Since I added this blog as one of my websites on Facebook, I thought I should at least put a post up to say what I've been doing. I see my last post was dated over a year ago!

Ok, so last year I wrote two applications - iPodifier and AnalogWhole. iPodifier is used to automatically convert TV content for the iPod, and AnalogWhole can be used to remove DRM from music. Both apps are doing ok now. I do absolutely nothing with AnalogWhole now. The program works and gets downloaded a lot, but after the online help forum for it got overloaded with spam, I gave up trying to keep it clean. iPodifier is doing great and I regularly monitor its online forum to help out users. There are some things I should update in iPodifier, but it seems to be working fairly well, so I'm not touching it.

Last fall, I found I was spending way too much time in front of a computer, so I began to look around for a more hands-on project. I hadn't done anything really mechanical since rebuilding my motorcycles a couple years back (Kawasaki GPz-750 and a ZX-11). I remembered reading an article some time back about a guy who rebuilt a Porsche 911. I did a bit of research and found that there is a great online community around the Porsche 911. Also, 911's have been appreciating in price nicely, so it looked like the effort put into rebuilding one could be realized if I wanted to sell it.

I began looking around for a distressed 911 for cheap and after about a month of searching, found on in Concord, New Hampshire. The guy selling it was a bit shady and had had the 911 up on ebay. His ebay ad had very little info, and a pic of the car from a deceiving angle that made it look pretty good. The car sold to a guy from Germany, but b/c he didn't have a title for the car (not req'd in NH), the guy from Germany couldn't import it, so the deal fell thru. I went to see the car and found that it had some pretty severe rust on it, and the engine/transmission was pulled out and sitting beside it with only a flimsy tarp doing little to protect it from the elements.

Perfect - a real basket case that I could get for a good price. So, here's the car as I purchased it. Anthony and I dragged it home on with car dolly. There were no real surprises - it was in tough shape, but everything was there and I got it for a very good price.

I covered the car with a tarp and pulled the engine/transmission into my workshop. From ~Jan-Mar I worked on the engine. First time I'd seen a Porsche engine before, but since there is a great online community, technically, it was not too difficult. Because it was very rusted/dirty it took a lot of cleaning and sand/media blasting. I made a sandblasting hood which turned out to be very useful. After I completely disassembled the engine, I send the critical bits (i.e. heads, cams) to a shop in CA for machining and worked away at cleaning up the other parts. I won't bore you with the details, but in the end, it came out pretty nicely.

After finishing the engine, I did the same with the transmission. First disassembling it, cleaned all the parts, sourced replacements, then re-assembled it.

More in the next post...