I had been faithful to the British car hobby for years, having owned a couple of MG Midgets, but I sold the last one ing '99 when we moved to the Raleigh, NC area after a 6 month layoff.  Just under 3 years later I find myself moving to the Charleston< SC area after a more length and traumatic layoff.  I seemed like I had the fecal touch - making my employers shut down due to bankruptcy or corporate acquisition.  A year later it happened again, but this time we stayed in the area and I found employment within weeks.  Need less to say it took a bit before I felt like we were financially sound enough to get back in the hobby I sorely missed.

This time I wanted to avoid rust so I started looking into kit cars and replicas.  I started with Cobras because they were the most plentiful, but the cost and uber-macho vibe just didn't work for me.  I bought a copy of Kit Car Builder (I think) magazine with a custom Thunder Ranch Speedster on the cover, which started me changing my opinion about Speedster replicas.  The more I looked into them, the more I liked them.

In late 2004 I came across the SOC and liked the vibe as it was a lot more relaxed than the Cobra sites I had been lurking on.  I also saw pics from the 2004 Carlisle show as well as the Knott's Berry Farm show, and I liked a lot of what I saw.  pretty soon people started talking about the '05 Carlisle gathering and I decided I should make the trip.  At that time most of the replica and kit manufacturers car to the show with examples of their products, and it seemed like a good place to compare and contrast the different cars and manufacturers.  I reached out to @East Coast Bruce who was running the show at the time, and he told me I'd be welcome to join them.

Well the trip was a blast.  I met a lot of great folks, had a lot of fun, and saw a lot of gorgeous cars (and a lot of Carlisle's infamous May rain).  Among the folks I met were Gordon ( @Gordon Nichols) and Chris Nichols (Five Cent Racing, aka FCR) and Carey Hines ( @chines1) (Special Edition).  After the Carlisle show it seems that both FCR and Carey had similar thoughts about doing a promotional build of a Beck Speedster at the next year's show.  At that time the Beck Speedster had only been on the market a short time and there weren't many out there, so this was to get some publicity.  They put their heads together and started planning, but Carey pointed out that for it to be feasible for Special Edition he needed a buyer.  They both remembered me from Carlisle and Gordon gave me a call during which he said something along there lines of "Carey Hines is going to call you and you really need to listen to what he has to say."

Well Carey did call, and what he had to say was very interesting.  Let's just say he offered the demo car to me at a significant discount, which made it within my budget - after some negotiation with my CFO.  The car was completed at the 2006 Carlisle show (chilly and wet though the weather was), going from several pallets to a drivable, albeit unsorted car in roughly 16 hours.  The car was delivered to me by Kevin Hines (Carey's dad and Chuck Beck's business partner for those of you who haven't met him) on 1 June 2006, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Great stories, guys.

Everybody's heard mine, but suffice it to say -- rust and a perception that VWs were cheap (as compared to V8 muscle cars) were the main drivers towards this. I never thought I'd still be in it 25 years later, but I'm a lifer now. I've built a large chunk of my life around this.

I was (and am) a Midwestern motor-head from a small town out in flyover country. VWs were a thing for about 10 minutes here, and had all returned to their base elements 20 years prior to me seeing a Kit Car magazine with a VS on the cover in a supermarket where I was working. My new business was making solid money, and I had a green (not even yellow) light from Mrs. Galat to buy a cool car. Her only caveat was "no Corvettes", which made me sad because I really wanted a nice C2.

Anyhow, I bought that magazine and called Kirk out in CA. In the magazine, there was an air-conditioned Speedster, and I wanted one. Kirk talked about not doing it. He also tried to talk me out of leather seats. Maybe it was a bad day for him, but he kinda' ran me off.

This was in 2000, and eBay was just taking off. I looked online and bought a home-built car for less than $10K.

And the rest is history. That was 2 cars ago -- I commissioned a JPS in 2002, sold it in 2005 to have an Intermeccanica coach built. It was the best decision I'd ever made, following the worst (with JPS).

20 years later, that car is 100% mine -- I've changed a LOT of things, but it's still got the gooey goodness all of us love. It's achingly beautiful and more fun that an entire barrel of monkeys.

Lane's car build at Carlisle is a story unto itself.  Chris and I started going to Carlisle in 2004 and after the 2005 gathering, as we were heading back home to New England from Pennsylvania, we got talking about all the cool stuff we had seen and done and wondered what we could possibly do to top that next year (when I was taking over as Organizer of the Speedsters Meet Spyders and other kits) and the comment was made, "I wonder if we could build a Speedster right at the show?"  Followed by, "Dad, it took you SEVEN YEARS to finish your CMC."  

"Yeah, I know, but Special Edition has a Beck kit that is, like, 80% finished already, and all you do is install the drivetrain, seats, lights and a few other goodies.  We could maybe build one of those in a weekend!"

After a few calls to Carey and Kevin Hines we figured out that, yes indeed, given the right kit, with the right amount of pre-assembly done, some SOC volunteers and a really good set of tools, we should be able to pull it off in two days, right at the show.

So then things started to snow-ball.  I contacted the marketing folks at the Carlisle Show grounds and got their immediate buy-in.  Their comment:  "I know for certain that no one has ever built a car at the Knott's Berry Farm show!!"   

They promised marketing support, free advertising, a primo work space in a covered pavilion with security, plenty of electrical power and close proximity to the food booths (And "Debbie's Hot Buns") and the SOC area of the show field.  I promised them (A guy named Ed Stazinski) a safe, orderly work space, no rowdiness, workers free to take spectator questions as we progressed and plenty of photos and videos during the build.  I don't remember who brought the Video team, either Beck or Carlisle, but they were there quite a lot, too, filming the build progress.  

The details were covered on here back in 2006 and should be find-able using the search function, but the bottom line was that we pulled it off in something like 16 hours (two eight hour shifts, going from a body and lots of boxes of parts

Installing stuff and taking spectator questions along the way:

To a (mostly) completed car that did a victory lap around the show field just before 4pm on the second day, Lane driving and Carey Hines from Beck as co-pilot.  

We were event attendees, so we only worked 8 hours per day over two days and did event things in the evening with the rest of the SOC group, including a banquet dinner.  It was a great build group of everyone from semi-professional builder types to an accountant with few mechanical skills who really wanted to help in some way - We found jobs for all of them based on their skill sets and they were truly a great group:

Lane wrote about life after getting his car, and he was a yearly Carlisle attendee, driving his car from South Carolina (where there really aren't a lot of other Speedsters) to Pennsylvania and back and lived to tell about it - Many times - And made a lot of good friends along the way.

"...And made a lot of good friends along the way."

Yes I did!  And here I am 18 years later, and still having a ball with those friends.

Phase 1: 1960 +/- age about 15. friend up the street drives down to my house with a newly acquired, used '57 Speedster. "Damn John, that looks really cool!"  Spent many hours in the right seat of that car.

Phase 2: Graduating from college, 1966, need/want a car, see ad on bulletin board: 1956 356 A Coupe for sale, $600.  Borrowed the money, bought the car.  Long story here, lots of air-cooled OJT and plenty of rust.

Phase 3: 1968, '56 car no longer safe to drive (rust) so take small inheritance from grandfather ($2,000??) and buy a '61 S90, 356 B.  Very nice car, wonderful DD.

Phase 4: wandering in the desert . . . from the '70s up to 2006 or so. Both the '56 and the '61 are sold at the start of this barren period due to lack of funds sufficient to keep the rust at bay; continue chasing the American dream for 30 plus years: wife, kids, mortgage, old house, career ...

Phase 5: 2005, divorce, empty nest, other sad travails; I've never had a convertible "fun" car, and it might be time. Disposable income now in much better shape. Shop around. Drive a Miata, S2000, BMW Z-something.  Not feeling it.

Phase 6: 2006, stumble on to a Car and Driver magazine in the airport, studying tire ads for my then DD. See a 1/4 (or 1/8?) page ad from JPS for a Speedster replica. No shyt!!?  I could have a Speedster? Fly to No Hollywood, spend the day with his nibs, JPS, and decide this could actually work. Start writing checks.  "Damn John, that looks really cool!!" The rest you all know.

Here we go...

Growing up, I read anything on anything powered by an ICE. I was always drawn to DIY stuff: replicas, homebuilt aircraft, hovercraft, homebuilt gyrocopters, helicopters, etc.

I read lots of car mags back then, especially VW and kit car mags. In 1984, when I was 20 years old, I read an article that changed my life. I was living at my parent's house, going to the local State University(so no extra money). I got an issue of VW & Porsche(later changed to European Car) which featured a centerfold of a Beck 550 Spyder. The article was titled "Cool As Ice". The Spyder was silver and had 356/912 running gear: motor and brakes at least.

Speedsters were cool, but I always HAD to have a Spyder.

I decided right then and there that I would have one at some point. Fast-forward to the 1990s I had a good job and got married. We(I) bought a house. I wanted to build an RV-4 kitplane but thought better of it and turned to the car world again. If the car crapped out you can just pull over, right? Not so in a plane.

I started thinking about Spyders again. I got literature from both Chuck Beck and Greg Leach. It took a bit more time, but in 2001 I pulled the trigger and ordered a roller from Greg at Vintage. It arrived the summer of 2002, just after we had started the process of divorce. I had two really young kids so the focus was on them and retaining sanity.

Once everything was settled in 2005 I started working on the car in earnest. It was finished in summer/fall of 2005. I got it registered in 2006 and have been hanging with you folks ever since.

A crash and a new car later(in 2016) I still have a Spyder and it is the shizzle. I drove it yesterday. It was 75 F out and glorious.

@Lane Anderson & @Gordon Nichols- that is a great story guys!  I already knew the Cliff Notes version (Lane's car was built by members at Carlisle over a 2 day period) but it's really neat to hear some of the details.  When I read that is was a year in the making (something I hadn't thought of) I realized that of course it would take that much planning.

You wouldn't believe the planning.  At that time, I had retired from a career of project planning in the computer biz so I just treated this build like another project with a task list and overall schedule but instead of covering weeks or months, the schedule was in hours.

People volunteered to help (or got volunteered with a very little coaxing) and then I asked them what their skill set was, which went from "I build things - like cars" all the way to "I push papers for a living".  

Then, with Carey's help at Beck, I created a task list of everything that needed to get done and in a specific order, then matched people skills to tasks and got everyone assigned.  

Lastly, I set up a build schedule so people would know, roughly, when to show up for their stints and what came before and after.  All that went really, really well, and checking my build notes, we actually finished it in less than 16 hours.  

I remember a small group of people would hang out at the barrier around the work area to watch progress and we often got the question: "Do you guys all work for Beck?"  The answer was "No, We're just a bunch of people who got together to build this car." THAT made a great impression on the spectators.  

And the Paper Pusher?  He had bought a gorgeous Intermeccanica Roadster and wrote his check, but with us, he got to be part of a car's build team.  He ended up pushing the brake pedal for half an hour when we bled the brakes to get a solid pedal.  He was pumped!  We gave him something important to do and he was a part of the team.  

A few more "action shots":

Pretty amazing, Gordon; all I can say is "wow!" and I do wish I'd been there.

I didn't join the SOC until 2013.  But I was one of the first members of Spyderclub.com.  It started for me in 1988.  Read an article in Car and Driver about the Beck Spyder.  I was a sugical intern making $19k/year with 2 kids.  I put that magazine away until 1998.  By then I was a successful physician.  So I pulled that magazine out in 1998 (I still have it) and called the number in the article.  Chuck Beck answered so I arranged a trip to CA.  I also called an upstart, Greg Leach, at Vintage motorcars of Hawaiin Gardens. 

I met with Chuck and Greg in 1998 and ordered a Vintage from Greg with a 2109 CB engine.  I received that car in 1999 and drove it for a few years.  I really didn't have the time or know how  to own a car with an air cooled VW engine so I sold it. 

In 2001 I ordered the first ever Suby Spyder car built by anyone.  After 2.5 years I received that car in 2003.  The Subaru engine builder I chose was a complete scammer who sold me a blown up engine.  Started blowing oil out of the breather filters the first day I drove it.  So I paid to completely rebuild the engine with a new shortblock.  However, after I got the engine rebuilt I found out the car would not cool during spirited driving.  The radiator was mounted in the rear and just wouldn't cool no matter how it was positioned.  The car really left a bad taste in my mouth so I sold it.

At that time I started my love with motorcyle sport touring.  I absolutely fell in love with Ducati motorcyles.  I also bought a Caterham Super 7 as a roller and put the car together with a friend of mine.

When I moved from FL back to VA in 2005 I sold the Caterham but I kept the Ducatis.  So many motorcyles until 2013.  At that time I had a near fatal motorcycle accident on a Ducati coming off the Cherohala Skyway.  My wife theatened to leave me if I didn't sell the Ducatis so I did.  It took me 2.5 years to recover from my injuries so I couldn't ride anyway.

So in 2013 I bought a used slow 2009 Intermeccanica.  But in the next 2.5 years I healed and felt the need for speed again.  So in 2016 I called Greg Leach again.  By then he had perfected the Suby Spyder.  I received my Spyder in 2017 and as promised it has been perfect.  Beautiful, reliable and very fast.

However my wife really missed the IM so I bought a used IM a little while ago.  Pat Downs built at T4 for it and Greg Leach is doing the work on the car.  I go to LA next week fot final inspection next Tuesday. 

Uggh.  Lots of cars over a long period of time.  But the last 2 are keepers.

I started lurking on this site back in 2014, but my love for speedsters started earlier in life. As a kid about 15 years old I got my drivers license and my main form of transportation was a Honda 90. About that time the dune buggy thing was just getting started. I guy in town had a cool Tiny Thompson Burrow buggy. It was a custom frame work on a VW chassis and had an aluminum panel body. There was a waiting list to have one built, so my Father ordered a kit from EMPI called the Empi Sportster. We found a 1956 VW without an engine for $150.00 and towed it home. We got a guy from Yugoslavia who lived near us to help remove the body and shorting the VW chassis. He had worked on VW's before and he could also weld. He took the body in trade for the welding and body removal. I had a Cousin who work at a VW dealership in the LA area. He got us a Bus engine, single port 1500cc. On the weekends we would work on it as a Father-Son project. We finished the build after about 6 months and took it for the first drive. Wanting to learn more about how to work on VW's, I began hanging out at this local Porsche/ VW repair shop. Al Elliott was the owner and was also a hot rodder. So were the other two guys that worked there. I remember they had a 4 Cam Porsche engine sitting in the window. It belonged to Kent Fuller, Hall of fame drag car builder. I became good friends with the guys and they would help me tune the buggy and later my first car a !968 VW. I loved the look of the 356's and especial the speedsters. So hanging out there got me wishing I could own one someday. Fast forward through years for motorcycles, Sand rails, Off-Road buggies, The whole Van Craze and a long and wonderful trip into the Hot Rod world and show car scene. I found the SOC and ordered my speedster from Vintage in March of 2021 the way I wanted it. I had read all about the do and don'ts and had a good idea what I wanted. Greg was very helpful in making that happen. I took delivery of my Subaru powered speedster in June of 2023. I enjoy this site a lot. The people are great, funny, knowledge and they all like PIE !! The first guy I met from SOC was my friend Mike Pickett from Maui, Hawaii. After our met and greet on Maui, I thought if all the guys are like Mike, I'm in .......... I was able to meet up with the West Coast SOC group a couple times in San Luis Obispo, CA. Even when I didn't have a speedster and showed up in a Hot Rod, it was a very welcoming experience. I hope to meet more of you in the future. I'm here to stay as long as you'll have me.

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Of all the Porsche dealers in all the towns in all the world, I had to walk into that one.

It was 1977 and I had no business being in a Porsche dealership. To this day, I can't remember why I was. It certainly wasn't to buy a new car, or even a used one. As they would be for most of my adult life, Porsches were just a step too far. I probably could have borrowed, begged, or stolen enough to have one, but I could never quite feel comfortable doing it. Somehow, I just never thought of myself as Porsche worthy.

But, there it was, on the showroom floor, next to all the shimmering, new 911's. Why it was there, I didn't know, as they never parked used cars there.

It was a '63 C Coupe, but it looked as new as any of the other cars. And, at about 14 years old, it was too new to have been restored at that point. This had been someone's baby. The yellow stickers on the engine were still crisp. There was no dust on the fan shroud. Everything sparkled.

And there was something about that older, classic shape. The car had a presence out there on the floor that none of the 911's did. It was holding its own among the debutantes. And it was speaking to me. It had my ear.

I glanced at the window sticker.

Six thousand dollars.

Yikes! Were they kidding? I'd never seen anyone asking more for a used car than it had cost new. What did they think this was, the Aly Khan's Rolls Royce?

It was, after all, just a used car. I could wait. The prices would inevitably come down as they always do with used cars, right?  What kind of rube did they think I was?

Well, as it happens, it's been a long and winding road since then and I've lost track of just how many times I've stopped by the roadside to rediscover just exactly what kind of rube I am.

Fast forward 35 years, several sporting driving machines owned, and many stops by that roadside made. It was around 2012, a year into a somewhat stable retirement. The prices of nice, 'driver' C Coupes (nothing special, y'know, just a nice driver) had still not started to fall, and quite the contrary. I reluctantly began to see they probably wouldn't in my lifetime. Could I have been wrong about that? And it was just then that I discovered this site and the world of plastic Speedsters.

OK, I've bored you enough as it is, and you're too familiar with the noise I've been making here ever since, so I won't drag this out.

In 2013, after a year here, and knowing everything I could possibly need to know to make a wise choice, I bought a brand, spanking new build from one of the low-priced three, and since it was a brand new car, I figured I wouldn't need to do a thing to it — just drive off happily into the sunset.

What did I know? What could I know?

It turned out the car was fine. All it needed was a new engine, new carbs, new transaxle, new distributor, a realignment, new brake caliper brackets, new headlights, new wiring and switches, new fuel tank venting, and maybe just a few dozen other things, but eventually, thanks to a lot of help from a great mechanic, from a supportive wife, and from the peanut gallery here, I have a reliable driver and probably the most enjoyable automobile I've ever owned.

And while I little suspected it at the time, this place turned out to be the start of a beautiful, new friendship.

Mine was NOT a "Porsche" family.  We were more into Ferguson farm tractors from the 1940's and old Ford sedans and trucks when I was growing up.

So it came as a bit of a surprise when my brother came home on leave from the Air Force, driving a 356 Speedster in Forest Green (definitely NOT a Porsche color).  It had been in a slight fender-bender so he took it to a local auto body guy with a great reputation to make it like new again and paint it the original Porsche Meissen Blue (that was, in fact, the same guy who taught me how to gas weld steel panels).  My brother returned to the Air Force from leave, so my Dad got to drive the little car now and then, sometimes picking me up at school after Band or sports practice.

Fast forward a few years and I joined a volunteer medical group like the Peace Corps but on a much smaller scale.  The day I flew out to Central America I picked up the very first copy (Vol 1 Number 1) of "Dune Buggy Magazine" way before merging with "Hot VWs".  That would have been May of 1967 and I kept that magazine forever.  When I got home I wanted to build a buggy and found a 1957 VW, pretty beat up, but the pan and drivetrain were fine so for $25 and the use of a farm truck, I had a chassis to built on.  That buggy was copied from the magazine story of Sal Havens' buggy of Costa Mesa, California, a friend of Bruce Meyers, and I made the entire body from Marine grade Plywood, just like his.  That was eventually sold to subsidize my freshman year of college.  

During college I commuted from home, worked full time and got the same Hot Rod bug that Dave caught, building a 1946 Ford Business Coupe, similar to the first car I remember my parents having.  It cost me $300 and a haul home.  It had a Flathead V8 (bored out 300 thousandths), custom intake and exhaust, Kong Magneto, a LaSalle 4-speed with floor shifter, Z-Bars front and rear to help pretend that it could take corners well and a DIY Diamond-tufted set of seats (jump seat in the back).  It was a terror from zero to 70 but ran out of breath around 80 or so.

That was a lot of fun until the kids started to come along and we suddenly got poor, so the coupe was sold and I had mundane transportation, mostly pickup trucks, for the next fifteen years while we built a home, had kids and I changed jobs a few times.  

I got recruited by friends into my last job, a company that had very little in the way of business systems in place, so a few of us had to create all that from scratch in what came to be called the "You Bet Your Company" program. The pressure was off the charts and eventually I burned out and ended up in Hospital for a month.  I remembered my brother's Speedster after someone brought me a bunch of car magazines from the rack of a local drug store and I saw the ads for Classic Motor Carriages.  That was when I was leaving the hospital, but my doctor told me to get a hobby to forget work or I would end up back there visiting his fine Hospital staff that I had grown to love.

So....  I bought a CMC kit, fought with them to get everything delivered that I paid for and used the build as a work escape.  But first, I had to build a third bay onto my attached garage which became my workshop for the car build.  That bay took about a year and then the Speedster build, after a couple of false starts, could start.  I finished the build in early 2001 when I retired, but they're never really finished, are they?  Lots of "upgrades" happened after that, like the vinyl dash pad, the top installation, polished spoke Fuchs wheels, better seats and on and on til today.  

Maybe a shorter history, not having as many cool cars as others on here, but I had fun just the same I and I am still here to tell about it.   That surprises me more than anything else.

Almost as much as my surprise at meeting a large group of very good friends after joining the SOC.  I wish other Internet groups could be as welcoming, but this one seems to be unique.

Thank you, @Theron!

Yes, txs Theron!! Best internet club -- or whatever this is -- ever.

I found out about the SOC AFTER I had made my deal at JPS.  I had no clue about the larger Speedster replicar industry, and in hindsight, might have spoken to Beck and Vintage had I known the lay of the land.  BUT . . .  Having had two 356s I figured I knew a thing or two about the air cooled world, and this reskinned VW would not present me with insurmountable or unknown troubles.  What all I saw at the JPS shop in No. Hollywood looked very familiar to me.  All that turned out to be sorta right and sorta wrong, depending.  The SOC is a true treasure and I am grateful to the cognosci who wander these virtual halls, and one or the other of which seem to know all the answers.

Having some internet troubles, here is a test posting.

Still testing . . .

Sorry for the clutter, sorting out some firewall issues . . .

The title of this thread is:

How did you find yourself in the Speedster World?

Looks like Kelly is still looking for himself..........    🙃

yes, lost in the deep dark innerworkings (or lack thereof) of MS Windows . . .

After a restart, I seem to be able to load Chrome, load this site, post one reply and then when I try to post another, it hangs up.  Little dots go round and round forever.  Something very wrong.

... a new day, a better result?

@El Frazoo posted:

... a new day, a better result?

Only you know for sure.

@El Frazoo posted:

... a new day, a better result?

Not everywhere...

1972-1997 I was a member of the PCA (Porsche Club of America) and also the POC (Porsche Owners Club).

I was leading a caravan of 15 Porsches from SoCal to Monterey for the 1990 Porsche Parade. We made a stop-over in San Luis Obispo for a 356 Registry gathering. At that event I saw a black outlaw '58 Speedster with Fuchs and bagged (slammed). I thought that was the coolest 356 I'd ever seen.

Long story short, years later in 2000 I was in the market for a Speedster. After a year of searching through the weekly Auto Trader I couldn't find a similar black Speedster and eventually ended up with a really nice silver VS.

I had been driving that car for 5 years before encountering SOC member David Salvatore in Laguna Beach who hollered "Check out Speedster Owners dot com". That's when I joined the knuckleheads on SOC in 2005.

As a daily driver it logged 100,000 relatively trouble-free miles until it was wrecked (totaled) in 2014 as I was leading a SOC caravan from SoCal to the West Coast Cruise in San Luis Obispo (SLO).

With the insurance settlement from the driver at fault, I replaced that wrecked VS with the Speedster I had envisioned since seeing that outlaw in 2000.

So far, I have logged 50,000 relatively trouble-free miles with this daily driver and continue to enjoy the friends I've encountered on SOC.

" ... In the Speedster World" -- for the snext stop after all these remarkable origin stories, how about looking for most miles logged.  I ay this figuring it's most likely MUSBJIM, as you might tell from his post.

Does anyone in addition to Jim use their Speedster as their daily driver?

My girlfriend and I were on Maui for a period including my birthday.  I thought it would be fun to get a sports car of some kind and tour around.  I found Jérôme’s business renting replica Speedsters.  I have been a Porsche owner since 1989, but had never driven a 356.  At my request, my GF rented one for my birthday.  Jerome has great cars, and is very friendly.

We drove it from Kihei to the north side above Kapalua.  That was it.  I was astounded at how well they drive.  I said I wanted to get one and we chuckled…. I bought one very similar to the photo within 2 months.  It took 15 months to get it, but that was the story.  Mine is even better, but it is very close to “Pele”.  Thanks, Jerome!

Jim and Nick met me at VMC and gave me a tour of the coast.  Thanks, guys!

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@Michael McKelvey posted:

.

...Does anyone in addition to Jim use their Speedster as their daily driver?

Well, if by 'daily driver' you mean Costco runs or 'neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night', then I guess the answer is no.

But I do drive it every chance I get, and try to not let it ever sit for more than a week at a time. I haven't logged Jim's miles, but have more than 50K now, over 11 years.

I do this as much for the car as for my own jollies (or so I tell my wife). I've found that the less you let it sit, the better it runs. As a solvent, fresh, flowing gas does good things to fuel lines, carburetor innards, and float bowls, etc. Not to mention that a steady driving routine helps keep the gas fresh. And enough heat to wake up the temp gauge boils off any moisture that may have collected since the last runup.

When I first got the car, I was pulling the idle jets and 'blowing them out' all the time and messing with the mixture screws, idle stops, and timing constantly, ever chasing that 'perfect tune' where it would idle smoove, move off from a stop without a stumble, and hum along in good synch at cruise.

But ever since I upgraded the dizzy a few years back and settled into this routine of driving it as much as possible, I need to fuss with the tune hardly at all. I work around the mixture screws about every six months (which takes maybe five minutes), but that's really all it ever needs.

The EMPI hex bar linkage was pretty carefully set up at initial install, but has been rock solid. It just doesn't get up and walk around in the night.

And yeah, I get that you can't do this if you live in Frostbite Falls, North Dakota, but this is just another reason why you shouldn't.

.

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@Sacto Mitch posted:

And yeah, I get that you can't do this if you live in Frostbite Falls, North Dakota, but this is just another reason why you shouldn't.

Well, the good people here in Frostbite Falls would like to have a word. We're pretty partial to our little corner of God's green earth and the way we enjoy this hobby.

Winter is a time when everybody gets a bit stir crazy and some of us start doing unnatural things to our little contraptions. Dry sumping and twin-plugging and the like.

We remember that 3rd gear seemed like it was juuuuust a little too short when coming out of a bend, or that the reach to the pedal cluster was not quite right when we took that 14 hr jaunt to Greater Nowhere, USA last summer. A flamethrower for the exhaust seems like it might be neat, or a set of Danish tires available for sale only in a certain boutique tire-shop in Copenhagen. Besides, the engine case is covered in an oil mist and the nuts holding the transaxle to the case are rounding on the points of the hex heads. It has to come out anyhow, so....

We just go ahead and tear the whole thing down, shovel a wheelbarrow load of money into the boilers of progress and start hunting on Czech eBay for tool steel widgets and billet-alloy whatnot. We contact that one wild-eyed dreamer in Billings, Montana who machined that one thing nobody wanted out of a forging he did in his toolshed. The car is usually back together by Independence Day. Or not.

You make this all sound like a bad thing.

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Stan, the important thing is to get some heat into it every so often.

If you must do that with a welding torch, so be it.

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@Sacto Mitch posted:

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...But ever since I upgraded the dizzy a few years back and settled into this routine of driving it as much as possible, I need to fuss with the tune hardly at all. I work around the mixture screws about every six months (which takes maybe five minutes), but that's really all it ever needs...

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Um, well, it turns out just a few hours after posting that, I got a call from my accountants, Murphy & Hubris.

Both of the principals were on the call and they were pretty agitated.

"Mitch, you dufus," I knew Murphy's preachy tone, " how many times have we warned you about going off like that, let alone in a public forum? You know how hard this makes balancing your accounts."

And then Hubris jumps in, "You can pay us now, or pay us later."

Damn, that dude is always right.

It wasn't but four days later. The wife and I are again out taking advantage of all this glorious driving weather (you can drive any time between sun up and sun down, top down, without freezing or frying). We were cruising up to sleepy little Lotus, next to the 1848 gold discovery site at Coloma. The birds were shining. The sun was singing.

We stopped for our usual thermos of coffee at a picnic table that seemed placed there just for us, right on the American River. It was all too perfect. I should have known better.

It was on a long downhill on the way back that the telltale 'pop-pop-pops' started up. I hadn't heard them in years. You see, I drive the car all the time. It keeps the carbs and fuel lines flushed out. It keeps the gas in the tank fresh. That way, I never get dirt in the carbs. I never have to pull the idle jets.

Okay, long story short, I've got some great accountants there in Murphy & Hubris. They're worth every penny I pay them. I should just be a little more careful about taking their advice.

This time, I got off easy. There actually was a piece of dirt in the number 1 idle jet — right there stuck in the end of the nozzle where I could see it. Cleaning that out returned law and order to my domain. I did 30 miles of test drive today with hardly a whimper.

But M&H have put me on notice.

My rates are going up next month.

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Murphy and Hubris, huh?

I generally feel like my garage is haunted by the Ghost of Christmas Present (from Dickens' "A Christmas Carol"), or more accurately by the ghost's children, Ignorance and Want.

So much Ignorance in my garage. So much Want.

"Ignorance! Get OUT!"

That was shouted by my seventh grade history teacher, Mr. Monahan, whilst standing on his desk that he just bounded onto. In a single bound!

Pretty good for an overweight dude well into his fifties, back in 1977.

Thanks for reminding me of one of the greatest teachers I ever had!

And Mitch, even the best fed carburetors get milky white junk in them. Any moisture at all will cause that awful white goo in the float bowls.

Even if you have access to ethanol free, you can still get the goo.

I found that every spring or maybe every other I'd take the carb tops off and clean the bowls out. Just my experience, anyway.

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Danny, this wasn't goo, it was a small speck of something, too big to pass through the jet.

The fuel lines are all 10 years old, and I was expecting to see little black specks in the jet, but this wasn't that. It was sand-colored.

I'm thinking I changed out the air cleaner filters a few months back — brand new ones — and don't they say that that is when you're most likely to dislodge dirt? I cleaned everything out as best I could tell then, but it only takes something the size of a gnat's fingernail to ruin your day. And that junk could have been floating around in the carb passages ever since, just waiting to lodge somewhere.

At any rate, after blowing out the jet and passages for just that one throat, it's running smoother than it has for months, so hopefully that was all it was.

But I probably should swap in new rubber lines anyway.

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Please at least look at your float bowls, Mitch.

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@Stan Galat posted:

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Please at least look at your float bowls, Mitch.

I guess I should have mentioned that it's not like the tops haven't been off the carbs in 10 years.

About two years ago, there was a lot of post-shutdown percolating of gas down the outsides of the carbs. Not that you would see fuel dripping, but the outside of the carbs would accumulate dirt maybe a month or two after being cleaned.

So I had Tony replace the little rubber nits on the float valves, and the carbs were opened for that then. At that time, the bowls were pretty clean (after about eight years), but were cleaned up anyhow. And again, it's not like I'm having constant carb issues.

This recent problem came on really suddenly, there was an obvious grain of something in one jet, and now that that's been cleared, it's back to running really smooove (and it's not every day that I use three 'o's' in 'smooove ').

I'm declaring victory for now, but with somewhat more humility than before.

And, as always, I am ever-vigilant.

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I could add two things Re: Weber carbs, well maybe more. In chronological order: (1) I installed proper SAE certified fuel lines agreeable to ethanol laced gasoline. (2) I installed a small micron, stainless steel, made in the USA fuel filter (3) I put in a MagnaSpark dizzy system.  all this happened at various times over a couple of years.  I think the fuel filter did a lot to help (I stopped blowing out idle jets by the side of the road) , and the better dizzy system made a real difference. There also were two complete tear-downs and rebuilds with special attention to the floats between (2) and (3).  About this time, it might be worth noting, I was about 1/16th of an inch from throwing these useless pieces of aluminum into the nearby lake.  I bought two Delarto carbs from a friend, and rebuilt those complete and ready to put on. It never actually came to that, the Dels currently are in reserve in plastic bags. Anyway . . .

Maybe item (4): I had a very careful carb balance and tune by a guy who knows how to whisper to these things.  I'm going on two years now after all of that, actually following the remark once made by Mr. Piperato: "Once you get them set right, Webers are pretty reliable."  So far so good.