Porsche Pilgrimage: Days 12 & 13 – Akron to Kalamazoo
Visiting perhaps the most esoteric car collection in the country, and playing with drums.
Life on the road is a bit tiring, but thanks to all of the great friends and family I've had the opportunity to meet up with on this go-around, I can maintain a positive attitude and push on to the next destination. Mix in a whole lot of great cars and racing, and I'm practically in heaven.
While in the Akron, Ohio area, I stayed with my good friend Cameron. As luck would have it, he managed to hook us up with a private tour of mutual friend (and erstwhile internet automotive celeb) Myron's automotive collection. Myron likes to refer to himself as "Junkman", as he subscribes to the "one man's trash" method of car collecting. He used to be a huge Porsche 356 fanatic, having owned over 100 of them. He even told us a story of how he bought an old used up Karmann Notchback 356B for 65 dollars on his honeymoon. The guy is as full of amazing stories as his garage is full of amazing cars.
It's public knowledge that I admire things most people might spurn, a trait shared with Myron. His collection has some wacky stuff in it, and his Porsche contingent alone is worthy of admiration. As our favored German marque goes, The Junkman still retains a quartet of 356s, including three former championship-winning racers. On one side of the garage is a Porsche tractor and an ex-racer 914, over in the other bay is a one-of-two Troutman & Barnes-built 914 pickup truck. And that's just the cars, that's to say nothing of the thousands of pieces of rare and esoteric automotive memorabilia.
Outside of the Porsches, there are dozens of interesting four-wheeled contraptions in every direction. Do you like Italians? Here's an Alfa Montreal. French? How about a Citroen CX wagon, or a Matra Bagheera? Like American-built oddities? A few old-school hot rods sit in as-built condition with a weird AMC and a Davis Divan. If you like Japanese cars, you'll fit right in. The one-of-one Honda Lady is here, as well as a pair of Mazda Cosmos and a Toyota Sports 800. This is heaven. I'm convinced I died on the road and ended up here.
Being the great guy that he is, and seeing that our friend Cameron was frothing at the mouth over an ultra rare 42-year- old Isuzu 117 Coupe parked out front, Myron tossed us the keys for a quick run around the neighborhood (lead image). The car was wholly uninspiring to drive, being that it was based on a regular Isuzu sedan, but damn if it wasn't gorgeous.
The following day we worked on a little side-project. This next part is a little strange to explain. You see, Cameron and I host an automotive podcast called "The Cammed & Tubbed Podcast". Cameron is a drummer in a band on nights and weekends, and as such he needs to fit a full drum set in his cars, owing to the fact that he has a handful of hatchbacks and wagons at any given time.
One of our favored listeners recently asked what kind of sports car he should buy with the caveat that he was also a drummer. Since that time we have made it a point of discussion in sports cars over whether it "will drumset". We both wanted to know if my little 912E would drumset. Now we know.
The car's rough idling issue started to get a bit worse in Ohio, occasionally stumbling to a stall at stop signs, and a hesitation on throttle tip-in. We took the notoriously horrible intake boot off of the car and applied some silicone to one of the bigger cracks and wrapped it in cloth-bonded adhesive strips (that'd be duct tape) to try to stay the leaks. When that didn't work, we started spraying starter fluid around the vacuum lines as you do to determine line leaks. In the probing and tugging, apparently one of the spark plug leads came loose, and we were soon dealing with a giant fireball in the engine compartment. Don't do that. It's dumb.
Everything back together and a couple minor vacuum leaks fixed, I'm back on the road. I'm at my parents house for a few days in rural Michigan where WiFi is unknown jiggery pokery. Will report back soon.
