Fanboyism-Ism

Here’s the thing,

I’ve been thinking about something off and on for about a year now, ever since I went out and bought my Porsche 944. And that is the state of being a fanboy of certain cars, certain manufacturers, what have you. Growing up, I wasn’t much of a fanboy. I of course defended the car I owned at the time because, well, it was my car. I didn’t want people talking crap about what I drove. However, everything changed once I decided to buy my 2007 Chrysler 300 Touring. It had a 3.5L V6, was RWD as well as big and roomy. What else could you want (besides more power of course, I still kick myself for not getting the HEMI)?

Once I started really driving it, getting used to it, cleaning it, and just in general getting close to my car, I noticed that I started developing a love for Mopar vehicles. I wouldn’t give any other kinds of cars the light of day, whether it be European or anything JDM. I wasn’t having it. I specifically remember telling my wife that I would never, ever, own another Asian car again. And I hadn’t even considered any European cars at all.

And then, of course everything change. It was not by my choice however. My wife had to go to school for two months, and I had to take my kid to daycare. So naturally, once my wife came back, my kid still wanted to go to daycare. And seeing as how I have to be up at the ass crack of dawn to go run and do pushups and stupid stuff like that, we needed a second car so my wife could drop her off.

I had a roommate at the time, a fellow car guy, and he had told me how he was looking at a Porsche 944. I just wanted to check it out, because I had my heart set on a (again, Mopar colored glasses) Dodge Stratus R/T. I saw the 944, absolutely loved the shape, and I immediately started seeing anything from the 80’s with rose colored glasses because of my first car. So, I decided while looking for a Stratus, to look at 944’s as well. I looked at 928’s, and 924’s, but I loved the 944. Eventually I found one I was happy with. Really, what caught my attention was the guy had bought a cup holder that would fit in the car and I saw it in the pictures. So I figured this guy had probably drove it a bit and showed it some love. And he did. He had replaced a laundry list of parts, but only drove it 200 miles in the past year. So I went to test drive it, and immediately fell in love. So I bought it, and paid 2900 all in twenties for the thing (good thing he worked at a bank).

I named her Rosie.

But at the same time it felt… strange. The 944 was the first car I had ever purchased solely with my money, solely for myself. Everything just clicked, everything felt right. Everything from how I sat in it, to how they designed the center console perfectly to have your arm rest on it when you weren’t shifting so that your hand didn’t rest on the shifter. My wife loved to remind me all the time how I used to say, “Mopar or no car huh?”, and I always felt like a dumbass. Because in all honesty, being a fanboy to a degree of shunning all other vehicles is kind of like being a bigot towards cars just because they aren’t a Chrysler, Ford, or Honda. All cars have something to offer, you just have to be willing to really look.

For example, let’s take a look at my 1986 Porsche 944. It was my first RWD car with a 5 speed attached to it, so I learned the amazing feeling of being able really control my car. It was really just meant as a car for me to drive, but I bought it before I really understood it. I didn’t know it had a transaxle, I didn’t know that transaxle was in the back, hell at the time I didn’t even know what a transaxle was. I had to look it up. I was still sort of in the mindset of “It’s not a Mopar, so it’s just some car I’ll drive.” It was just some car I drove, until I started driving it more, and more. Within a month it had over 1000 miles on it, I just loved driving the damn thing. Now, to get to my point, the clutch started screwing up. Eventually I found out the transmission was perfectly fine, great even. The clutch grabbed fine, granted it slipped a little at maximum torque, but the culprit was the pilot bearing. What I didn’t know, and what the previous owner didn’t know, was that the clutch in it was a good 20 years old. And whoever did the last job, only replaced the disc and pressure plate. Everything else was old and chewed up, and the flywheel had never been resurfaced. So my point here is even though I just bought it to be just another car, I ended up seeing it more for what it was. I saw it as a sports car, an amazingly balanced RWD car, and more importantly, a German car. When I was looking for a clutch kit, I realized that I wasn’t just messing with another car, I was messing with a Porsche. That’s because the clutch kit ran me 800 dollars. Ouch.

It wasn’t until after I dropped the transmission, the torque tube, struggled getting the bell housing off, and I bought the clutch kit that I realized: I cannot just jump into a car and hope for the best. I can’t just shrug off not knowing about a car before I buy it. And in order to really learn about a car, you can’t just write it off and not be interested in learning what makes it move. Honestly before I started working on my car, I didn’t know truly how a clutch truly operated. Now I do, along with knowing how it works with the rest of the car. I know exactly how the transmission works, including the gearbox, and how everything moves together. I didn’t know what an interference engine was, and honestly if I had when I was looking at a car to buy, I wouldn’t have bought my Porsche. Timing belt change every 30,000 miles? Come on, that is just sadistic.

Along with me trying to figure out exactly how everything worked, because there was a lot of mystery to the car, I ended up getting a few vehicle reports. Through these reports I had found out my car was originally built in West Germany (just think about it, my car was built in Germany during the cold war, that’s just crazy cool. Even with all that stuff going on they still managed to build amazing cars). It was also sold in California, had a ton of miles put on it quick, then sold at auction in Arizona. And then through the years it eventually made its way to me, in Virginia.

I would say that my refusal to really allow myself to be interested in cars, other than the ones I was all obsessed with, led me to arrogantly purchasing a car I knew nothing about. And I paid for it in more than one way. But, because of this car I learned how to do a clutch job, rebuild an entire brake system, take apart a fuel system, drop a transmission safely, and even drop a rear suspension. So even though I bought it for the wrong reasons, I’m keeping it for the right ones. I’m going to fix it up right, throw it around a track, and keep it in great fighting shape. If there is one thing buying the wrong car taught me, it’s to always keep an open mind, and allow yourself to like a car outside of your comfort zone. You might be surprised, and you might have quite a unique story to tell.

And, that’s the thing that’s been on my mind.

~ Jeremy

Introducing: Jeremy Hampson

Here’s the thing –

 I like to think of myself as a car guy, up until something breaks on one of my cars. Then, there I am wondering why in the hell there is half a gallon of coolant on the ground. And then I finally figure it out, asking myself why I didn’t think of that, and commit it to memory so it doesn’t happen again. Then, some other new thing I’ve never seen happens. Such is the vicious cycle of trying to keep a 30 year old car running.

For those that didn’t read the title, my name is Jeremy, and how I became a gearhead is a little strange. Allow me to explain. So I grew up mainly with just my dad, and he was (yes, was, not so much anymore, more of an armchair gear head then a ratcheting one these days) a pretty huge gear head while I was growing up. He took me around sometimes in his ’57 Chevy Sedan Delivery. It had a 454 big block, was fully restored, and done up for one of the stories in the magazine he worked for, Super Chevy. I grew up just looking at that thing, and also being hauled around in his ’95 Chevy Silverado. A Silverado that he put on coil overs and threw a supercharger on, just for the giggles. I’m pretty sure it was around that time he had the truck that I developed an unhealthy affinity for speed.

Let’s fast forward to my first car. While he may have been a gear head, and I learned car spotting from him, he never even taught me how to change my oil. But he did buy me my first car, a 1989 Honda Civic DX. It was one of those 3 door hatch backs, with a 5-speed, and power nothing. At first I thought he was crazy, no power steering or anything like that. But then I came to realize that it ended up making me a more cognizant driver, seeing as how I have to turn the wheels and all that before I stop moving. It helped me pay attention more. Anywho. So I blew the clutch in that thing, and he had it replaced for me for my birthday. That is when I learned the glory of a 5 speed, that is, being able to spin the wheels while changing gears, it was glorious.

Then, I joined the Army. After I got to my duty station, first thing I did was talk to my dad about getting my car. He said that it needed more work then was worth, had been sitting for roughly a year, and apparently the entire brake system needing replacing. Oh well. For a while I drove my wife’s Cavalier, but the gear head in me came out when I picked up a 2007 Chrysler 300 Touring with 27,000 miles on the clock. What had happened was the dreaded pink thingy problem, and after researching I found that I wasn’t going to pay a dealership several hundred dollars just to put in a new shifting column. Not when it was just going to happen again. So I took matters into my own hands, borrowed a tool set from a friend, and ripped my center console apart. It was right then that I realized I had no idea what I was doing. I ended up driving it around for a few days by sticking my finger against the pink thingy and getting it into gear that way. I ended up getting the replacement part, and it even came with instructions.

So, I ended up putting the new part in and putting everything back together. Everything was fine, except for the fact that tiptronic didn’t work anymore. Luckily that stuff doesn’t matter much to me anyways. It was like a light switch flipped in my head. All of a sudden, I had successfully fixed something that would have normally cost me hundreds of dollars to get fixed. It was an amazing feeling, and I had to do it again. I started getting tools, and workshop manuals, looking for something to fix. But nothing really came up on the 300.

So, I did what any sane person would do, I went out and bought a 1986 Porsche 944. Something I knew needed a bit of work. It soon came up that it needed a new clutch, and I’m in the process of doing that now. But that is a story for a different time. Sometimes, you may not even know that you are a gear head until fate forces you to do something, and all of a sudden it’s like a whole new world has opened up to you. You don’t even really have to know anything, you just have to be willing to learn, and that is what I did. Now, I have screwed up plenty of fixes, botched repairs just because I forgot one simple thing, and narrowly avoided dismemberment. I really don’t care when it happens though, I just look at it as a learning experience. It’s just one that hurts the wallet really bad sometimes, so it pays to remember.

~ Jeremy