam and I have been dailying the Porsche 924 since getting it back from a timing belt + water pump replacement earlier this week. A dying battery left us briefly stranded at Morrisons in Hartlepool, but we carry one of those little booster packs to limp us over to Halfords for a new battery. I'm cautiously optimistic about its reliability.

As a daily driver, it's surprisingly practical: comfortable, warm, and with plenty of space for e.g. tile adhesive in the boot. The rear seats are not accommodating to a dog, however, so we're looking forward to getting the Fabia back. (Although I am also scoping out available Volvo 240s; the old beast I owned briefly in Florida never had any trouble getting started, and could haul like a pickup.)

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.

Seatbelts aren't complicated: it's a spring, a drum, a belt, and a couple of bolts. When you buy new seatbelts, it all comes in one piece; the hard part is figuring out how to attach it to the car. The car in question is Sam's Porsche 924, and the seatbelt in question is the driver's seatbelt in Sam's Porsche 924.

There's not much more to say about replacing seatbelts. Good old West German engineering meant that it was a 20-minute job. Now the seatbelt returns promptly and with a satisfying thunk. In the event of a collision we're now minimally safer than we would otherwise have been.

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.