73 S w/ twin plug engine

[banjomike]

I just had a short affair with a 73 S. I saw it at a local Porsche shop. It was silver, and looked pretty good cosmetically. Some rock chips, a few chips on the door edge. There was a tiny soft spot on the bottom of the car right under the front edge of the driver door. I talked to the propriator. I knew I didn't have the money for a nice early S, and my wife's old Volvo is getting pretty rickety, but I just had to know how much.

Well he wanted $17,900, which was less than I expected. I asked about rust, and he admited that there was some rust under the batteries. Okay, I figured, this is another old 911 with no floor pan, and a new coat of paint. Not worth the trouble. But the paint looked really good, and it was the original paint. Then I wondered why were the horn grills chrome? and it looked like someone had cut holes in them to mount those fog lights. But no, those were original factory fog lights (rare). Then I noticed that it had a sunroof (also rare), power windows, a/c, factory sport seats (in good shape). The interior was really nice. So we popped the hood. It didn't look entirely right. There were some aftermarket ignition parts, but he intake was stock. Then I noticed the damnest thing, the distributer looked awful crowded. This car had twin plug heads. I asked about it, and was told that the original owner (good) had just had a Ferrari mechanic (bad) upgrade the engine. Twin plugs 2.9 liters!(very good) Lord how much does that put out? about 230hp he says. Naturally we both would prefer that someone else had done the work, there are a few extremely qualified shops within a few miles. Anyway the rebuild was less than 10,000 miles old. would it hold? 2.9 is much more than the factory every tried to get out of that case, isn't it? Anyway, Volvo, no covered parking, no trunk, no deal, I gotta go.

Of course at home I had to tell my wife all about it, until she couldn't take any more car talk. I was expecting, and even hoping she would say 'you know we can't afford it... do those even have trunks? isn't that where the motor is?' but instead she said "if you really want it you should get it. it could be good for our credit." (isn't she great! credit is very important to her homeowner desires)

So on the way home the next day, I passed it again and had to take a look. I had convinced my self in the mean time, that it was a rust bucket, with a timebomb in the engine compartment.

But it wasn't. It was a garage baby. So I made plans to get an insurance quote (it's just an intellectual excercise, we're getting a newer volvo), and inquire about financing, on saturday morning. But as I was leaving the house that morning, I drove by the car and there was no for sale sign, and with all the errands to do, well it was probably for the better. Today I asked about it and it wasn't sold. The original owner decided that he wanted to keep it.

Anyway, I don't have any questions. I just needed to unload my sad story.

I found true love, and lost it. Probably for the best.

Mike

[Adam]

Tough break... that sounded like a really nice car.

Imagine the noise of a 2.9MFI twin-plug motor! Try the owner again, perhaps taking it off the market is just a whim...

[Wayne 962]

Show up with cash - it's a great motivator... Make sure *his* wife is there when you produce the wad of cash. Take stacks of 20s and then about 50 100s. Put the 100s on top and the 20's on the bottom. The 20s will give you the tremendous thickness - the 100s will be the show stopper...

-Wayne

[emcon5]

Sounds like fun, but the Ferrari mechanic thing is a little scary. Isn't a pretty major modification to the MFI pump needed for this upgrade?

Tom

[pwd72s]

If a car ever needed a PPI, it sounds like this one would. Kind of difficult to do, since the owner decided to take it off the market. Too bad.