Fixes, Maintenance and Fleet Upgrades – Carmudgeon Show feat Jason Cammisa & Derek Tam-Scott Ep. 169

The Carmudgeon Show

Derek and Jason own many cars and once in a while, many of them break. Or receive really cool upgrades. It's time for a car-nerd fleet update!

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Click here to join the Hagerty Driver's Club: https://bit.ly/Join-HDC-Cammisa-Rev

See: https://www.vredestein.com/

And: https://www.radwood.com/socal-2024

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The boys start with discussing "de-advanced" ignition timing on the Rover SD1 — and Jason did his first-ever brake master cylinder rebuild. But the big issue is that Jason wants to downsize his fleet (he still has 10 cars) but loves the different experience that each car offers. The Rover has a big (ish) lazy V8 and is unlike anything else Jason has.

Derek wants to be done with his Citroën CX because it sprung a hydraulic leak, but then found the Citroën community — and, hopefully, someone to work on it. And so maybe it'll stay.

Thanks to Derek's guilt, 9 of Jason's cars have fresh brake fluid — which doesn't seem like a big deal, but doing 9 brake-fluid bleeds is time consuming. And worse, Jason discovered that his E30 Touring still had ATE Super Blue in his car. Which confirms that it was at least a decade old.

Derek's Porsche 944 no longer has a 14-year-old timing belt, which means it can be driven to Radwood SoCal (hopefully on new Vredestein tires, no less!)

Jason and Derek talk about today's ridiculous trend of people changing timing belts at 3, 4, or 5 years, with no mileage on them. This is an epidemic in the Ferrari community — when mechanics happily double the recommended replacement interval.

Jason has been suspecting that his VW Cabriolet is suffering from SMS: the dreaded transmission self-machining syndrome that kills many 020 transmissions. But after some exploratory surgery, it really now seems like a bad wheel bearing.

That would figure, since Beatrice the E30 (the 1989 325i) also needs a wheel bearing after completing a track day (with Randy Pobst as an instructor on Sonoma Raceway.) These tend to come in pairs. Just not on different cars!

Derek suspects his S124 E320 wagon (with the dogleg 5-speed and 3.6-liter swap) has bad wheel bearings, too.

More urgently, Derek is having a Motronic Month: he's finally troubleshooted some strange running on his Porsche 964, which has gotten progressively worse over the last decade. He also found that one ignition module had failed, so it was running on half of its spark plugs.

A new idle control valve didn't fix it, but swapping a DME (engine computer, or ECU in non-Porsche speak) from his dad's 964 fixed everything. Jason's buddy's 993 is doing the same thing — so Derek might have just inadvertently found that car's problem.

Jason had never heard of rebuilding an ECU (except on Honda Beats) but thats' it. Jason's cars mostly don't have DMEs, and he's been fighting with ignition timing on both of his 16-valve Volkswagens (the Scirocco and Cabriolet) and wonders if he just should upgrade all the old cars to a Holley EFI or Megasquirt.

Derek found a hard top for his R129 Mercedes SL, in Florida, but shipping was too expensive. So he found a local one in the wrong color . Jason has once done that, with the wrong color hardtop on his 996 for track use, and Derek also bought a very expensive new softtop for that SL.

RIP by the way to Bruno Sacco, to Mike Valentine, and almost to Jeremy Clarkson.

The R129 SL500 / 500SL is the best deal in the collector-car world, period.

Jason did another (for a total of three) Power Acoustic CP-71W Single-DIN wireless Apple CarPlay head unit. He loves them. And that's before the $140 (+ tax) pricing.

Except that he won't put one in the Mercedes 190E 2.3-16 because the Becker is too iconic. Or the Beat, because of the Gathers (Honda) head unit in there. Or the e31 850CSi. Continental and Blaupunkt make retro-looking radios, but Becker's original units can be retrofitted with Bluetooth or Aux In.

Porsche Classic PCM unit is amazing, but it's far too expensive for non-Porsches. Says Jason.

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