The synchros in the transmission were worn down to almost nothing, shifting truly was a dark art, like closing one’s eyes and feeling their way through a drawer of silverware.
Otherwise in better condition but I guess I had twenty years less wear on it!
(my current car dream is to find another 914 and do an electric conversion… not a car where it behooves one to keep the original anything)
I had a 1973 2.0 for much of the 90s. It was definitely the most fun car I've owned. I foolishly let it go and "upgraded" to a Boxster, which may have been faster and more comfortable (stuff like A/C was a cool innovation for me then), but was a lot less fun.
The 914 cornered like it had talons with which to grip the road. You could be going up curvy roads like Las Flores Canyon in Malibu, cornering at a speed where any other car would let go, crank the wheel over, and the 914 would just happily go exactly where you pointed it.
It wasn't nearly as fast as the Boxster that replaced it, but it felt faster. That rattling acceleration off the line, especially being so low to the ground, that smell of hot oil, the sound of the engine right behind you ... I miss that car.
Yeah, it was in the shop a lot. So was the Boxster. The difference was, of course, that you'd buy your replacement parts from the VW parts catalog rather than the Porsche parts catalog and save yourself 600-800%. I still remember getting a replacement VW window crank for $2 when the Porsche dealer quoted me $75.
I got old and "responsible." I eventually ditched the Boxster for a reliable, truck-like Subaru. And I now live in a city where transit and bike infrastructure is great - I don't even own a car. I don't miss it much. But there's one day a year, when the weather reminds me of that first springtime ride up Angeles Crest Highway in the 914 with the top down, and then I'll admit to some small regret.
I went '67 MGB to boxster and while air conditioning and having a working radio is nice (and it was just a much more practical car all around... which isn't saying much), there's something about classic cars that is just fun
I did an electric conversion with an old Vespa, it was literally just a shell I got for about $300, packed it with a beefy BLDC motor and a driver (from a standup electric scooter) that let me change the speed based on the thumb throttle. I wanted to use the original throttle on the Vespa but that got kind of messy at the time. The LiFePO4 batteries were the most expensive thing here and I regret not getting larger capacity ones.
The neat thing about an electric motor vs an ICE, that you pointed out, is the torque curve is linear so no need for a transmission.
For 4-wheelers, I really want to see electric conversion kits get more popular, specifically ones where the electric motor mounts to the transmission spot - either transverse and have attachment points for two half shafts or conventional where it points to the rear. Then we can use the engine bay as a additional storage, assuming we put the batteries where the gas tank is. I really want to do this conversion with a older, rear-engine VW bug. I hate ripping out original parts but I can find so many shells now where they’ve taken the engine out.
Did double clutching not help, or were you not aware of the technique? My dad drove over the road semi tractors for a few years and taught it to me, and it's just habit now.
You might want to double check whether the second drive is properly
connected, or the display manager will refuse to start. In this case
typing `exit' in the console should still let you log in, unless
it locks up for some reason. (Then you will have to reboot.)
Now that you are logged in, a few things to note:
* The mouse buttons do not work. Pinch the touchpad to click.
* The keyboard layout is a mixture of the US English, Japanese, and Teletype
33 keyboards. By the way, its key labels are German.
* If you need a modifier key, try sequentially going through tab, caps,
control, alt, super. Maybe you will find it.
* The only text editor on the computer is nvi. No, that's not `nvim'.
* Firefox works, but has scripting disabled, routes everything through
Tor and clears cookies on exit. Also, each new tab is opened in a
separate temporary container that routes through a different Tor
circuit.
As an alternative, we have w3m too.
A few things before using my Linux laptop with amdgraphics... If you want to shut the lid, or otherwise use sleep make sure it is powered off USB, if it is powered by the battery or the barrel jack it will wake up, but the screen won't - be prepared to his Alt-PrintScreen REISUB.
Get used to doing that multiple times a day, or it may be time to setup USB debugging and try and add some info to the bug report at...
(Cool. I've moved on from ergodox to lily58 and have a cst trackball.)
This last weekend I pulled out my 12 year old Thinkpad running custom qtile window manager to transfer old DV movies to mp4s. Sadly my muscle memory was mostly gone and I had to revert to gnome... (Hanging my head in shame.)
My whole computer is like this. I use sway/i3. On my home computer I don't use a login manager so you have to type "sway" to get something graphical. At that point you probably don't know the key combos to open a shell, much less a web browser. And, yes, I do use emacs...
My girlfriend simply calls my computer "broken".
One time my brother was in my study and I needed to shut down my computer. After bashing on the keyboard for ten seconds or so he commented "THAT is how you shut down your computer?!" It honestly hadn't even occurred to me it might seem weird from the outside.
I wouldn't have it any other way, though. Sure it's nice if a machine "just works", but machines don't just work. They are layers upon layers of complexity and if I have to understand them then I might as well interact with those layers directly.
Strongly disagree here on the "machines don't just work." 99% of the machines in my life just work for 99% of the tasks I throw at them. I spend an inordinate amount of time fixing/working-around the 1%, but directly interacting with the lowest layers is a massive waste of my very limited time.
My primary reason for not using Linux for my desktop is that when I connect a bluetooth device, headphones, a monitor, a keyboard or a mouse, when I want to run a GPU intensive application, or when I need to connect to a VPN and have my DNS requests correctly routed through the VPN it just works on Windows or MacOS.
I don't have the time or energy to work out those issues in a community supported environment where half the time the community support treats you like a half-witted imbecile for needing support and where the environment itself uses a CLI tool that my wife or kids can't use to manage the settings.
Ease of Use, Dev Tooling, or Cheap. Pick two. Linux is consistently harder to use. With WSL-2 I've found windows eases the dev tooling pain that existed a few years ago. A Mac is not cheap.
> After bashing on the keyboard for ten seconds or so he commented "THAT is how you shut down your computer?!"
This is exactly why I love to use my Linux machine. When I have a thought, I simply command it to the computer in written language and it immediately obeys.
I don't have to figure out where Johnny Ive hid the toggle switch in an attempt to make things more minimal. In fact, I don't have to figure out where anything is hidden at all because everything is right there at my fingertips. I shutdown the computer by saying "shutdown". I lock it by saying "lock". I open firefox by simply typing "firefox". It's a simple system, but I love it.
These posts are really funny because its people like us who love contraptions, and people going "wow linux doesn't work huh"
yet I typically run weird systems(xmonad, arch) and they're infinitely more reliable after the initial couple hours of setup than my windows install.
My thinkpad with a 7 year old Antergos install and i3wm "just works", but without a hint of irony. Literally the only issue with the laptop happens equally in windows and linux, and that's the USB ports going to sleep and never waking up until reboot.
The big thing about playing around deeper in the system, is you can fix it relatively easy. It's like a 90s honda civic where you can step into the engine bay vs doing any kind of maintenance on a modern audi or bmw. Sure you can see the guts but if a bolt loosens on both, which one would you rather have to fix?
I'm similar, but `startx` to get to GUI, and dwm instead of i3/sway. My girlfriend is somewhat used to it, I've added some convenience scripts for her in rofi to switch keyboard layout and setup the screens. She still asks me to remind her how to access her menu though.
Spot on. “My life is a constant barrage of belligerently fielding foolish questions and foolish answers from comically ignorant children.” I wish I didn’t know quite so many guys for whom this is their main shtick.
A few things to know before stealing the laptop my work gave me that I still keep around on the off chance I need to check something on an old, near unusable machine - if there is something preventing it from working there is a little hole on the bottom of the laptop that you can cause a hard reset and restart by sticking a safety pin or toothpick inside.
A bartender told me that he had connected the fuel pump to a switch hidden. He lived in a rough neighborhood and his car was an easy target for thieves. More than once he had found his car a hundred or so meters down the road.
Adam Carolla likes to talk about how he did this with his truck way back in the day. You could drive as far as whatever gas was in the carburetor and fuel line.
He also painted his radio brown like the interior of the truck. It was so ugly nobody ever stole the one thing that had any value in the truck.
Were Webers ever on the car from the factory? I thought they were all fuel injected.
Disclaimer: Back when we were mechanics (and before we became technicians) I earned a living working on these, but I seldom had the opportunity (?) to work on one this old.
They were interesting beasts - actually more Porsche then the later 924. Except for the /6 which had a real Porsche engine, the engine was the flat four adapted from the Type 2 (bus) and Type 4. Suspension, transmission, electrics and so on were all Porsche. (For better or worse.) The 924 had a lot of parts that would have been comfortable on a Rabbit/Golf.
I actually think the reputation of early Bosch FI systems being horrible is pretty overblown. I haven't had a hard time diagnosing L-jet issues (I haven't touched D-jet). It's pretty simple and while you can't plug a scan tool in, you can use an oscilloscope to see what's going wrong. Also it's so simple, there are really only a handful of things to check. Some friends and I do endurance racing in a Fiat with the original L-jet system and it has been reliable.
I can understand a shop not wanting to touch them because you'll likely lose money tracking down issues as opposed to plugging in a scan tool, but for a hobbyist it's really not that hard.
That system had a flap in an air passage that metered air flow. If the car backfired, the flap could change position relative to the indication that went to the control unit and that threw off the air/fuel mixture. They were also more sensitive to air leaks than a carbureted car.
I owned a 914/4, and at one fully overhauled its engine and so had a close look at its transmission and drivetrain.
A small correction on point of fact: On all the 4s the entirety of the drivetrain was VW, down to the CV joints and lug bolts. You can see this in photos, with 4s having a four-bolt pattern. 914/6s OTOH had five bolts, as on the contemporaneous Porsche 911s.
There was a further wrinkle with some six-bangers being badged as "914/6" and others as "916" -- but I was regrettably never in the market for either of those, so have forgotten details.
The synchros in the 914 transmission were the same as in the 911 (and other Porsches.) Not like the brass ring and cone that is more common (and used in VW transmissions.)
You're probably right about the half shafts. However if I search for parts, all of the ones I can find show a 6 bolt CV joint for the 914.
In Norway, this car would be very unlikely to pass the mandatory roadworthiness test.
You would be forced to fix the car, or sell it to someone who will fix it, or remove the plates and deregister it, or scrap it. If you don’t do anything the police will remove the plates.
I would advice fixing the car or selling it to someone who will fix it because it has some value.
The 914 in the picture looks like a 1970 or 1971 so since it's over 50 years old it looks like it wouldn't be inspected anymore. [0]
A lot of states in the US also require safety inspections (including North Carolina where the author teaches) but often make exceptions for antique cars.
Interesting. It seems to be possible to skip the check for vehicles worthy of preservation. It requires the vehicle to not be modified (original design), which seems to be the case there, but also the safety equipment must function satisfactorily, which may be up for debate there.
> are in virtually original design
> Devices/equipment that are important for safety must function satisfactorily
> Must only be used
- on special occasions such as motor history gatherings and races
- otherwise occasionally when the use does not cause undue danger or inconvenience to other traffic.
Good thing the author isn't in Norway, I guess. Otherwise, he wouldn't be able to keep his car which clearly has a lot of sentimental value to him.
Also, Norway should consider dropping mandatory passenger vehicle inspections as mechanical malfunctions are a tiny percentage of accident causes (and might be lower than officially reported by police) and it has been shown that they do nothing to increase actual on-the-road safety:
Your data says about 2% of the crashes. Seems very much worth it.
And the test also checks the pollution or reduces the annoyances to other drivers (such as too high headlights, broken light indicators, smelly vehicles,…).
It sounds like the author is perfectly capable of maintaining the car and takes pride in it. I doubt you could really “fix” it so that it runs like a 2014 Corolla unless you build it from the ground up
It's just a tickle at the back of the article, but for anyone who wants a first sportscar that is fairly affordable and rewarding to drive an older Miata is a wonderful starter vehicle.
Readit News
The synchros in the transmission were worn down to almost nothing, shifting truly was a dark art, like closing one’s eyes and feeling their way through a drawer of silverware.
Otherwise in better condition but I guess I had twenty years less wear on it!
(my current car dream is to find another 914 and do an electric conversion… not a car where it behooves one to keep the original anything)
The 914 cornered like it had talons with which to grip the road. You could be going up curvy roads like Las Flores Canyon in Malibu, cornering at a speed where any other car would let go, crank the wheel over, and the 914 would just happily go exactly where you pointed it.
It wasn't nearly as fast as the Boxster that replaced it, but it felt faster. That rattling acceleration off the line, especially being so low to the ground, that smell of hot oil, the sound of the engine right behind you ... I miss that car.
Yeah, it was in the shop a lot. So was the Boxster. The difference was, of course, that you'd buy your replacement parts from the VW parts catalog rather than the Porsche parts catalog and save yourself 600-800%. I still remember getting a replacement VW window crank for $2 when the Porsche dealer quoted me $75.
I got old and "responsible." I eventually ditched the Boxster for a reliable, truck-like Subaru. And I now live in a city where transit and bike infrastructure is great - I don't even own a car. I don't miss it much. But there's one day a year, when the weather reminds me of that first springtime ride up Angeles Crest Highway in the 914 with the top down, and then I'll admit to some small regret.
My curvy roads were the canyons from Salt Lake City to Park City and up Wasatch mountains to the ski resorts.
Same here, but ones with the wheel on the right side are even harder to find. :-(
Well... I guess that, for a conversion job, I won't need a working engine, or transmission.
The neat thing about an electric motor vs an ICE, that you pointed out, is the torque curve is linear so no need for a transmission.
For 4-wheelers, I really want to see electric conversion kits get more popular, specifically ones where the electric motor mounts to the transmission spot - either transverse and have attachment points for two half shafts or conventional where it points to the rear. Then we can use the engine bay as a additional storage, assuming we put the batteries where the gas tank is. I really want to do this conversion with a older, rear-engine VW bug. I hate ripping out original parts but I can find so many shells now where they’ve taken the engine out.
Dead Comment
“A few things to know before stealing my laptop and/or using my editor config.”
Now that you are logged in, a few things to note:
* The mouse buttons do not work. Pinch the touchpad to click.
* The keyboard layout is a mixture of the US English, Japanese, and Teletype 33 keyboards. By the way, its key labels are German.
* If you need a modifier key, try sequentially going through tab, caps, control, alt, super. Maybe you will find it.
* The only text editor on the computer is nvi. No, that's not `nvim'.
* Firefox works, but has scripting disabled, routes everything through Tor and clears cookies on exit. Also, each new tab is opened in a separate temporary container that routes through a different Tor circuit. As an alternative, we have w3m too.
* There is no file browser, just bash in xterm.
Enjoy your new computer!
Get used to doing that multiple times a day, or it may be time to setup USB debugging and try and add some info to the bug report at...
Half the Keys have no labels, unless it's the one with the clear caps, which has no labels at all.
Right shift is mapped to Escape (for vim, of course)
There is no Caps-lock, only Control.
Nobody messes with my stuff. :)
This last weekend I pulled out my 12 year old Thinkpad running custom qtile window manager to transfer old DV movies to mp4s. Sadly my muscle memory was mostly gone and I had to revert to gnome... (Hanging my head in shame.)
Deleted Comment
My girlfriend simply calls my computer "broken".
One time my brother was in my study and I needed to shut down my computer. After bashing on the keyboard for ten seconds or so he commented "THAT is how you shut down your computer?!" It honestly hadn't even occurred to me it might seem weird from the outside.
I wouldn't have it any other way, though. Sure it's nice if a machine "just works", but machines don't just work. They are layers upon layers of complexity and if I have to understand them then I might as well interact with those layers directly.
My primary reason for not using Linux for my desktop is that when I connect a bluetooth device, headphones, a monitor, a keyboard or a mouse, when I want to run a GPU intensive application, or when I need to connect to a VPN and have my DNS requests correctly routed through the VPN it just works on Windows or MacOS.
I don't have the time or energy to work out those issues in a community supported environment where half the time the community support treats you like a half-witted imbecile for needing support and where the environment itself uses a CLI tool that my wife or kids can't use to manage the settings.
Ease of Use, Dev Tooling, or Cheap. Pick two. Linux is consistently harder to use. With WSL-2 I've found windows eases the dev tooling pain that existed a few years ago. A Mac is not cheap.
This is exactly why I love to use my Linux machine. When I have a thought, I simply command it to the computer in written language and it immediately obeys.
I don't have to figure out where Johnny Ive hid the toggle switch in an attempt to make things more minimal. In fact, I don't have to figure out where anything is hidden at all because everything is right there at my fingertips. I shutdown the computer by saying "shutdown". I lock it by saying "lock". I open firefox by simply typing "firefox". It's a simple system, but I love it.
yet I typically run weird systems(xmonad, arch) and they're infinitely more reliable after the initial couple hours of setup than my windows install.
My thinkpad with a 7 year old Antergos install and i3wm "just works", but without a hint of irony. Literally the only issue with the laptop happens equally in windows and linux, and that's the USB ports going to sleep and never waking up until reboot.
The big thing about playing around deeper in the system, is you can fix it relatively easy. It's like a 90s honda civic where you can step into the engine bay vs doing any kind of maintenance on a modern audi or bmw. Sure you can see the guts but if a bolt loosens on both, which one would you rather have to fix?
Good luck with this thing.
A few things to know before stealing my 914 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30878489 - April 2022 (417 comments)
https://archive.li/yl7z2
He also painted his radio brown like the interior of the truck. It was so ugly nobody ever stole the one thing that had any value in the truck.
Disclaimer: Back when we were mechanics (and before we became technicians) I earned a living working on these, but I seldom had the opportunity (?) to work on one this old.
They were interesting beasts - actually more Porsche then the later 924. Except for the /6 which had a real Porsche engine, the engine was the flat four adapted from the Type 2 (bus) and Type 4. Suspension, transmission, electrics and so on were all Porsche. (For better or worse.) The 924 had a lot of parts that would have been comfortable on a Rabbit/Golf.
I can understand a shop not wanting to touch them because you'll likely lose money tracking down issues as opposed to plugging in a scan tool, but for a hobbyist it's really not that hard.
A small correction on point of fact: On all the 4s the entirety of the drivetrain was VW, down to the CV joints and lug bolts. You can see this in photos, with 4s having a four-bolt pattern. 914/6s OTOH had five bolts, as on the contemporaneous Porsche 911s.
There was a further wrinkle with some six-bangers being badged as "914/6" and others as "916" -- but I was regrettably never in the market for either of those, so have forgotten details.
You're probably right about the half shafts. However if I search for parts, all of the ones I can find show a 6 bolt CV joint for the 914.
You would be forced to fix the car, or sell it to someone who will fix it, or remove the plates and deregister it, or scrap it. If you don’t do anything the police will remove the plates.
I would advice fixing the car or selling it to someone who will fix it because it has some value.
https://www.vegvesen.no/en/vehicles/own-and-maintain/eu-mand...
https://www.vegvesen.no/en/vehicles/own-and-maintain/eu-mand...
A lot of states in the US also require safety inspections (including North Carolina where the author teaches) but often make exceptions for antique cars.
[0] https://www.vegvesen.no/en/vehicles/own-and-maintain/eu-mand...
> are in virtually original design
> Devices/equipment that are important for safety must function satisfactorily
> Must only be used - on special occasions such as motor history gatherings and races - otherwise occasionally when the use does not cause undue danger or inconvenience to other traffic.
So I would fix the brakes.
https://lovdata.no/forskrift/1994-10-04-918/§1-9 (translated with DeepL)
Even if it's a 130 year old Benz Victoria:
https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/niedersachsen/braunschweig_ha...
Also, Norway should consider dropping mandatory passenger vehicle inspections as mechanical malfunctions are a tiny percentage of accident causes (and might be lower than officially reported by police) and it has been shown that they do nothing to increase actual on-the-road safety:
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=...
https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...
https://www.theamericanconsumer.org/2019/06/do-mandatory-veh...
And the test also checks the pollution or reduces the annoyances to other drivers (such as too high headlights, broken light indicators, smelly vehicles,…).
Deleted Comment