My life with Porsche… And my latest (last build) – 2.8 RSR style on 9111121235

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SCCA RACING SCHOOL:

On 25 February 1996, I got my SCCA race license… SCCA race school was over 2 days (24-25 FEB) at the Streets of Willow Springs… We had written and driving tests, and a few test races… I can’t remember the date, but I remember it snowed lightly on day 2, and I was lucky I still had wipers…

Gertrude is basically still in street trim, with 6s and 7s, passenger sport seat, and still has S trim and the front odd bumper… The front oil cooler hadn’t been installed yet… I’m guessing John didn’t think I would need it as it was winter in the high desert… He also had a laugh duck taping the number “0” on the car… I remember him saying “You get number zero, because that is where you are at… Zero… Don’t try to go out and be a Hero”… I passed and got my SCCA race license… I was on my way…

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RACING IN 1996 – IT WAS A VERY GOOD YEAR:

Now that I had my race license, I couldn’t wait for my first race…

Gertrude was now fitted with the front oil cooler and the front bumper from 9113301270, 7s at all 4 corners, Toyo DOT circuit tires, and for some reason a series of different race numbers (9, 20, 23), I can’t remember why or timing, and an evolution of equipment (passenger sport seat still installed (that sure didn’t help with weight), headlights (H4 I think), radio with antennae, etc… Gertrude would evolve a lot…

My first race was the very next weekend on 2 March 1996, at Holtville, the very circuit that Steve McQueen raced a 908 before going to 2^nd place at Sebring and then to make the film Le Mans… I know… There is no connection between Steve and me, or my 911 and his 908, but it was cool for me to think I was racing at the same place the King of Cool had all those years ago… I still get that feeling when I drive or race at the Nürburgring, Spa, Monza, Silverstone, etc… I’m somehow driving on hallowed ground…

In any case I would race for the season in the SRS class for the SCCA San Diego region… Then it was on to the inaugural race at Buttonwillow on 24 March 1996, where I would race in the ITGT class for season, in the SCCA Cal Club (L.A.) region… And back and forth between Holtville, Buttonwillow and Willow Springs for the remainder of 1996…
A few things I remember vividly, and another reason I really was lucky back then, was the fantastic “it aint over til its over” attitude, John, Tom and guys at Otto’s had…

At one of the race weekends at Buttonwillow (might have been the inaugural – I’m not sure), Gertrude had an oil leak from the oil line of the driver’s side pressure fed tensioner (installed after first race – can’t remember why), and spun a bearing in practice… John and I loaded Gertrude on the trailer he used for Rudy (I used to drive Gertrude to the circuit, and swap road to circuit parts (exhaust, tires, etc.) that John would bring up in his van or I would shove into getrude), and I drove it back down to his shop in Venice (135 mile – 2.5 hour drive), where having called Tom and the boys ahead of me arriving, they had pulled the Euro Carrera 3.0 out of 1193310010, which was at Otto’s, pulled the CIS injection off, and got it ready for a transplant into Gertrude… Once I arrived, the guys stayed late to drop the 2.4S engine out, swap over the weber carbs, and everything needed from the “old” 2.4S engine, and installed the “new” 3.0 Euro Carrera engine in… The good thing for me, was, the 3.0 liter engine size was still legal for the classes I was running in, with the 2.4 I was “under sized”… The original plan was to rebuild the 3.0 with race engine parts – cams, P&Cs, etc, and have Jerry Woods fine tune it on his dyno before calling on it for race engine duty… But because the 2.4S engine decide to let go, this would be the 3.0s “baptism by fire”… Short story, that engine ran flawlessly for the rest of 1996, and didn’t get the intended rebuild to full race spec until the winter of 1996/97… Back I drove to Buttonwillow, and ended up 2^nd in class for the first race there…

I had a great year racing in 1996, and ended up with a few 3^rd place finishes, a few 2^nd place finishes, and few 1^st place finishes… I also set some lap records… One still stands at Buttonwillow 6CCW for ITGT – which I’m guessing must be because they don’t run that configuration anymore… But I’ll hang on to that and take what I can get… (https://calclub.com/buttonwillow-track-records/) and (http://www.calclub.com/html/html2/ar...rds/bw6ccw.htm)

I ultimately, won the ITGT and SRS class championships in Cal Club and the San Diego regions respectively… A very good rookie year for me!

Here are some photos – no particular order, showing the 3 circuits, numbers and evolution of Gertrude…

WILLOW SPRINGS 1996:

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holtville 1996:

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inagural buttonwillow race 1996:

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buttonwillow 2:

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LAP RECORDS:

I somehow managed to set a few lap records...

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CHAMPIONSHIPS:

And somehow managed to win both Cal Club and San Diego SCCA regional championships for my classes in my rookie year… I only have the San Diego region plaques in the UK (photo), the Cal Club trophy is in France (so no photo)…

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REFRESH 1996/1997:

With the 1996 season over, and me intoxicated with racing… I managed to do a few things… In the following order…

1. Rebuild Gertrude’s body into a 2.8 RSR look… It was done in fiberglass to save weight and cost, and finally got rid of the passenger seat (except to and from the circuit – or passenger rides) … I ended up running various combinations of wheels – Fuchs 11x15s were really hard to find, so I ran some Fuchs and some Compomotive wheels in various combinations… Here are the only photos I can find of Gertrude right after body work and paint – unfortunately no “build” shots… Kills me to see the rough and dirty way we did this – E.g. the overspray on the oil lines, etc…

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Rebuild the 3.0 Euro Carrera engine into more of a race engine, dyno it up at JWE with Jerry Woods - I ended up using PMO carbs instead of MFI for some reason I can't remember (guessing it was based on John’s input), and I can't find any dyno sheets (they must be a box somewhere), but I seem to recall it was around the just around the 300 HP zone… Here are the photos I can find of the rebuild and trip to see Jerry… Note Gertrude on the lift, and the ducktail has been replaced with a whale tail already (function over form I guess… I really like ducktails, and less so the whale tail – given a choice – so, I’m guessing this was John’s input)…

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Got married (1^st wife)… As a wedding gift, I gave her 9112200420 the Gemini Blue 911 E posted earlier… She decided she didn’t want an old Porsche and wanted the then new Mercedes SLK, which had just come out in 1996 (ended up finding a Vivianite – aka Calypso Green one and had to pay MSRP + dealer markup)… Should have seen the early warning signs… no photos of car or ex-wife…

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Just in case, I'm really enjoying reading all of this. Please keep it up!

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Got married (1^st wife)… As a wedding gift, I gave her 9112200420 the Gemini Blue 911 E posted earlier… She decided she didn’t want an old Porsche and wanted the then new Mercedes SLK, which had just come out in 1996 (ended up finding a Vivianite – aka Calypso Green one and had to pay MSRP + dealer markup)… Should have seen the early warning signs… no photos of car or ex-wife…

we shouldnt do wedding gifts, or engagement rings..

„One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them“

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we shouldnt do wedding gifts, or engagement rings..

„One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them“

At least not cars... Although I am lucky, as my current and "last wife" is a petrol head, and loves cars and racing... So, all is well... although, she limits me to 1 "toy" car at a time... so I got her 1 "toy" car, which makes 2!

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Just in case, I'm really enjoying reading all of this. Please keep it up!

thanks for the kind words Rick... they are much appreciated... sometimes I wonder if I'm just putting people to sleep, but hopefully it gives future caretakers of the cars some history... not just ownership... e.g. from this date until this date, this person owned the car, but some of the nuance... why bought, what was done to the car, what was done with the car and why, and why it was sold... I would love to know the history of my current car, but that's lost to time... It is the same for me with vintage guitars (I used to play a long time ago, and collected for a short time)... Always wanted to know who was original owner, what happened, and then next owners... I have one guitar, a 59 Gibson blonde 335, that I was able to trace back to 1967 in the UK, with semi famous players (loosely connected to the Beatles and Eric Clapton - I even found a couple of colour videos from a French TV show with one of the bands that shows closeups of the guitar), and back to the USA in California, then back to the UK, where I became the current caretaker... but, I have no idea who bought it in 1959, and what life it lived between 1959 and 1967... how did it get from the USA to the UK originally, etc... Maybe I'm just nostalgic now that I am getting older...

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Got to participate as a stunt driver and background actor, in the making of a TERRIBLE Roger Corman (New Horizons) film called Overdrive (shot in 1997 and released in 1998) (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119850/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk) , starring Steve Gutenberg and Robert Wagner (boy they must have needed the money or owed some favors)… If it is favourite of anyone reading – my apologies… 
Somehow the film company contacted John (I think their production offices were in the same neighbourhood as Otto’s shop), and he volunteered his new 911 (a midengined tube chassis built by Griggs racing – to race in IMSA) and Gertrude as the two main characters’ cars in the film… John’s was for Steve Guttenberg, the main character, Matt Stricker, and mine was for his traditional rival in the film, played by Mark Phelan as Craig Thompson (Mark even wore my race suit, and helmet for continuity when I was driving (I still have both the helmet and suit)… Steve as the star, got his own suit… 

John volunteered us with the proviso that we would be the drivers for all on track action (the actors would be in the cars mounted on camera tow rigs for cockpit shots), and we got some free Goodyear tires (the production company somehow got free Goodyear tires for product / logo placement – Robert Wagner wears a Goodyear jacket and there is logo on Steve Guttenberg’s race suit, as well as various banners, patches and stickers all over the place and on cars) and circuit time (I’m not sure if John had a side deal going on for cash in addition, but it wouldn’t surprise me, and to be honest I didn’t and still don’t care)… I even was able to get 9113300757 in the movie as number 7, with my dad driving! Not quite as slick as Jo Siffert’s deal with Steve McQueen’s Solar Productions for Le Mans, but fun to do, and a great memory for me with my dad… 

The film crew shot a POC or PCA race at Willow Springs on the main circuit (I can’t remember which, but think POC – hopefully someone can correct me if they know) … First filming the real race, with John and me staged going out first in the warm up lap, and pulling off (neither of us were racing that day, so they could shoot some scenes in the pits while the race was going on), then the production company rented the track for a few days, and invited some of the racers to come back for staged shot filming and gave them free circuit time when the crew weren’t filming on circuit…

All in all it was fun, albeit a really terrible film… It only came out on VHS home video, and yes, I do have a copy (which I had digitized for prosperity – terrible quality), and it is kind of fun to watch the on circuit parts to reminisce - a good time, actual moving footage of Gertrude, laugh at the sound effects (never heard a 911 sound like an F1 car going by ) and terrible fake racing footage (they shot slow for tow rigs and faked passing moves – about 60-80 MPH)… But, the crew and actors were nice… I have a great memory with Porsches with my dad… We got a lot of free circuit time, and gave rides to most of the crew for fun (I knew that passenger seat would come in handy)…

One thing I remember, is the crew wanted to show Steve’s character moving up the field (with the gratuitous always a higher / faster gear and foot to the floor shot – Hollywood still does that – just watch Le Mans ’66 or Ford v Ferrari in the USA), and crashing with his rival, spinning off the circuit, and then later with just his rival crashing… So they were trying to get John and me to spin off for one scene and then me to crash my car for the next – for the glory of being in a film!  What a laugh… I remember a negotiation ensuing, where we told them we were happy to spin and crash if they wanted to pay 50,000 USD for the cars and our stunt driving above what we were already doing… 

Needless to say, they didn’t want to pay, and we agreed to a couple of high speed spins off circuit at turn 9 (the high speed final right hand turn before the start finish straight) for the shots – and they would reuse the footage for both scenes… It took me 4 or 5 takes to really get a good spin off circuit (can’t remember exact number), because I kept instinctively correcting the slide and not spinning, just oversteering slides and correcting (all that training at Holtville on “may pops” had sunk in)… I finally managed to get it right in the end, and I remember spinning closer and closer to one of the cameras they had set up, and I noticed as I was getting closer and closer, and wondered if I was going to stop or hit them, and as I was just about to hit them, I saw the camera crew running away… Gertrude stopped about 2-3 meters from the camera! Pure luck!!! Then we re-parked Gertrude half way up a dirt berm for a shot of the actor climbing / falling out of the car… Cheezy…Here are the photos and a couple of screen grabs from the film I can find of that… The cars even made it on the cover of the VHS box jumping through flames! 