SharkSkin's 928 Pages

The story of how I came to

purchase my first Shark

This all came about as a result of my desire to upgrade my Z-car. More info on that car on my Past Vehicles page. Having built a really solid powertrain & suspension setup to my liking, I became very busy during 2000-2003 and never did get around to doing the cosmetic stuff. The windshield and hatch leaked. I didn't want to get into replacing the glass until I was ready to paint... using the old trick of cutting the gasket back, painting, then installing the new glass & gasket. Front & rear glass + gaskets would be around $1500. I didn't want to do any of this stuff until I replaced the dash, and in concert with that project because of an intended color change..... another $1700 for just the dash pad. I didn't want to pull the dash without replacing the wiring harness, or at least grafting in a new fusebox. Also, add to that seats, headliner, etc etc on top of a $3500 minimum for what I would consider an acceptable paint job. So, here I was up against a wall, no real garage to work in and all of this garage type work to do. It occurred to me that I could get a nice shell and drop all of my goodies into it and sell what was left as a restoration project. I've been saving for some time toward some property, but I really felt like I needed an upgrade in my ride. Around the Christmas of 2003 I decided that the coming summer was to be the summer that I finally pulled my Z together into the clean little rocket that it always deserved to be. I began to search for an old Z with very low miles, preferably a garage queen with a blown motor. Problem is, these cars don't blow up until the cosmetic stuff has been run around a couple hundred thousand miles. I found several nice prospects on ebay, but it seemed I was looking at $10K for the sort of car I wanted. I've also had a thing for the later 300ZXTwin Turbo cars, and I found a really nice looking one in Florida(opposite coast) that was in my price range. I looked at 928s and really felt that they were still out of my price range. Oh, I could have taken out a loan and picked up a $30K GTS easily enough, but that would not fit in with my plans of socking money away monthly to achieve other goals. I really prefer to do auto deals with cash..... So, I had a budget. In my quest for a Z upgrade, I happened to pick up an auto trader. While it didn't have any good Z's, I started flipping through pages and encountered a lone 1978 Porsche 928. The ad was poorly written... I won't go into the broken english. :) But the price was $4200, and I thought to myself, WOW! that's awfully cheap.... I better call the guy. I called the following day, Monday morning, and determined that the car was 5 speed, Blk/Blk Leather, no sunroof.... The guy said it ran good and it was in good condition, and had 62K miles on it. I found out that the guy had left it at a gas station near BART and he rode BART across the bay to work. So I took the morning off work and went to look at the car. I arrived, and was really impressed with the exterior. Sure there were some tiny chips and dings that were touched up, but very few and far between. Parts of the car had been resprayed, but it looked good. There was only a very slight hood misalignment, and I could see that the headlights were not quite positioned correctly. What I could see of the interior looked to be in pretty darn good shape. I could see the crack in the pod, but I could also tell that the interior was in real nice shape overall. A peek underneath revealed that the exhaust was in decent shape except for a small hole in the rear muffler(In retrospect... it turns out the exhaust was pretty well shot, but it looked like it was OK. I was more interested in the condition of the motor, transaxle, suspension, body... the big stuff.). A look under the front showed some oil seepage, but the car was not dripping any fluids at all. Brake pads all had lots of meat on them, no scoring on the rotors. Some judicious wiggling and I was satisfied there was nothing major clanking around. I saw the aluminum ball joint carriers and decided not to worry about the uneven wear on the front tires; clearly the car would need a full alignment after the ball joints were set right anyway. So I called the guy back, and talked him into taking BART back across the bay at lunchtime to meet me and let me check out the car further. He turned out to be a really nice Persian guy, maybe 55 years old, who really had no clue about cars in general or this car in particular. He told me that he just had it as a flashy car that he would take out on dates, but now that he's moved to a condo he can no longer keep it. Nowhere to park it, apparently. He said he put about 3,000 miles on it, and the records more or less back this up. So I asked him to open the hood, which he did, and of course he started it up. I wanted to poke around under the hood first, so I had him shut it down. It was leaking from the power steering reservoir and between the cam towers and the head.... it looked as though it had a relatively fresh PS pump though. The timing belt probably dated back to 1978. The oil level was right in the middle of the dipstick, and looked reasonably clean. Couldn't find the water level, but it looked like it needed at least a flush and a new cap. Also, there is a fitting on the rear passenger side, behind the last runner, that looks a bit corroded. The air filter had a hole burned in it about the size of a baseball, probably the result of a backfire. So I assumed that the engine had at least sucked up a bit of ash from the burned element, and whatever else may have been sucked in there since... Bugs? Rocks?. Ugh. Really, really clueless, this guy. Also there was a general patina of neglect: missing Jump Terminal cover, cad plating corroded off of the plenum-runner hose clamps, injector lines, etc. So I started the car at last, and it fired within a couple of turns(as it had when he first started it). The motor itself sounded very tight, very little mechanical noise at all. There was some noise coming from the fan bearings; I stopped the car, wiggled it... maybe .1mm of play.... so I started the car back up and tried the lights, wipers, and so on. The headlights operated smooth and silent; Burnt high beam on one side and the pods had a bit of play in them, but the base mechanism seemed to be functioning properly and had no loose parts that I could detect. The washer fluid light was burnt out as were many of the bulbs in the switches. Washers clogged as expected, wipers ran strong, smooth & quiet. Voltage looked low, but I've heard plenty about these gauges. :) The PS pulley was badly bent somehow, maybe by some mechanic trying to pull it off of the old pump using a hammer. Easy enough to replace, and it didn't seem to be vibrating. So I pulled out of the rear of the gas station onto a small access road, and quickly discovered a HUGE dead spot. The car would rev OK, but as soon as I tried to engage the clutch the motor would just lose power, as if I had released the throttle. They guy was saying "Push..... Pooosh more de gas"... :) So I did, and at about half throttle it leapt like the spanked thoroughbred that it was. :) So, seeing as how we were in Millbrae, Ca, near SFO, I took him on a little spin up Highway 380, then over Sharp Park road and back. Some good hillclimbing freeway, and some good steep twisties. I wasn't pushing hard by any means, but I was pushing some, asking the Shark to tell me about itself. The suspension felt very tight overall, though it had just the faintest hint of ball joint rattle in some circumstances. But what impressed me was how smooth and strong the car was outside of that dead spot. Started cold(well, maybe 4 hours cold) and idled like a dream; over 3000 RPM and it pulled very hard and smooth. So, I knew that there couldn't be anything drastically wrong with the motor's internals; I have a good ear for that sort of thing. I figured secondary ignition or fuel filter were the most likely culprits. As I understood it, there was to be another potential buyer coming along later in the afternoon, so I went ahead and put a deposit on the car, and agreed to give him the balance in a few days for a total of $4200. Later that week I went and paid the balance and picked up the keys and title. Now, some of you may know where to get a car just like this for less money. Or for less money than it will take for me to pull this car together. Well, since I really don't have a lot of time to go flying around the country looking at cars, I decided that opportunity had knocked and I had better open the door. :) This is the first 5 speed I have seen(at rest... can't tell when they whiz by) so I know they are somewhat rare and I didn't want an automatic. For more info on the first weekend with the the car and what I did to it, see Shark Attack: Round One - The battle of the drool.

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