I showed up Thursday night, spent much of Friday kicking around town.I didn't see any fellow sharksters around the hotel, other than Heinrich and Shane arriving late and parking next to my car, which was below my hotel window. Half asleep, I heard the characteristic 928 hatch-slamming sound, and got tangled up in the screen door trying to get a look outside.
Heinrich and I had a good laugh about it the next day.I didn't really get around to taking any pics until Saturday morning at 928 International. By 10:00am there were cars lined up all the way into the back lot...
Across the front of the complex...
Practically spilling onto the street!
This is an amazing pearl yellow car that was in attendance -- a fabulous, rare color...
This car for sale had some interesting wheels on it.
One guy brought his '32 Ford roadster. He was allowed on the lot because he had created this intruiging hybrid, bastard child of a big block Chevy block and 928 heads. It was very interesting work -- he had set up his own timing belt system, using the intake cams to drive the exhaust cams rather than vice-versa.
He had simple but effective-looking one-off intake.
Here is another view of the timing belt system.
Here you can see the "bumps" in the side panel that provide clearance for the cam gears.
Here's a front shot, showing how much space the engine takes up, and shows the cam gear "bumps".
I walked up, inquisitive, and the guy said something to the effect of, "I used 928 heads, the only good part that Porsche ever made right" and I yanked his chain right back with "Good thing, because that's the one thing Chevy never figured out how to make worth a damn". We both got a chuckle out of the exchange and proceeded to jawbone about stuff he'd done, this n that.
Every time I turned around, it seemed that there were more sharks...
Joe Fan's yellow racecar. Still lookin' good!
Doctor Heinrich and Doctor Brendan hard at work performing surgery on Shane's fresh acquisition, bought from Mark Anderson on this trip, putting a radiator in and sorting some other minor issues out for the trip back to Washington. Shane had bought it to help recover from the car fire he had on his supercharged shark.
It looked a little like this -- oh, that'll buff right out.
Quick pic of my car as I wandered the lot -- yep, it's still there...
Lunch Stampede underway. Damn good vittles.
Keith unveiled his 19" rims at the event. He had just finished up the install... positively stunning. These wheels really update the car.
One of the highlights of the day was when Bill Ball helped Derek get some issues sorted out on his supercharged 86.5 shark. Derek went off and showed how well it worked by doing a big smokey burnout down the street. Not to be outdone, Bill Ball came along and did a couple of HUGE burnouts. Below is a small GIF that Bill has been using in his signature line recently, and a link to the original MOV file. Classic!
Original .MOV file
Encore .MOV file
For the record, here is a pic of the VW part number on Dr. Bob's excellent VW cupholder. I forget who asked me for a copy of this pic... ibkevin maybe? Anyway, here it is.
Apparently Tom Cloutier and Louis Ott(L.ott) have this hush-hush partnership going on down the street from 928 International...
Let's see who we have here at the Saturday night pre-dinner drink session... Mel in the foreground, Bill Ball standing up, Heinrich at the table in the red shirt, then clockwise around the table, Shane, Konstantin, Dennis K, and... uh... I dunno... but that looks like Carl Fausett just above Konstantin's head, and his son -- Troy I think? to the right of Carl. Beyond that, I'm not sure who's who in this pic.
The room we had reserved for dinner was just big enough for all of us. Here's a stitched-together panorama taken from my corner seat:
(Mozilla/Firefox users may have to click the image to zoom it before scrolling)
Direct link to image
Keith gives a thank-you speech, offering words of admiration for what the 928 community has become, and passing out prizes.
Obviously, this hotel caters to Porsche owners... this was on the desk in the room.
Sunday, we went on a terrific fun drive, called "Rim of the World" by some. It runs around the rim of the LA basin. Here is a view from the first stop on the ride. The view was breathtaking!
This is the view to the left of the above view
So, we basically took over this turnout on the side of the road. This is roughly half the cars that went on the drive...
...and this is, roughly, the other half.
These following 4 shots encompass the view, panning right to left.
Not sure which car belongs to who, but here are three standouts(at least within this pic, IMHO)... Jim Bailey's "Brown, very Brown" 928, my car, then to the left of that Joe Serio's car with the Carbon Fiber hood open.
It was a great run, fantastic roads. After we came down out of the mountains, we all stopped for a Mexican lunch. I left from there, as I had to hotfoot it north to get home as early as possible -- I was to start a new job at NetApp on Monday. As of this writing, the job is going great, and I still have fresh memories of this fabulous weekend. What a treat! Also, I was very thankful I didn't have to stop on this road at any point on the journey.
