Hard to diagnose running problems - need to fix before Legends of the East!

Hey friends, after about a year, this chapter of the weird/frustrating electrical problems book seems to be have been brought to a close. Don left today after a wonderful two days of fixing my car, fun conversations and good food/wine -- not necessarily in that order. After driving for at least 60 minutes fault free this morning, the problem seems to have been my main connector in the wiring harness, where the handheld tester unit goes into. Don was thinking the issue was between my ignition key assembly to the fuse box, or from the fuse box to the coil, but that darn main connector was rather loose and had suspicious looking wires inside -- and he spotted that in the first ten minutes. So he literally cut it out and fashioned a new connector with only the wires I needed. Then he reconnected my new heater box to the engine after Chris installed same several months ago. The car started right up, idled at 185 degrees for 20 minutes during a hot 85 degree Viriginia day and then we drove for 25 minutes or so with flawless running. After we got back and enjoyed a nice evening together at the house he did a valve adjustment the next morning (as he heard some suspicious sounds I could not even hear) and found that five of the valves were a little tight. He fixed that and hooked up Megasquirt to recalibrate the tune given the minor valve adjustment changes...

My idle is now rock steady at 1100 (to account for AC on rpm dropping) and barely waivers 25 rpm up or down. Air fuel ratios were tweaked, VE table, some ignition timing refinements, etc. I dynoed before at 198/215 at the wheels but she feels even more now.

To celebrate, we went to Katie's Cars and Coffee this morning (along with my wife Fran and Don's awesome girlfriend Wendy) and had a supper time looking at Jahan's race prepped 911 as well as other esoteric new and old interesting cars...

My car is back! Bring the car shows, Concours and other excuses to drive my E9!

Oh, and of course, Don left me with a lot of homework including new screw heads, caps, gaskets, rubber parts, etc. to bring my car into Concours conformance. And he pointed out my Conti tires were over 10 years old (good grief). I never gave those tires a second thought given how much tread is left on them but the last thing I need now is a catastrophic blow out on the way to my next event. A new set of Conti Extreme Contact Sport 02s is on the way.

He gave Doug Dolan some homework, too, and many folks here know how nicely done Doug's M5 powered E9 is...

Thanks to my savant mechanic/technician friend of 14 years, Don Lawrence!
 
Great result! Glad you shared this. I recently read a story by Jay Leno. He too admits he never really gave tires, on all of his classics, a second thought. If the tread looked good, well then what's to worry? His experience with taking his Mercedes 600 out for a run brought this topic front and centre. He now realizes he requires about 1200 new tires! Ouch!
 
I believe the part about the valve adjustment by Don.
People have been known to park near Don's shop and find their valves were adjusted unbeknownst to them...
 
It’s a wonderful life when you can fly across country, meet old friends, make new friends and fix problems that have bedeviled beautiful cars. Then there are dinners and wine and more cars….and so much more. And thank you Jahan! What great hospitality- this is the reason the e9 forum exists!”

Why would anyone ever retire?
 
Great result! Glad you shared this. I recently read a story by Jay Leno. He too admits he never really gave tires, on all of his classics, a second thought. If the tread looked good, well then what's to worry? His experience with taking his Mercedes 600 out for a run brought this topic front and centre. He now realizes he requires about 1200 new tires! Ouch!
LOL
I watched that video as well. A couple of years ago, I had to get new tires for the Mustang and 997 and the boat trailer and the car trailer ... and the utility trailer.... LOL and I think the E23 and.. who knows what.
I did some shopping around and found Walmart had the best prices on the trailer tires and that Discount worked for the car tires (and Discount matched the Walmart prices for the trailer tires I wanted).

I bought 25 tires that day. I do NOT want to do that again any time soon.
 
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