Ferrari Mailing List: Re: Add to Clyde's List of Self-Cleansing Hobbies

[Doug & Terri (dnt]

Peter notes “Think back to the 50s and 60s cars and how many reliable car clocks there were...   Zero.”

 

True true.  Just changing from planes to cars in general and specifically to early Porsche 356’s – there was an MIT grad character who name was Harry Pellow who lived in the San Francisco Bay Area.  He called himself the “Maestro.”  Jerry Seinfeld referenced him several times in jest.  Anyway when Pellow lost his job with (GE?) when they were making a bid for nuclear reactors and “the other way” (??) was chosen he turned into this Porsche 356 engine and serial number guru.  Became THE source for anything Porsche 4 cylinder engine.  Not the whole car or transmission – JUST the engine.

 

Wrote thick books on them and then in the middle of a dissertation could state “. . . I digress” and go into a personal crazy story - - - [I digress] about his guaranteed to pass a Kalifornia smog check test kit.  Went something like this:  in the days of early (late 60’s early 70’s) emission testing all a person’s vehicle needed to do was show an “improvement” in emissions.  Maestro’s kit was a spark plug that had zero gap.  The plug sparkies points were mashed together.  SO the testee would replace a good spark plug with the “kit” plug, go to the smog station and fail BADLY.  Go home and replace the “kit” plug with the old plug, return to the smog station and IMPROVE.  Hooray.  Here’s your sticker.

 

(This treatise does have something to with car clocks.)

 

Another trick the Maestro came up with is his special vehicle license plate.  When the personalized plates first came out he surmised the ever good but misunderstood and innocent folks doing time in prison and making license plates would overlook a special combo of letters and numbers.  Something like this: 0O0O0O0.  a string of zero’s and oh’s.  so he requests the above plate and sure enough it comes back 0000000.

 

 

And so he never ever got another parking ticket.

 

So what about the clocks?  In the olden days, Porsche as well as many many Euro cars used the electro/mechanical clock winding mechanism.  Clock would wind down to the place where a set of points made contact . . . clocks solenoid would snap the winding arm back and about every ten minutes you could hear a faint zzzzztt.  All 356 Porsche’s with clocks left the factory with this electro/mechanical clock.  So what does Harry say about these clocks?  When shopping for a used 356 he used it as a doctor uses a blood test – if the clock works – proceed to checking car out either personal or technician sort of PPI.  If the clock DOSEN’T work – walk from the car, now.  Unless you’re buying a parts car.

 

So that’s that.

Onward

DOUG