[Jay H]

John,

I've made plenty of errors that caused hours of rework on my 924S. I too fall into the Rank Amateur category. Maybe even below that...

However, I've also corrected quite a bit of prior work on my S that was done poorly by hack "professional" mechanics. I have a full set of records on my car from new and some of the jobs that were done recently by local "hack" shops before my ownership were terrible.

I also found a hose clamp sitting in the #4 cylinder head area after I removed the intake during the winter of '18/'19. Records show the intake was removed by the selling Porsche dealership in early 1990 to replace a failed idle control valve under warranty. The clamp was pretty clean other than some yellow build up of fuel deposits and the clamp had worn away a bit of the cylinder head in two areas as it vibrated away for (maybe?) 29 years and 170,000 miles. I couldn't believe what I saw when I pulled the intake off. Again, I would have to assume a Porsche dealership would have technicians 1,000 times more skilled than me and I have yet to leave a hose clamp in an intake (as far as I know).

Hopefully you were able to correct the shifter issue without having to drop the transmission again?

Before the days of YouTube and 944 bulletin boards, we relied more heavily on those Haynes manuals and any other print manuals for our cars, but I can't imagine restoring a car (mechanically) without the internet. Cars built before the advent of the internet (as we know it today) were more simple though too...