PCA Newsletter and Editorial Musings

What a great photo! Taken by Dan Torbiak, this photo graces the cover of the latest edition (January/February 2017) of Red River Ramblings. Plenty to look at in this issue, including reports on the Holiday party and the Porsche Driving Experience at Barber Motorsports Park, and plenty more.

I write an editorial piece for each issue of Ramblings, and I think that just for fun I'll also reprint my editorial here on the blog. So here goes with Jan/Feb's deep thoughts:

Service above self
That’s the motto of a well-known international service club but it’s something we should remember when thinking about our cars as well. To wit: when is the last time your Porsche was treated to a full comprehensive service?

When we drive our cars only seasonally (as many owners of sports or vintage Porsches do) it’s easy to let regular maintenance slip. After all, we have a limited amount of time to drive in the summer, who wants to waste it with the car idle in a repair shop or sitting in the garage?

The issue was brought into sharp focus for me over the Christmas break. I’d wanted to get a whiteboard for the garage to keep track of oil and filter changes on our vehicles, and finally got out to Walmart to pick one up. Then came the fun part - going back through my records to write up the date, mileage of the latest service for each of the machines.

The GTI was easy - the massive engine repair bill incurred in October was still fresh in mind, and oil and filter were changed at the time as well. Recorded.

The Ducati 848 had benefited from a service (including oil and filter change) at the dealership in early 2016, just after purchase at Christmas 2015. Recorded.

The Yamaha R1's oil and filter had been changed by me in the summer of 2015 and it had done only a couple thousand kilometers since then. Recorded.   

Then things started to get a bit sketchy...

The Ducati 900SS/SP hadn’t been ridden regularly since 2014 or so, but the last oil and filter change I’d recorded was in 2013. Time to put that right in the Spring, even if I’m not going to be putting many miles on - the idea being that if I wanted to ride it on a weekend, I could do so without feeling I was compromising mechanical wear on a sumpfull of elderly oil.

When I went through the Porsche’s records I was in for a bit of a shock. The last I’d changed the oil and filter was in [date redacted] in Andy’s garage! Granted, the car’s not done too much mileage in the interim but it will definitely be due in the Spring. A major service and some repairs will be in order as well, since the blowers are now all completely non-functional after the regular use the car received in October and November.  

So with that resolved I’ll eagerly await springtime (and save my shekels for the inevitable expense of the upcoming oil changes and service). However, I guess I needn’t be too hard on myself given the relatively low mileage elapsed between services and the fact I only use top-brand full synthetic oil - ELF suggests that full-synthetic oil should go 7,500 to 10,000 miles (!) between changes and that’s far far in excess of my current interval - in fact the R1 and 848 only have about 10,000 miles total on their clocks since new!

However, I do heartily recommend the whiteboard method for those with multiple vehicles to maintain. It does help focus one on maintenance needs and I have to imagine it will be extremely satisfying to finally write up Spring maintenance on the board!