[Dan in Pasadena]

Superman, Good to hear there are others here on the board in heavy civil construction. Where are you working? Project?

Not to hijack but I am on the Gold Line Eastside Extension project in L.A. I am the Project Quality Manager for the Authority and this job has been done as BOTH D-B-B (tunnels and station box excavation) and partially as D-B (the rest). I agree fully that D-B isn't new and in my opinion, isn't the panacea the industry would have you believe it is. We have had a great degree of success so far....but the game isn't over yet. I'm one of those guys you mentioned with a graduate degree and I learned a long time ago to LISTEN to craft. Worst possible thing you can do in my role is to act like you know more than the guy on the ground. They go out of their way to prove to you that you don't! If you defer to their experience and LISTEN, they go out of their way to share their thoughts and their concerns. Makes my job almost easy sometimes.

Back to legion's comments, given what you posted, why then do Porsches STILL have what seems to me to be just dumb mechanical issues? Things that seem like they're made harder than they had to be? I'll give you a real simple example. The left front signal light on my '76 coupe doesn't work. Why? The bulb "socket" isn't a socket like most other cars. It is cast with two sort of "ears" that have a ridge the electrical contact plate/spring slide upon and when the bulb is pressed in this plate slides back until it hits these little crimped tabs on the "ears" and the plate- being pushed by the spring, keeps contact with the bulb. On mine, the little tabs are worn and won't hold the plate. Clearly I can take the whole signal assembly out and probably can re-crimp the tabs or some such to fix it. Yet, as far as I can tell you've got to remove the entire front bumper to get the damned thing out. Why was that necessary? If an enginerr had to work on this I am sure they could devise a simpler method to access that stupid signal housing.