Michael Meldrum
Houston, Texas @p911r Model 911T TARGA Year 1972 Acquired 2013 Model 911E Year 1972 Acquired 2014 Model 930 TURBO 3.0 Year 1977 Acquired 2014 Model 930 TURBO 3.0 Year 1977 Acquired 2015 Model CARRERA 3.0 Year 1977 Acquired 2016 Model 911 SC Year 1981 Acquired 2015 Model 3.2 CARRERA Year 1986 Acquired 2015 Model 993 C4S Year 1996 Acquired 2016 Model 964 CARRERA 4 Year 1994 Acquired 2016 Model 997.1 GT3 Year 2007 Acquired 2017 Model 991.1 GT3 RS Year 2016 Acquired 2018
I’m sure most Classic 911 owners know this, but I thought I’d take the opportunity to remind everyone that old Porsches can be fickle. I’m a very boisterous air-cooled cheerleader, but it’s not all fun.
A few weeks ago, I was doing the school run in my 1972 911E, all was well, kids arrived bang on time. On the return journey, I glanced at my wing mirror and the housing was there, just no mirror (I still remember the ‘mirror-signal-manoeuvre’ mantra drilled into me by my driving instructor, although, many of the road users in Houston TX prefer the shortened version ‘manoeuvre’, mirror and signal is optional!).
Obviously, this is a quick and easy fix, one that I had done before on my ’72 911T. I asked the nice chaps at Rs-werks to order me a genuine Porsche ’72 wing mirror, stage 1 completed drama free. Upon arrival of the mirror, I inspected the new part, everything looked good, so I laid out all the parts ready to go.
But first, I had to remove the existing mirror, which in theory, is a quick and painless job. Wrong. Once I moved the rubber plugs, the first bolt was in perfect condition, but the second bolt was a rusty old bugger (a big thanks to the previous owner for using some cheap and cheerful rubbish hardware). It was totally seized up and it needed to be drilled out. Once I finally got the rusty hardware off, if was a quick install of the shiny new mirror.
I was expecting to spend 20 minutes at most on this project, but it ended up being closer to 1.5 hours. The moral of the story, even the simplest old 911 project can take five times longer than expected, but the sense of achievement is priceless.