Today's grouse is two-tiered: First Tier: Hardly any car businesses in this immediate area seem to take the 914 seriously and Second Tier: if there other Sacramento (CA) 914 owners hereabouts, they do a remarkable job retaining their anonymity in this age of hacker-stolen personal information heists, whereby virtually everything is public record.
In a previous post lamenting the difficulty finding a Porsche service/repair business that willingly works on 914s, I solicited inputs from any and all who might know a good 914-friendly garage in my area. Several people responded with some tips but regrettably even those previously 914-friendly businesses they mentioned now seem to duck and cover whenever this subject comes up...including well-known 'Frank's Automotive', which has specialised in Porsche for more than 50s years (they responded "We no longer work on 914s'...because mechanics these days are hard to find with that 'old tech' knowledge." Whaaat!?
In the second instance, it was pointed out to me that there are some 914 owners in the local (Zone 7/SVR) PCA region but thus far I haven't come across any. It was also stated that there is a FACEPLANT social media 914 group ("...so why not look it up?") but as someone who is a strong critic and opponent of the social media sickness America is infected with (that Mark Zuckerface founded), as well as someone with an intense disapprobation of the Zuck himself, FACEPLANT is not a viable option. That seems to leave me as high and dry and an overballasted tramp steamer bottomed-out on the San Francisco Bay's Potato Patch Shoal at low tide! Or a cow full of milk that had stepped on its own teet at milking time!
Finally, after some deeper digging, I was referred to IPB Autosports (Ron Krain's Porsche & import service in this city), where Ron welcomed my car and took care of some needed work for me. However, on two occasions the mechanic who worked on my car committed what I feel is unacceptable carelessness in completing the work. In the first instance, he did a bit of work on my brake pedal stoplight actuation switch , but failed to perform an actual test of whether the switch was set at exactly the right setting (clearly referenced in the 914 shop manual as a final step in the process) before signing off on the job. In the second, he reconnected the newly installed Hella horns but when he put the steering wheel back on, he failed to align it precisely with the direction of the front wheels (sloppy!).
I have a feeling that this doesn't reflect adversely on Ron, the owner, but on a suspected too-casual attitude of the referenced mechanic that "914s aren't REAL Porsches, so who cares?" You can bet your entire $150/hour labor charge that any late model "real Porsche" owners would have invoked the Riot Act, had this degree of carelessness queered THEIR expensive mounts' repair work!
Despite the fact that acknowledged 'Porsche Expert' George Valerio lived in this city and kept his extensive collection of rare and valuable Porsches here, despite what others tell me, I can't seem to find any 'socially inclined' Sacramento 914 confreres who would welcome interactions with other 914 owners...especially of the mechanical/technical sort.
Oh, the shame of it all...in a state that literally BEGAN the California Car Culture here in America, back in the 50s! Naturally, the result of my being 'social media averse' works against me in this quest, since few others seem to be Bohemian enough in their dislike of corporate manipulation to declare social media to be a harmful plague and merrily participate in all that SM crap without a thought. Perhaps I'm too much of a misanthropic neo-Luddite to conform to currently popular social expectations, but anyone (like Zuckerface) who is so fabulously wealthy that he can have a special MACAN stretch limousine custom made by Porsche for his wife Patricia from his personal 'chump-change', is NOT someone I wish to adulate and/or condone his activities!
Any thoughts on either of these two major gripes of mine are welcome, of course, either positive or negative in their general tone, but having some 914-friendly people in this neck of the bourgeoisie woods would sure be a welcome boon! And on that note, I'm going to toss a few more logs on the fire and go sulk with my 'Jezibel' in the stable, with a cup of hot cocoa!
I really got to know those cars well, and ended up buying 4 or 5 myself since they seemed impossibly cheap as the aged, and I was able to fix the up and sell them along. My last rx7 was a '93 twin turbo, and it's still among my all-time favorite cars. That 3rd gen twin turbo was a special car that added up to way more than the sum of its parts.