Funny, I recently joined a few 911 centric FaceBook groups.

Saw the "what's the best oil" question pop up the other day.

Made me laugh.

I had a friend that had a 914-6GT. It was the lowest mileage, most original of those cars in the world. I had hoped to have a chance to buy it from him when he decided to eventually sell it, but I wasn’t standing right in front of him when he decided to sell it and so it got sold to somebody else. Story of my life, I missed several cars in that same way.

It was a hell of a car. He spun it once in a track event, when I was chasing him hard in one of my 930s and I just about T-boned him. As bad as I would have felt for wadding my 930, I would have felt worse for wiping out the most original GT in the world. I think that was the last time I had that 930 on the track, except for the occasional lap to take one of the rugrats around to see what it was all about.

Grady Clay was a tech forum god, no other way to put it.

And I'll further claim that there's a before and after era.

I saved my PMs from Grady Clay and Jim Sims for posterity.

Grady was a hoot. He and I often talked behind the scenes, he could get pretty serious about a topic. Even after he had effectively ended his career proper, he still seemed to keep Porsches centermost in his life. That’s one thing I noticed about some of the more famous guys. There was Porsche, and then there was everything else.

I can’t find it, but I have an indelible image that was posted here of Grady and some other folks sitting outside a garage after, it seemed, working on a Porsche.

Just to be there was my thought.

I learned most of my tech knowledge from Rennlist when it was an email-list.

I still have stuff I printed out.

How to drop the 3.0.

Shifter coupling replacement and adjustment.

Brake bleeding.

Etc. etc.....

When it went to BBS form I kinda dropped out and then ended up here. By then I didn't really need much tech help and found it more entertaining/useful here at Off Topic.

That said I'm grateful to Pelican for their efforts in maintaining the forums. They're an invaluable resource for sure!

I had a mentor like Grady when I was first getting serious about Porsche‘s, around 1981 or 1982. He worked on just about all of the Porsches in Northwest Arkansas, as he didn’t trust the dealer mechanics to do anything right. I couldn’t count how many services we did in his garage. I was there seven days a week, after work, often late into the night wrenching on one thing or another. When we weren’t fixing something, we were off driving on the thousands of twisty little roads in that area.

He cut his teeth on Mopars and drag boats and then got hooked on Porsches. He owned 40 or 50 other cars along the way, he just liked to try things out, but Porsches were his first love. He had a lot of German in him, with all of the things that go with that. He had a wicked fast little 914-6GT replica that would hang with my modified 930 all the way through the first three gears. That’s the first three gears in the 930, not the 914, so that was roughly 135 mph. His nephew ended up with the car, I think.

I have a lot of memories of those years, all of them good, some of them hilarious. Guys like that just don’t exist anymore.

I have often wondered whether the air-cooled Porsche 911 is the best-understood car in our solar system. The car is fairly simple. The population of people who are qualified to work on them includes many tens or hundreds of thousands of owners and previous owners. A good proportion of those people are licensed Professional Engineers.

John Walker can answer any possible question about these cars.

I would guess the 32 Ford Coupe is the most understood. It has been around and hotrodded for almost 90 years. Every possible part and variation and mod has been done 100 times. Then most all the American iron of the 60s and 70s are super simple and once almost free they were so cheap, and make a 911 look like a puzzle.

No doubt, the 911 G body is a basic car and pretty easy to repair and mod.

I had some e-mails from him near the end that I keep. Just on some minor technical thing but he was talking about getting lit up by radiation.

Sigh.

The last Grady PM I saved is where he is offering me a "nice, straight, unrusted '74 911S Targa roller" that was originally Conda Green for $6000.. He said that it had a current inspection and I could drive it before he took the engine and tranny. Everything else was there and in good condition. I sure wish I bought it.

Grady was a Denver guy and I ran into him a lot. Right before his death I ran into him at DART auto/racing on a Saturday.

The members come and go and as new ones arrive, they need teaching by the folks that haven't left yet but are still excited and have fresh knowledge to share. It is a cycle. Not a bad one really.

Maybe I am burnt out on cars overall, but I can't say that I would enjoy explaining how to time cams or adjust valves 18 times over and over in a decade. Some of them do vlogs to document their work, which I find a horrible way to follow something technical. I have seen some really basic video being made and everyone being so excited now knowing how to change the oil on their 993. Really!? But that's how it is done "nowadays". Folks also claimed that you can't find anything in the archives and that they are back to square one in a lot of ways.

It makes sense to me, the forum is like a workshop with people coming and going and it is easier to teach each other than go back to the workshop manuals (or notebooks of people long gone). Maybe manuals are really the last resort these days.

One of my big Porsche regrets is not buying Grady's '68 911 when it went to auction after he died. It went for $80k, IIRC, and needed a full restoration but it was worth it and I just know that it possessed wonderful secrets in terms of work that he had done on the engine/transmission/suspension.

He was a great guy in every way. I remember his posts well. :(

So much wisdom in these archives. If only you could still buy a decent G50 Carrera for $25k.

I'll bet the 69 Camaro or the Gen 1 Mustang would give the '32 a run for the money these days. Every nut and bolt is offered new either stock or improved, with ten thousand experts offering advice.

Yep. I really felt I overpaid for my '89, at $20K IIRC...but was willing to do so because I wanted a flawless, low mileage one from CA (or some other place where they don't rust)...preferably from a Pelican that I trusted. I could have bought a less perfect Turbo for about the same price. I guess that was a big error.

Yes. I am amazed at parts availability. I owned multiple early Mustangs when they were cheap (in the 70's) and found it very difficult to get parts (unless you could find them in a junkyard). I often made them myself from fiberglass or even wood. I ordered synchro parts (brass blocking rings) once for my tranny and it took months. Had to put it back together and drive it as I only had one car.