Back in March, I made my annual pilgrimage to Springfield Massachusetts, the home of Tech Tactics. This annual event is open to all Porsche junkies. For a few bucks, you can pay homage to a weekend of Porsche technical knowledge. This year the theme was "25 Years of the TURBO." A veritable who’s who was hand.

Jim Newton started it all off by describing the 911RS/RSR evolution claiming, "We don’t need no stinkin’ turbo!" Jim owns a Porsche shop in New England and has been tuning and restoring Porsches for decades.

John Paterek was next up. He is one of the best known restorers in the country, with his cars winning the coveted Louis Vuitton Classic in New York City. His discussion was cosmetic troubles of the 930. If you ever need to have body work done on your Porsche, look him up. His facility is located in northern New Jersey.

My favorite speaker of the day was Alois Ruf. Pronounced "Roof" not "Rough," the cars from his stable are second to none. Ruf purchases bodies from Porsche and from the ground up produces Secretariat class thoroughbreds. His cars have been featured in car magazines numerous times and been crowned fastest production cars built. He only builds 25 cars per year, but it is his engineering capability that sets them apart. He developed a 5-speed transmission for the turbo years before the factory. If you want one of his cars, get in line as there is a two year waiting list. Oh, and if you ever get over to Germany, he welcomes you to tour his factory.

Claus Bruestle was the last up for the day. His pedigree is years with Porsche AG as engine and turbo development director. Claus enchanted us with a wonderful slide show about the development of the turbo in both racing and street applications. At the end, he presented an interesting game for all in attendance: nine exhaust note recordings and 11 cars to choose from. It was a mix and match game with the winner receiving a factory damaged piston from a test mule engine that did not make it. I was not the lucky winner; maybe next year.

The next morning we had the opportunity to listen to PCA technical committee members Allan Caldwell, and Bruce Anderson. Both gave a retrospective of many problems that have appeared throughout the turbo years, and the simple fixes necessary to keep the cars running.

I highly recommend this event as an early season starter. See you there next year.

Now that warm weather is here and it is too nice to stand in a garage and do work, so I take my vacation from hosting tech sessions until the fall. Open up those windows and hear the music.