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Old 12-31-2020, 06:50 PM   #81
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It’s been almost 2 mo since I had an update. Have to be honest, I haven’t been motivated to move forward on the Mistress. I had her all put back together for the car show in mid-Sep. I created a new list of things to do and a majority of them require the dash and interior to be torn apart to complete the work. Wasn’t hot to do that. But here’s what’s new.

Key
My new key would lock the doors (my valet key wouldn’t) but it wouldn’t budge the trunk lock. Tried some graphite in it but to no avail. Decided to take it to the only locksmith who thought they could work on it a yr ago. I dropped it off and explained the issue one morning and by mid-afternoon it was done. They didn’t say if some tumblers were stuck, but the key did work in the lock now. Only problem was I was $125 lighter. I put the lock back in the trunk and I’ve solved all my key & locking issues.

Paint Imperfections
I have the sunroof scratch and a chip in the driver’s fender ready to polish but the rake claw marks haven’t been as easy. It’s taken many (4-5) batches of paint to build up to the surrounding paint layer. I have 75% of the spots filled properly, but have a few left to complete. Put a new batch of paint in them last wk and need to sand them out. Hopefully this will be the last bit of painting necessary and they’ll be ready to polish after sanding. However, that qtr panel is on the dark side of my garage so I either need to wait for a sunny, warm day to open the garage to sand or put some light on the qtr. Would prefer the former but will probably have to do the latter. I have plenty of other items to address, so I can wait for a nice day.


Interior
As I mentioned, many of the items on my To Do list require tearing the interior apart. A couple of days ago I decided to pull the front seats out in hope that would get me motivated. At some point I’ll need to take the seats to my leather guy for refurbishing, so they needed to come out. And having them out will give me more room to slide under the dash to do work. None of the gauges on the instrument panel are working, which means I needed to tear the dash pod open to get at the instrument cluster. Pulled the steering wheel off along with several panels below the wheel. Loosened 2 bolts holding the pod in place and was able to pull it fwd enough to get the cluster loose. I think I found my cluster problem. I have a post in on Rennlist to verify, but it may be an easy fix. What am I saying? Nothing’s easy with the Mistress. I think in the meantime I’ll go ahead and remove the pod shell this weekend, as it has cracks in it that will eventually need repairing. I may take it to my leather guy and see what he says. I need to pull 5 switches off the pod but the instructions on the net look fairly straight fwd. With the pod off, I can also look at the rheostat wheel that keeps the cluster permanently illuminated and drains my battery. It looked dirty / corroded so maybe a good cleaning will take care of that problem.

Here’s what she looks like right now.






While I have the interior torn apart, I need to track down why the windows don’t operate as well as why the radio isn’t making any sounds (it lights up when turned on). I also need to see why the passenger mirror isn’t working. Lots of electrical gremlins to chase.

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Old 12-31-2020, 08:21 PM   #82
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One of Porsche's best commercials ever...

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Old 01-02-2021, 02:20 PM   #83
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Got the 5 switches removed from the dash pod, along with the wires to the 2 rheostats. Only 1 of the 5 switches gave me a fight, so not too bad. Pod is now removed. I can take it to my upholstery guy on Mon. Want to find out if he can repair it and how he does it. If he fills the cracks with body filler, I can do that myself and save a few bucks.

The tear down continues.



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Old 03-06-2021, 03:59 PM   #84
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This may be the last post about the Mistress, at least under my ownership. She’s on her way to Denver with her new owner. But how did we get here?

I made several attempts to attack areas left on my To Do list. Many of them were electrical. Never seemed to make any progress, which was frustrating. I started leaning towards time to sell her to someone who could get her to the finish line. Like Clint Eastwood says, “A man’s gotta know his own limitations.” Plus I was seeing some Boxsters & Caymans with more reasonable prices, so my eye was beginning wonder. There was a delicious ’11 Boxster Spyder on PCA that really had my attn. So I put the interior back together and plotted a sales strategy. Here she is with everything back in place.



The first person I contacted was the guy in KC who had expressed interest in buying the Mistress not long after I’d purchased her. When I told him back then I was keeping her, I said I’d give him 1st crack at buying her when I was going to sell. I PM’d him thru Pelican and asked if he was still interested. He said yes. We emailed back and forth a bit, then had a long phone conversation. He wanted to buy her but the timing wasn’t right. He had fewer jobs coming in the last yr due to COVID but thought things were going to pick up in the spring. Initially he thought my price was too high but changed his mind after studying the spreadsheet of my expenses that I’d sent him. He wanted to do payments. Sorry, I’m not a bank. So we left it where we’d stay in contact if anything changed.

I put together several ads, customizing them as needed for PCA, Rennlist, Pelican, and Craigslist. I got several bites off PCA the day I placed my ad. In fact, late that day someone from Maine contacted me. He was all excited as this was the car he wanted. He was even going to pay my full asking price. He wanted to know if I wanted a down payment. I’m iffy on them and said it wasn’t necessary. He sounded very convincing that he was going to buy. We talked about shipping and PPIs. This was a Sun night. The next morning I woke up realizing I’d sold the Mistress. But I felt good about it. Then I opened my emails and read a note from him saying he didn’t sleep all night and he was going to back out of the deal. Alrighty then. And Sun night when I thought she was sold, I looked at the PCA ad for the Spyder. It had just sold that day.

I get a few more bites but none of them appear too serious. It seems most of the prospects are going to have to hire all the remaining work to be done, but that’s going to be cost prohibitive and was when they checked with their mechanics. I needed to find a buyer who could do the work themselves. Then I got an interesting email from a person in Luxembourg (yes, in Europe). He seemed very interested, gave me his name, phone #, and email addr and wanted to know if I could recommend any shipping companies. Hence my thread asking about global shipping. While I was waiting for responses to that thread, I did some due diligence on the prospective buyer, wondering if he was some rich prince, ha ha. Turns out he’s a famous race driver from there and owns an exotic dealership. This would be perfect! I chased down 3 estimates and sent them to him as I got them. Then he went silent. Oh well.

Somewhere in here I got an email from someone who saw my ad on PCA. He asked if the Mistress would be drivable to Columbus, OH? Yeah right! I clearly stated in all my ad the timing belt and water pump needed replacing. Towards the end of my ad I said she’s a running / driving car, meaning she could be driven onto a trailer (which is important when getting a shipping quote). I guess people were fixating on the latter stmt and ignoring the fact that you shouldn’t trust a 22 yr old TB on a long trip. I replied that I wouldn’t drive her to Columbus, NE, which is 50 mi from OMA. Plus we were in the depths of a record cold snap (-30 below zero one night) and it would be dangerous to even attempt a long trip in any 30 yr old car. It took a week, but amazingly I heard back from him. He was going to pass. Shocking!

It was about this time I got several bites from my Denver CL ad. Denver must have a shortage of Porsches because I always get inquiries from CL ads I post there. In fact, I’ve sold 2 cars to ppl in the Denver area (the black 06 CS and the red 14 CS) from CL ads. One prospective buyer and I had several emails and long phone conversations, but in the end he thought it would be too expensive to have someone fix the issues that remained. I also got a txt from someone who wanted to know if I’d trade for a 944 Turbo. I wasn’t too keen to trade and figured I wouldn’t hear back from him. A week goes by and then late Wed afternoon I get another txt from him asking what my bottom dollar was. I sent him the answer and he said he’d taker her. I called and he wanted to make a down payment so he’d be sure I didn’t sell the Mistress out from under him. We agreed on an amount and began planning the exchange. He thought Sat would work for him to come out.

Thur & Fri I got her ready to go and drove her around the neighborhood for about 15 min. She hadn’t been out since late Sep, so she appreciated the exercise. I started making piles of parts that I has scattered around the basement, dining room, and garage. Then I gave her a bath and some detailer. She looked marvelous. Fri I txtd my friend Phil, who had gone with me on the adventure to Spencer, IA to buy her, and said I was selling the Mistress tomorrow. He came over this morning and checked her out, having not seen her since I bought her in her sad shape. He was impressed with how she looked.

My buyer arrived around 12:30 (he left the Denver area at 3am). He spent quite a lot of time looking her over and we drove around the neighborhood a bit too. After what seemed like a lot of deliberation, he said he’d take her, so we did the paperwork and then loaded her on a U-haul trailer. Kind of funny – she arrived at my house on a U-haul trailer and left on a U-haul trailer. The Mistress’ new owner has had 928s before, so he has experience with them. I hope he’s able to take her to the finish line and have a great car. I guess I never asked him if he planned to keep her or sell her, but it doesn’t matter as long as he gets her issues resolved. She deserves it.




It’s been a long and winding road, but overall a great experience. I’ve gotten to own and learn about one of the coolest Porsches ever made. For being 34 yrs old, she still has a modern look to her. I hope you’ve enjoyed my journey. While I’ve only driven her 5 or so miles at a time, she’s taken me places I’ve never been before. I don’t know if the new owner will keep me informed of his progress or not. If he does, I’ll pass it along.

As I was logging on to various platforms to delete my ads, I had a PM from the KC guy on Pelican. He asked if I still had the shark. Nope, I just sold her. There were also 3 guys I had to email saying she was sold. Why do potential buyers always appear after a car is spoken for?

And a couple of hrs after the Mistress left for Denver, I got a txt from a friend asking if I’d sold the shark. I said yes, how did he know? He said he passed her around Kearney, NE. She’s still turnin heads on I-80. Good for her!
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Old 03-06-2021, 05:40 PM   #85
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Congratulations on your sale and all the great work you accomplished on the 928. I appreciate you taking the time to share the journey with the forum. You got her looking and performing to a point that you changed her trajectory upward. Someone is going to be very proud to be a long term owner of that beautiful car.

On to the next one!
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Old 03-06-2021, 10:08 PM   #86
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Originally Posted by dghii View Post
Congratulations on your sale and all the great work you accomplished on the 928. I appreciate you taking the time to share the journey with the forum. You got her looking and performing to a point that you changed her trajectory upward. Someone is going to be very proud to be a long term owner of that beautiful car.

On to the next one!
+1 to above

It is fantastic that you share with us the journey with the cars you work on. Very interesting and same time educating, thank you!
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Old 03-08-2021, 10:44 AM   #87
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Thanks for the ride-along! Looking forward to more stories about your cars.
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Old 03-09-2021, 07:18 AM   #88
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I too have enjoyed your documenting your 928 journey. Thanks!
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Old 03-31-2021, 07:25 PM   #89
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Terry,
Saw your ad for the 928 in Panorama this month.
Glad you sold it for a reasonable price to someone who can finish the project.
Now you can take your VISA card out of the freezer. (It should be cooled down by now])
Just sayin'.......
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Old 04-01-2021, 05:51 AM   #90
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Saw your ad for the 928 in Panorama this month.
Glad you sold it for a reasonable price to someone who can finish the project.
That's the downside of the PCA classifieds - advertising in Pano is behind reality. I marked my online ad as sold as soon as I had CIF (cash in fist), but the delay in publishing a magazine with dated ads came into play. I must have priced it market correct as I've gotten an email and a phone call this wk from the Pano ad.

Quote:
Originally Posted by TeamOxford View Post
Now you can take your VISA card out of the freezer.
A couple of items here...
I had almost $7K in parts in the Mistress. While I didn't have a high dollar amt in the purchase price, esp compared to other WD cars, the high amt in parts bothered me and was a major factor in deciding to sell vs finish. There were several high dollar items left to do (timing belt & refinishing the dash to name a few) that were going to push that amt even higher. All told, it could have been another $3-4K. I didn't want to go there. That may seem odd when you consider I had $40K in my last WD car, but the time involved to reach the finish line was too long for me to invest that much more. A typical WD car is a 2 wk to 3 mo commitment, not yrs.

There were some advantages to spending so much on parts. I used points to select a new GoPro 7 Black edition and it was miles ahead in picture quality compared to my old GoPro 2. This yr's Indy videos jump off the screen they looks so good. So membership has its privileges.
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Old 04-01-2021, 07:11 PM   #91
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All points taken, Terry.

I owned three transaxle Porsches during their "period", and they were wonderful machines compared to what was available in the sport car market at the time.

But I would never undertake ownership now, considering the time and cost involved to bring them up to a 40 year old spec.

IMHO, it's best to let the past stay where it is......in the past.

Just sayin'.........

TO
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Old 03-08-2022, 06:03 AM   #92
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Sunday was the 1 yr anniversary of selling The Mistress. I hadn't heard for the new owner, so I tracked down his contact info and emailed him. He responded back, saying he'd changed the timing belt, water pump, and power steering hoses but hadn't had a chance to addr the electrical issues. Life issues got in the way. Totally understand as my time has been consumed with life issues for the last yr too. But she still looks good.



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