Many older cars did not have relays to switch power for their headlights. Modern bulbs can draw much higher current than older units and can cause failures in dash or column switches. Fortunately, adding relays to resolve this issue is pretty straight forwards. For extra credit, add inline headlight fuses if your car does not have them. While the specifics here pertain to most g-body (1974-1989) Porsche 911s, they can be applied to any older vehicle. I installed headlight r

I've put stainless steel flex lines in all of my cars; the Triumph has them as does the Carrera. In both cases the original rubber lines were ancient, and in both cases I was using the car in Auto-X competition and wanted to remove any squish in the brake pedal. It's a personal thing, but I am a huge fan of what they do. So now the A5 is 12 years old and hitting 97,000mi. I had to flush the brake fluid because its been over 2 years, and I figured I'd install the new lines at

Is this normal or is something wrong? The rockershaft & rockers are a brand new Moss kit; springs, spacers and pedastals are carried over from the old one. I cleaned the springs in petroleum spirits to make sure they weren't stuck together/binding. They seem to be pushing their rocker arm into good positions. In the video below, the engine had run for maybe 5 minutes here, warm enough to not need the choke, and for decent amounts of oil to flow out the tops of most of the ro

The 911 is going to get a top end rebuild near term and if it happens during the Auto-x season I'm looking at my options. I can trot out the ancient Spitfire which will be a lot of sideways fun, but will not be able to get on pace unless I fit it with slicks, and even then.. or see how the Audi holds up. This seems like the better option, but I don't want to do anything too racy to my 'grownup car'. Speaking with some other competitors (Audi drivers), theirv reputation is th

Replacing disc brakes are one of those jobs that is easy enough for a shade tree mechanic to take on without too much concern. Yes, it's your brakes, but they are nearly the same on every car. They're just a much stronger version of your bicycle's brakes, but operated via hydraulics rather than a cable. [Cars like the Model A Ford did use a cable. Not fun.] It had been years since I had my brakes worked on and now they were making grinding noises. This is a 'feature'; they te

I had more noise coming from the front of the car than is normal, and not the right noises. Cars make happy sewing machine noises at the front and burble noises at the rear. Or they should. I went underneath, looking for a leak. There was nothing obvious. So I removed the splash shield under the engine to view the downpipe. I put the car up on the quick jack, locked it in place and then started the car, letting it idle while I crawled under it. I like using a piece of paper

I had my first couple of codes thrown with a CEL back around 90,000mi. The fun thing with codes is they can have multiple causes and in fact the online shop manual I started using takes feedback from users as to what actually resolved a particular issue in order to help guide others. A pretty cool feature, although I still prefer a traditional shop manual I don't have to log into. I did a pretty basic tune-up plus new coil packs and the car was running well. But then it thr

Note: After reading the TapeOp article I changed the terminology for this post. They make a good case for "alignment" referring to the mechanical systems and things like head height and azimuth. Calibration is a more proper term for getting the electrical bits set properly. I replaced the capstan motor, capstan belt & idler tire in my old cassette deck and cleaned the controls. Now it works, seemingly pretty well. But is it performing up to spec? Can it be better? I purchase

Our refrigerator came with the house. It's a big stainless steel GE Monogram with an ice an water dispenser. Our first fancy fridge. The unit appears to date to about 2008. It has always worked nicely for us but this past summer it suddenly went on the fritz. The dispenser control panel would not respond and then the whole thing, fridge & freezer, stopped chilling. Even the interior lights didn't work. Last Christmas it was the oven. Now it's the fridge. Are we on some kind o

Prompted by our youngest becoming interested in making a 'mix tape' but not knowing what was involved. Literally... Me: "Do you have a cassette deck to use?" Them: "What's that?" I found my old tape deck in 'meh' condition at roughly 40 years of age. I hadn't used it in a very long time. It's a Denon DR-M33, from roughly 1984. It's pretty well built for a 'home' unit, it features 3 discrete heads and a dual capstan direct drive transport. It depends on a belt for the capsta

Once I had replaced the very noisy rear bearing I was able to hear a less noisy moan from the front of the car. It seems apparent I hit a pothole at some point that damaged both sets of bearings on the right side of the car. The left side seems completely fine. I read a bunch of threads and watched a bunch of videos (favorites below), ordered a few tools and got to work. High level tips/observations: Protect your wheel studs as you hammer away at stuff. In one video I saw a

In which I collect & test a number of approaches found in the wild to see what works. I don't write these because I am an 'expert'. I just try to collect the best approaches I can find and put them into a single document based on what actually worked for me. I had no idea when the bearing went bad. I drove all summer with the windows open and the sunroof too. It wasn't until it got cold out that I noticed the classic moaning of a bad wheel bearing. It was clearly coming from

The “after” pic in our little story. Just waiting to have new bushings glued on. Passivated Zinc plating is a really sharp look while protecting these parts from corrosion. My spring plates were in rough shape but it was also the middle of the Auto-X season. In the interest of time and adjustability I replaced the original spring plates on the car with an adjustable set from Prekom. They work great, and look terrific. But what to do with the old plates and hardware? They wer

Cornering on the stock suspension. Might be time for bigger anti-roll bars! (photo: Charles LeTouzey, CVR PCA) Having a few years of...

An easy fix, but one I was aprehensive about. I'm used to interior pieces being difficult to remove without either first removing other parts, or impossible to re-install due to the assembly order of operations. Luckily this job had neither issue. My door seals were already shredded when I got the car, and my sill plates were ugly and too short. Probably not uncommon, the door seal is pretty ripped up. There was some mild bodywork done on the door and a re-spray of the rear

How I installed new adjustable spring plates in the 911

My low horn stopped working and while I don't honk much, I would like it to not sound silly when I do. And the passenger side bellows...

Harkening back to my consulting days, here's the answer first and if you want the saga, well it's still all there. The Sunroof was...

Back in the fall of 2013 my VW Jetta lease was ending and my fancy consulting job gave me a stipend to pay for a nice car. I went looking for an Audi A5 with a stick, initially used but then found a cool deal on a new S-Line in Daytona Grey Pearl with a 6-speed. I didn't want an S5, the engine seemed a bit pricey to maintain and the even more expensive RS5 did not come with a manual so that was out even before I couldn't afford it. The S-line was kind of perfect, Quattro AWD,

I turned the key to lock the doors, and the lock went down and then popped back up. I tried it from both sides and got the same result. A...