Melting Motoring Madness

 Today was the Goodwood Festival of Speed - my first visit for 2 or 3 years. But with the south of England sweltering for the last few weeks, the forecast was for 35 degC and it felt hotter.

BUT I love this event - so loud, so exciting with amazing cars - every time, I see cars I've never seen before and watching one-offs I'll never see again, never mind moving at speed, is petrol-head heaven. Yes, it's absolutely heaving and everything costs a fortune but that is irrelevant - there is no better event in the world, never mind this country and it's only an hour and a bit from me. It would be crazy not to go...one day, my grandkids will marvel that such a thing was allowed.

I always seem to enter right next to the main Porsche stand which looked pretty cool:

There were loads of Porsches parked (if I was a Porsche Club member, I could probably have parked there?) but they were all at the bottom of the hill and it was already too hot to walk back up, so this pic will have to do:

This was a stunning looking 911 - great colour and really nice interior:

...although not as impressive as this champagne cabinet - wonder if that would fit in Barry?

This was a pretty impressive bit of tech that was almost hidden away - a wireless charger for your EV:

A lot more bikes than previous years, with some real art:

Some beauties in the supercar car park:

Others just hidden away:

Splendiferous supercar  paddock (which I completely missed last time) - the 4 seater, 2300hp Koennisegg Gemera:

A stunning Pagani something-unpronounceable:

One of 6 early Konegiseggs (sp?) in the Style de Luxe section:

Six (yes six!) Miuras:

A gorgeous Ferrari California Spider:

One of the best cars of the day - look at the details:

That brace is covered in leather!! In the engine bay!

Wonderful old Ferrari F1 cars:

...and a lot of exhausts:

This is a V16, 6 litre, 520 hp Auto Union that was doing 211mph - in 1939!!! They don't go any faster today, except round corners, I guess.

A Rolls-Royce limo:

The theme for this year was Singer:

And this was probably my favourite in the whole show - look at the colour and interior, unbelievable:

Lots of other amazing Porsches dotted around:

A host of Ferrari F1s blew my ears out - I've got some video I'll upload soon:

...and daytime fireworks were a weird thing:

A sweltering hot, wallet-busting, crowded, loud and utterly fantastic day!

Free dental work

 First task was a wheel alignment - despite us marking the positions of the various bolts, Barry just felt very strange, like it was crabbing along and the steering wheel was off-centre.

I tried to book an alignment at 911Excellence but they were full for the next 6 weeks, so I just randomly found a garage nearby who assured me they had done Porsches before and they had the Hunter system. It should have been a bit cheaper as well but turns out, the alignment was SO far out, it took them an extra 30 minutes and so ended up costing me £220. Still a bit cheaper than 911E and they seemed to know their stuff.

The ride on Barry is now definitely firmer (luckily I don't have any fillings to drop out) but it does feel taut and firm in the right way, so I'll just have to hope it softens a little bit over time. More importantly,  it's definitely better on bumpy, fast corners and under heavy braking, which was the main point of this exercise - it was getting a bit scary before but now back to the confidence-inspiring level of handling Porsche are famous for.

A local Porsche Indie dealer organised a meet half an hour from me, so I popped along to have a look:

A fun run out on another amazing day we are having lately.

Surgery - part two

 So now the rears and these put up a bit more of a fight...

Disks and calipers all off pretty quickly, then bottom of the drop link was simple. Hood into the service position and the top mount bolts removed cleanly.

Next up were the 6 driveshaft bolts - also pretty simple. 

There was then some thinking to how best to continue - we  basically needed to get enough slack to get the top of the strut out of the wheel arch and we realised we had to remove a lot of the suspension to do this.

We first removed the brace arm that goes across, under the hub and arms and then the coffin arm, after marking the position of the alignment nut to try get it back in roughly the right place. Same with the trailing arm (?) - fortunately all these bolts came off quite easily.

But something had to make it hard for us and that was the top bolt of the drop link, that goes through the hub. We had tried to do the original front drop link but it defeated us and I had to take the car to a garage and we were worried we might have to do the same here.

The nut came off easily enough but the bolt was seized in the hub, like the fronts had been. After hitting it with a hammer did nothing, we decided to get the angle grinder out. Cearth cut off the other side of the link (I'd bought new ones already) and then used it to make sure we had access to the nut so we could get a breaker bar on it. With a complex mix of jack stand to take some pressure, we lent on the breaker bar and, thankfully, it relented. It took another 20 minutes of working it backwards and forwards, the impact gun and a hammer finally got the bolt coming out, with a drift and hammer to get the final inch done:

What a relief!! Lots of high fives ensued...

After that, it was plain sailing - the old strut came out with a few whacks from the hammer:

These rears were definitely in worse condition than the fronts had been, with holes in the rubber bellows and very corroded top mounts:

The new ones slotted into the hubs easily and the new drop links looked nice and shiny:

All that was needed was to replace the coffin and trailing arms, the brace, brakes and calipers and one side done, 3 hours in - not too bad.

The other side was almost identical, with the drop link feeling a little bit worse to get out but the same method worked.

Finally finished around 5pm, so a full 8 hour day (including an hour for lunch) and I'm knackered.

The short drive back showed I badly need an alignment, which I'll try get done this week. But initial impressions are good - the ride feels firmer (to be expected) but it feels taut, like it's not flustered by bumps and happily crashes through them, if that makes any sense.

A very tiring but rewarding day and saved me a grand or so in labour charges.