This showed up in my garage Part 2.... #choptopchallenge goes bad..

Last night I get home from work and i'm gathering tools in preparation to pull the front left apart on the focus for work on my new Brembo kit... 

Get a message from my buddy Adam Jabaay. 

"How far are you from here?" 

followed by this photo




Turns out the #Gridlife #ChopTopChallenge Porsche Cayenne has decided to die on the return trip from Austin back to Chicago. 

Let him know that  i'm about 50 miles away in Ft Worth.

and he's like... damn... that's too far... 

goes silent for a few minutes..

Meanwhile i'm like... taking this car apart right now is a really bad idea with this all brewing... 

so i start putting tools back away... 

Adam tells me they found a u haul and they're headed to pick it up. Mind you, he's in Chicago working this as a totally removed entity.

I continue packing tools away and 5 minutes later I get a phone call... 

"u haul lied, no truck and trailer available and they just closed... can you drive to plano, do you know anyone with a truck and trailer and could you possibly house this thing for a week?"

I put a call in to my roomate, who owns the house... "so i'm going to park a broken car in my garage spot for a week, if that ok?" 

he gives the green light and appreciates my heads up.. 

Fire up the Focus and head to Plano..

all my phone calls for a truck and trailer are turned down... really know who I can count on.. 

I find these two waiting for me in Plano.. 


 

Cayenne is toast... will not idle properly it's missing so hard and adding throttle just makes it worse.. 

So I Dial up AAA and come up with the most convoluted story i can think of for how I have a car there... and i was also on a spring break trip to Chicago... 

AAA obliges and after 2 hours a flat bed finally arrives.. 



Get it back to my house where my roommate has come outside to see the commontion with all the flashing lights as the tow truck gets this thing as close to the garage as possible.. 

He's in total disbelief... "not in a million years would I have figured this was what you were bringing home..." 

team #ramblers and my roomate and I all manage to get this big girl into the garage....


 

so yeah... that's how a Chop Top Porsche Cayenne ended up in the garage last night.. 

Definitely worth using the VIN to join PCA and to take it to some show and shine type events. 

Cool. I may have met Adam at a chop top challenge build party in Chicago a couple years ago. But I have been out of the chop top loop for a while. 

Knowing Jabaay is one of the weirdest things........or rather, knowing Jabaay seems to mean that your life is going to get weirder. Don't tell him where I live. 

mazdeuce - Seth said:

Knowing Jabaay is one of the weirdest things........or rather, knowing Jabaay seems to mean that your life is going to get weirder. Don't tell him where I live. 

you misspelled better... meeting Jabaay was literally the best thing to ever happen to my life.. He has liquid RAD running in his veins... he should be dead with how hard he works. He is who I strive to be at every event.... 

I think the choptopchallenge going truly bad would be much worse than just having an awesome hoopty parked in your garage for a week!

Also reminder to  everyone that it doesn't run....... unfortunately...  

spacecadet said:

Also reminder to  everyone that it doesn't run....... unfortunately...  

Welcome to the Porsche ownership experience! 

mazdeuce - Seth said:

Knowing Jabaay is one of the weirdest things........or rather, knowing Jabaay seems to mean that your life is going to get weirder. Don't tell him where I live. 

I feel like whatever precipitated this, and you being locatable would only result in amazing. 

So LS swap build is next, right?

In reply to Mndsm :

I mean, if it were in my garage it would be on the lift and the motor would be out already......... spacecadet needs to step up his game.

You have understanding roommates.  

You should find a part car, grab whatever you need from it to fix the busted hooptie, then just flat tow the parts carcass for the rest of the trip to vulture parts as needed.

This won't be the only break down. Also, chop the roof off it, because, well, just because.

Props for bailing the guys out.

In my best Clarkson voice:

I'VE MENDED SOMETHING!!!!!

Car would idle fine for a minute or 2, then it would stall and die. I thought it might be a throttle position sensor. 

With a little Internet sleuthing I found a YouTube video showing these same conditons that said I should try pulling the #14 15A fuse for the primary fuel pump to bypass it and force the car to rely on the secondary pump......

Sure enough.... It worked.... 

Snapped this photo at the pump... didn't catch the irony of the Jeep next to it until just now...

This thing is THE MOST FUN... Mazdeuce was right... cars are better without windshields... he was only talking about miatas... but holy crap is this thing a BLAST

I can only imagine that if i took my cayenne and removed the roof and all glass and thus removed 300 of the highest placed pounds on the car in the process, it would be stupidly much better as a beater sports roadster than it would have any right to be. 

Looks like a fun time!

That's some good fixing. Now what are the rules in Texas about cutting off windshields? Isn't it legal as long as we keep the wipers or something weird like that? 

Something I've learned from Mazdeuce over the past 4 years is...... never pass up the opportunity for a great story! So I drove the Cayenne to work today.

In reply to spacecadet :

That's very James Dean in the daylight. Much better than that tribute boxster. 

mazdeuce - Seth said:

That's some good fixing. Now what are the rules in Texas about cutting off windshields? Isn't it legal as long as we keep the wipers or something weird like that? 

When I participated in this a couple years ago, we were pulled over, and the cops were okay with it since we all had full face helmets on.  Effectively with no windshield there's no obstruction, and our helmets were DOT windscreens no different than a motorcycle.  Not sure on TX specific codes.    

That said, a couple of the Michigan teams in the choptopchallenge this year got hassled on their way out of Michigan, and ended up getting their cars flatbedded across the state line where they set them back down and resumed driving them once out of Michigan because of some asshat cops.  

Took the cayenne to Lunch and then dropped it back off at the house... the coolant leak seems to be getting worse and it's the 90 degree elbow under the intake manifold which i'm not going to touch. So parked it in the garage and took the focus back to work. It's a ton of fun, but the novelty wears off pretty quick when i'm concerned at every stumble the motor makes and awaiting the next time the cooling level low light is going to come on. 

 

Maybe chop two coils off of the springs?  Oh, and fix the coolant leak...

You did an easy awesome fix. You drove it. As long as you don't break it, you're a hero. 

In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :

yes, right now it can be driven onto an auto transport for easy transport back to chicago.. we might still drive it back.. but it's all in discussion right now. 

It looks like a 4 door boxster roadster.  Needs a fringed canvass surrey top to be complete!