Porsche 911: Snow tires installed

A while back, Kath and I agreed that I'd be able to park whatever I want (within reason) in my spot in the garage. Outside of the obvious financial limitation, there was one rule - No Garage Queens. As such, whatever tickles my automotive fancy must be usable in the winter. This definitely influenced my decision to purchase the 911.

Unlike the C4 or C4S, my 40th AE 911 is rear wheel drive. The same weight distribution that gives earlier iterations of the 911 a reputation for being widow makers helps my car maintain traction to the drive wheels in the snow. Stopping and turning are even more important than forward momentum, so snow tires are a must.

Here she sits wearing her winter boots:

The setup is OEM carrera twists wrapped in Pirelli Snow Sports, 225/40/18 front and 265/35/18 rear. I'm not overly fond of how those wheels look on the car, but they'll do.

Comments

1995 NSX - 1 Year Report

Unlike the 911, the NSX has been an easy car to own. After catching up on some deferred maintenance, it required a set of tires at the six month mark. That trend continues past the year mark. Since having the tires installed, I performed an oil change. I'm beginning to think reporting on life with the car at six month intervals is overkill (knocks on wood). Life with the Porsche meant being on a first name basis with a service advisor at our local Porsche dealer. In contrast, life with the NSX has settled into the pattern: drive, add gas & check oil, occasionally wash. Repeat. Not surprisingly, the oil change was easy. I followed the instructions on the NSX Prime Wiki with one modification. To prevent the oil from the filter draining on the rear suspension components, I placed newspaper, folded at crease, over the suspension before removing the filter. As planned, the oil drained over the paper into the oil pan, ...

Porsche 911: Used Oil Analysis

Part of my master plan is to use the first year as a shake down period for the car. i.e. - catch up on deferred maintenance, fix whatever random (hopefully minor) stuff that pops up and get a baseline for engine health. Here's how it's gone so far: I've already described the deferred maintenance and random fixes here . By the time Christmas rolled around, I'd put around 5000 miles on the car. That's only half of the Porsche recommended oil change interval, but I was curious about the condition of the oil and one of the local dealers sent me a coupon. The dealer hooked me up with a Blackstone oil analysis kit & I sent of the sample the week after Christmas. The results looked great. There was no contamination of any sort and the metals look good compared to the universal averages at 3900 miles. Based on the results of the test, I'm going to try a longer interval and it's nice to see that my IMS bearing is in good shape.

1995 NSX - The purchase and trip home.

Preface " You're an idiot ", declares my lovely bride. More of our conversations begin this way than I'd like to admit, but I was a bit surprised by her reaction. While preparing one of our traditional Friday night pizzas, I brought up the topic of buying a NSX. Katherine is used my my automotive indiscretions and usually lets slide my four wheeled pontificating. This time, however, she iterated the many reasons why buying an NSX is stupid - it's expensive, it can only be driven half the year where we live, it will take garage space that we can't afford to give up, etc, etc. Being a couple beers into the evening, I took my tongue lashing in stride. If anything, it strengthened my resolve. This was a car that I've wanted since they were released in 1991 and I wasn't going to let a little thing like practicality influence my decision. Fast forward a couple months after our kitchen conversation and I'd found a car on NSX Prime. It was...

Alpenworks Automotive

Search This Blog