Between 705 & 1200 SQ/FT The Garage at The Place in The Valley (Garage Condo 45x23x20)

Thanks for the tip. I NEVER would have considered CVS as a source for anything photographic!!

I didn't know about the track at the Lake, either. Looks like its going to be an interesting one, agree on the elevation changes.

On your route out there, you drove within 1/4 mile of my house, about 8 miles west of Owensville on MO-28. MO-42 from Belle to Osage Beach certainly gave you some opportunities to explore the handling characteristics of your new Cayman, great choice!

Today is the winter solstice - the shortest day of the year. Sunrise locally was 7:17am and sunset 4:44pm. Oddly enough, today was also predicted to be warmer than usual and almost hit 60 degrees. I'm still trying to get out some with my new Cayman while the weather is above the 40 degree (F) minimum for the Pilot Sport 4S tires that came with the car.

I planned a new trip up the Great River Road to Pierre Marquette Park and then back around to the down town St. Louis to try to take a picture by the graffiti wall. This is a shorter drive than the last because we have less daylight to work with.



(**Spoiler** - don't follow this exact path as I *found* some borderline gravel roads north of the Park. **Spoiler**)

We headed out around 10am to attempt to time our drive to have a picnic lunch at the park. Nancy decided she wanted to drive this time too so we pulled out both cars in the mid-morning sun.



I almost forgot to take a mileage shot but remembered at the end of the drive leading out of The Place.



Running up route 94 in St. Charles county, we saw a train in the distance and realized we were going to hit the same little bridge at the same time. I had to stop and take a picture. The train driver blew his whistle as he crossed the bridge - probably noticing the two little Porsches sitting below watching him.



I've always loved the bridge into Alton. I know there are many of these new style suspension bridges out there now but I still like the looks of them. The roads were nice and clear of traffic as you can tell by the pictures that follow.



Down town Alton, IL: I figured I could take this shot while sitting still at the 3 way stop.



The Great River Road follows the Mississippi River north out of Alton. It is a very nice road for the amount of traffic that it sees. The views of the river and the white cliffs are beautiful. I've driven up here in the winter when the river is all white packed ice - but it was way too warm for that today.



We stopped at the Pierre Marquette Park visitor center to use their bathrooms and then headed into the park. We stopped at one of the overlooks and ate our picnic lunch. It was still a little cold to sit outside so we just ate in the 911.





When lunch was over we dropped out of the back (north) side of the park. This was a mistake. The roads were once step above a gravel road in places. I should have checked the roads in "street view" in Google maps prior to following this path. If I did it again, I would just drop back south out of the park and drive back to Grafton and take Route 3 north out of Grafton and finish the rest of the drive as shown.

The rest of the drive back along Route 3 was not as scenic. We did drive over the McKinley bridge in down town STL which was a first for me. It is an older one lane each way steel girder bridge. Sorry, no pics from me but here is one from Google Maps in street view. See, I do know how to use it... ;-)



We stopped at the Mural Mile or graffiti wall just south of the Arch. Basically, there is a flood wall for the Mississippi River that the city allows to be painted with graffiti. Some of the murals or graffiti can be quite good but it gets painted over quickly so it is always a bit of guess as to what you will find. There are also limited spots where you can get a car near the wall - I took a picture but I'm not in love with it.



From there, it was a quick run out Interstate 64 back to Chesterfield Valley and the The Place. Total time a little over 3.5 hours for a little over 150 miles. I think that includes our stops at the visitor center and for lunch.





Tomorrow is going to be warm too. I might try to get out again. After that, it rains Wednesday, goes down to 14F Friday morning, and is mostly in the 30s F range for the next 2 weeks. This may be the last hurrah for a while....

...and a good day was had by all. Thanks for sharing it with us.

It has been a cold couple weeks in St. Louis. I think we are out of the negative and single digits finally. My wife took this shot while we were at The Place last night. The snow pile is taller than the TTS! The TTS has become my winter beater. ;-) It was so dirty after driving to work the last couple of weeks that I broke down and took it to an automated car wash a couple hours before this picture was taken.



I hope everyone is staying warm and keeping healthy!

I bought a set of header antlers for the garage a year ago. They have just been sitting against the wall where I keep kicking them to the detriment of my shins and the paint on the wall. I decided it was time to get them mounted.







I took some quick measurements of width and height and sketched out on some paper an idea of how to mount them. It is a little more difficult than it might first appear because of how the headers are welded to the metal head. The headers are at an angle to the the head and actually extend past the plane of the back of the head so the head cannot be mounted directly to the wall - at least without having the head at some wonky angle to the wall.



I decided to make a plywood board with a raised area for the head so that I could pick up three mounting points. First the keyway on the back of the head and then one point on each header exhaust flange. I made the cuts with my 20+ year old circular saw working in my home garage. No need to get saw dust all over my nice garage... ;-)







I still have wall paint from the garage so I painted the board the color of the lower walls. This next picture shows the attach bolts going through holes on the exhaust flanges. There is also a bolt going through the head but it is not really visible here. Notice how non-true to the mounting board the headers are. I'm really not sure why they were made this way. If they were flat it would have made mounting so much easier. The 1/4" bolts have a counter bore and larger fender washer on the back side to keep the bolts from pulling through the plywood but still letting the board sit flush to the wall.







Another thing to note in the picture is that the headers are not symmetrical! I had not even thought about that until after I made and painted the board up. I just measured the overall height and width and made the board to fit that. When I dropped the headers on the first time I was confused at first. Obviously, on second thought - since the two cylinder heads share a crank shaft - the cylinders are offset from one side to the other. So the board is symmetrical but the antlers are not ... few people will notice and I'll just laugh to myself when I see it.



Here is a picture of the almost finished product. It is mounted on the wall by the stairs. I wanted it somewhere where it would not fall on a car if it fell off the wall. I have 8 drywall screws into the metal joists and it feels nice and secure so hopefully that is just me being paranoid. I just need to fill the screw heads in and do some touch up painting. (I'll try to remember to touch up the paint on the walls where I kicked it into the walls over this last winter at the same time).

Is phase 2 dead? It doesn’t look like the website has been updated in 2 years.

Great job on the "rack mount". It looks great - and less dangerous - up on the wall.

Cam79 said:

Is phase 2 dead? It doesn’t look like the website has been updated in 2 years.

Click to expand...

Phase 2 is dead as far as I can tell. Phase one took a long time to sell. The developers turned over everything to a board of owners in the facility.

Greg_STL said:

I bought a set of header antlers for the garage a year ago. They have just been sitting against the wall where I keep kicking them to the detriment of my shins and the paint on the wall. I decided it was time to get them mounted.

I took some quick measurements of width and height and sketched out on some paper an idea of how to mount them. It is a little more difficult than it might first appear because of how the headers are welded to the metal head. The headers are at an angle to the the head and actually extend past the plane of the back of the head so the head cannot be mounted directly to the wall - at least without having the head at some wonky angle to the wall.



I decided to make a plywood board with a raised area for the head so that I could pick up three mounting points. First the keyway on the back of the head and then one point on each header exhaust flange. I made the cuts with my 20+ year old circular saw working in my home garage. No need to get saw dust all over my nice garage... ;-)

I still have wall paint from the garage so I painted the board the color of the lower walls. This next picture shows the attach bolts going through holes on the exhaust flanges. There is also a bolt going through the head but it is not really visible here. Notice how non-true to the mounting board the headers are. I'm really not sure why they were made this way. If they were flat it would have made mounting so much easier. The 1/4" bolts have a counter bore and larger fender washer on the back side to keep the bolts from pulling through the plywood but still letting the board sit flush to the wall.

Another thing to note in the picture is that the headers are not symmetrical! I had not even thought about that until after I made and painted the board up. I just measured the overall height and width and made the board to fit that. When I dropped the headers on the first time I was confused at first. Obviously, on second thought - since the two cylinder heads share a crank shaft - the cylinders are offset from one side to the other. So the board is symmetrical but the antlers are not ... few people will notice and I'll just laugh to myself when I see it.



Here is a picture of the almost finished product. It is mounted on the wall by the stairs. I wanted it somewhere where it would not fall on a car if it fell off the wall. I have 8 drywall screws into the metal joists and it feels nice and secure so hopefully that is just me being paranoid. I just need to fill the screw heads in and do some touch up painting. (I'll try to remember to touch up the paint on the walls where I kicked it into the walls over this last winter at the same time).

Click to expand...

Love the “European mount.” Looks great on the wall. Just curious....do you hunt as well? Any bone antlers on the wall at home?


Sent from my iPhone using Garage Journal

stl_commuter said:

Love the “European mount.” Looks great on the wall. Just curious....do you hunt as well? Any bone antlers on the wall at home?

Click to expand...

I never got bit by that particular bug. I've been to different ranges over the years but never actually out on a hunt. This was just a spur of the moment purchase to decorate the garage....

very nice on the wall mount. Muffler-head haha

I ordered some AirPlay speakers for the garage. I was using a little portable Bluetooth speaker in the main garage and the TV speakers up on the mezzanine when we wanted to listen to music (or watch TV). The portable was just too small and to get any volume in the large garage it would just start distorting. The TV speakers were ok but with the QuadTV set up I have the sound from one TV was blocked some by the TV next to it. I was watching an Obsessed Garage episode on YouTube about these AirPlay speakers from DynAudio. I really liked the idea of having my speakers on my wi-fi rather than on Bluetooth. The speakers also have NoiseAdapt and RoomAdapt functions that dynamically adjust for ambient sound levels and room acoustics. The Obsessed Garage review talked about how that really helps when listening to music where you have so many surfaces like concrete floors. DynAudio is a well respected audio company so I thought I would give them a try.

I spent way too much time standing in the middle of my garage trying to find a symmetrical location where I could hook up a pair of speakers on the main level that had easy access to power. There really was not a good solution because of the stairs blocked power outlets on one wall and I knew I might put a lift under the mezzanine one day and that would block out one wall under the mezzanine. In the end, I decide to just get a single speaker for the main level. I decided to get two DynAudio Music 7s. One would be a center channel under my QuadTV set up and the second Music 7 would be used on the main level. I bought one red one and one dark grey one with the option for either color in either location depending on how they matched. DynAudio makes a very nice bracket (more later) and I'm going to put the one in the main garage on the wall opposite the stairs but close to where we do most of our work. It will be high enough on the wall to be out of the way. I figure with 20 foot ceilings doing the acoustic 1/3 thing and putting it about 7 feet up will work.

A single Music 7 has 2 x 1in tweeters, 2 x 3in midrange, 2 x 5in woofers each with there own 50 watt amplifier (300 watts total). It has Wi-Fi (AirPlay), Bluetooth, optical and HDMI inputs. For the mezzaning unit, I am using the HDMI connection into my upper left TV in the ARC input so that the TV remote can control the speaker volume. I also hooked up the optical to my upper right TV just in case I wanted to play sound from that TV instead of the upper left. I tend to watch TV with the upper left/lower right and upper right/lower left on different channels sometimes....

I took a couple pictures of the mezzanine set up here. The red speaker goes well and appears to match well with the red pendant lights.

I unboxed and set up the Music 7 for the main level but have not done the bracket on the wall yet. I ordered a 15' long power cable with the correct NEMA unpolarized plug and am waiting for it to be delivered. I want to make sure the power cord reaches the speaker without having to have an extension cable. I'm also trying to save some wall space for another project that is coming so routing the cable on the wall will be important. Sorry - no pictures for this setup yet but here is one I grabbed from the manufacturer of the bracket. It is heavy gauge steel and has screws that go into threaded inserts on the speaker. It should make mounting easy (I hope I did not jinx myself). When I get it mounted on the wall, I'll take some more pictures.


Sound quality is obviously vastly superior to my old "solution" (portable Bluetooth speaker and TV speakers). Using the upper speaker as a center channel works very nice. The NoiseAdapt and RoomAdapt do help with the acoustics of the garage. Hooking up to my wif-fi was simple using the app on my iPhone. I set up both speakers as a group and I could play music in the entire garage. However, once you put the speakers in a group, you can't send music to each individually. Unlike some other speakers, I cannot select multiple speakers in AirPlay on the iPhone either. So, If I play music to both at the same time I have to set up a group quickly and then delete it when it done. Also, if you put them in a group and try to drive from the HDMI or optical there is a multi-second sync issue between the TV video and the speaker sound. Thankfully the group creation and deletion process is simple but there seems like a toggle in the software would be a better setup. Most of the time I will only be using one or the other so I left them un-grouped for now.

So far - so good. It it nice to have higher quality music and TV sound in the garage now.

Greg_STL said:

---AUDIOPHILE GIBBERISH--

Click to expand...

Your mezzanine/loft looks more comfortable than most TV/Family rooms/Man Caves/Dens I've been in.

Whenever you come up with a quality plugged, or unplugged blue-tooth solution, I'd love to read your "Idiots Guide To TV Audio". I'm not an audio snob (obviously), but I want to be able host a backyard NCAA MBB opening weekend shindig in 2022.

@kjdhawkhill - You are giving me more credit than is due. I will say that I have not been a fan of Bluetooth in general because it is limited on distance and bandwidth. That is one of the main reasons I picked the speakers I did because they can use Wi-Fi instead of Bluetooth. Wi-Fi has a much greater range and a much higher bandwidth. I probably won't but you can stream high quality lossless music all the way to the speaker. I'm just going to use my XM satellite radio app on my phone since I already pay for that subscription for several cars and already know my favorite stations. XM has lots of compression on it so that should end all talk of me being an audiophile!!

I received my longer 15' power cord in the mail and installed the second speaker on the main level of the garage. It is not the best job but I had too many constraints. I was limited on outlets, the length of power cord, and I wanted the lower part of the wall to be free from cords for some additional artwork that is going to go on that wall. I used four anchors that were good for 79lbs each and placed the bracket with the anchors space equally around one of the studs. It is in solid so that is good - I'd hate to have it fall off and hit something. It sounds great, it out of the way, but it is still right in the area where we do most of our work while in the garage.

PCA Track Day - World Wide Technology (Gateway) Raceway - Day One

This last weekend was our first track day in a number of years. We have done Porsche Experience center and some super car driving events but not to a real full weekend track day since 2015. I last went with my Audi TTS but I didn't really feel like the TTS was a good track car. I planned to get back to a HPDE event sooner but the 2 year saga on getting the new Cayman and Covid got in the way. But no more - we made it back this weekend!

We had to arrive early Saturday morning to register and do the last minute inspection work on the car. So here we are leaving the house at 5:45 in the morning to drive from west of STL over to the east side to the track. My wife and I were both driving so the Cayman and 997 C4S were both packed and ready to go.



Traffic was very light and I just put it in cruise to head over and was surprised to get 29.4 mpg on the trip over. It was looking to be a hot day and we were regretting not getting a garage.



The garages are nothing special and are really more of a carport. But, they have power for a box fan and shade. I think next time we will have to get one.



We registered, checked torque on the wheel bolts, and let some air out of the tires in anticipation of the pressures going up during our first session. Notice the numbers indicating we are both in group 3. PCA runs 4 groups for HPDE events (plus a 5th instructor only group). Group 4 is complete novices with instructors in the right seat. Group 3 are people that have completed a weekend at Group 4 or are experienced people that have not run with the PCA group yet. Group 2 is solo intermediate and Group 1 is advanced. Since our last time at Gateway with PCA was 6 years ago, I was concerned we would be back in Group 4. With a new car and a new track layout, I was glad to have an instructor.



The new track layout is shown below. It is run counter clockwise as shown with turn 1 right after the long straight away and turn 12 on the banking of the NASCAR/Indy oval. This diagram labels the turns as 1 through 12 but I know we used a different labeling at the track so if we have a regular Gateway driver I apologize ahead of time if I butcher the turn numbers. The old configuration basically short cut from Turn 2 to Turn 6. I was a bit worried going into this about how tight turns 3 and 4 are and the 90 degree turn that is Turn 5. The head instructor said the course was setup to slow you down out of turn 5 so that you were in the same orientation as speed as if you came from turn 2 to turn 6. The course was tight in those areas but they turned out to be some of the best parts of the course and I do like this new configuration better.



I was lucky to get a very good instructor. He drove a GT4 that was modded with Dundon headers, IPE intake, and tune. He took me out in his car prior to my first session just to give me a feel for the new layout. He was fast and the g's on the backed oval were brutal. I watched him during the instructor only sessions and he was consistently in the top 3 on speeds. He was also a very easy going instructor and was very good at giving me the right amount of encouragement and direction to be more comfortable and go faster.

I do not have many pictures of our actual driving. There were amateur photographers there taking photos with big lenses so I'm hoping for some glory shots but the pictures have not been posted yet. I did get one shot of Nancy during one of her sessions from up in the press area that was thankfully airconditioned.

The new Cayman was amazing. It is just so much more precise than anything I have driven at speed before. It was very confidence inspiring and I was comfortable and faster than I expected to be. After the first two sessions, my instructor moved us up to Group 2. We were spending most of our time behind people waiting for a time to pass and I had the line down. He wanted me to move up where people were moving faster so I could practice watching my mirrors and giving point byes. I was going to be the only person in Group 2 with an instructor but it worked out great. Group 2 was a blast as there were fewer cars with more skilled drivers in general. I got passed by nice modded Lotus Evora and a couple 991 gen 911s that first session. My fourth and last session of the day I lined up in the pits first with a slower car behind me. I got far enough out ahead that I did not get passed and pretty much had an open track for 25 minutes - It was amazing to just drive and string corners together.

My gas light came on after the fourth run and I checked my gas mileage and it said I was at 9mpg. I'm pretty sure that Porsche just stops measuring below 9mpg because it stayed pegged there most of the afternoon.



We drove home and I think I was asleep by 8:30pm.

PCA Track Day - World Wide Technology (Gateway) Raceway - Day Two

Day two started out early but we did not have to do the early registration and inspection so we slept in some. I got so high mpg driving to the track the day before I thought I would try the cylinder deactivation mode on my Cayman. I got 30.1 mpg. A small bump but not worth the crappy sound that comes with the alternating power on the two cylinder heads.



The weather was much cooler. It was still going to be a hot day but the wind was out of the north and was cooler with lower humidity. Notice 208 number in the window on the Cayman indicating run group 2.





Day 2 picked up like Day 1 with me increasing my pace and comfort. My instructor commented several times that my AutoX skills really did help in my track driving. I was weak on high speed braking but my control inputs were smooth and whenever I got off nominal I quickly corrected without drama. My third run was my best. I lined up about mid-way back the run group in the pit lane. I proceeded to go out and pass 7-8 cars including the Lotus and at least one of the 991s from the prior day. I had zero'd out my g-meter before the run and these are the peaks recorded in that run.



My gas light came on after that third sessions and I decided to stop there. I didn't want to get as tired as I did on day 1 and wanted to end on a high note.

It was definitively a blast and will need to add more HPDE events to my normal AutoX routine. I was much more comfortable and faster than I expected to be - and I am sure the two are related. The Cayman is just such a neutral and fun car to drive fast. I know I had a step function change in my skill over the weekend but I also remember that first brutal run with my instructor and know that I still have a long long long way to go. It was still nice to see progression in a single weekend.

My wife had a blast too. It is so nice having a wife that likes cars and likes to drive. There is a small but skilled group of female drivers in the STL PCA group. They are planning a women only HPDE even at Gateway in September and Nancy will be there. It should get posted up soon on motorsportreg.com if you know a female driver that wants to attend. Nancy and I are also talking about maybe trying to get to either Heartland in September or Putnam in October. I'd really like to add a new track.

I have been enjoying AutoX this year in the new Cayman. I have been to four local events plus Parade this year. It took me several events to figure out what settings worked best. I ran the first AutoX of the season with all the nannies off. My TTS always fought me and I thought the best path would be with nothing on. I struggled - not so much with the lateral grip but with the better part of 400 hp on 265 section rear tires. I was also using launch control and I believe I was over heating the rear tires relative to the front tires. I placed 24th out of 57 by PAX and was more than a little disappointed.

On my second AutoX, I tried running with all of the nannies on and ran into a different set of problems. The launch control would not consistently launch and I would bog down. I was having the same issue in some of the tight corners where the PDK would jump up into a higher gear but bog down and not settle into a lower gear when I tried to accelerate out of the corner. It wasn't all bad news as I did place 15th out of 56.

I talked to one of the experience drivers who runs Porsches (manual GT4 last season and a PDK GT3 this season). He said I needed to just stop using launch control and put the PDK in manual mode. He said the PDK works great at the track but at AutoX speeds it gets lost sometimes. He also suggested I go back to nannies off. I decided to go half way. Porsche has a full off with a long press of the Porsche stability management (PSM) button and a relaxed margin with a short press of the PSM. I went with the short press PSM because it keeps the traction control on. The GT3/GT4 have a different set up where the PSM button can be set separate from the traction control (plus those cars have wider rear rubber). But on the lesser GTS vehicles, the traction control is set with the PSM button and cannot be on with the long press PSM setting. I also did a track alignment and maxed out my camber at -1.4 front and -2.0 rear. A lot of changes but it appeared to work. The June AutoX was my third of the year and I placed 8th out of 51 with these new settings.

Picture from the June AutoX:


I ran AutoX at Parade (Porsche Parade in French Lick). It was a very different course that was 1.25 miles long around a runway/taxiway. I did ok but my stock PS4S tires were toast by my fourth run and I coned it away. I was in a tough group - S09. They decided that the 4.0 GTS should be with the 981 GT4s, 997 GT3s and 991 Turbo Ss rather than with the 718 S and GTS models. I beat two 981 GT4s and a Turbo S but lost to GT4 and a GT3. I really do not think the hp increase of the 4.0L GTS vrs 2.5T GTS (394 vs 365) should bump it up into the next category with people with wider tires, adjustable sway bars, adjustable coilovers, and a lot more camber adjustment. If I look at that next level down, my times were better than all but one car in S08 and I actually beat all the 718 GT4 times in next level (S10). Heck, if I would have put my new RE-71 tires on I would have been in P (production) class instead of S (stock) class and would have been first in my group. Looking at the overall results, I was 13th fastest in raw time (out of 123 people that had times). So big picture, I did ok but it was just such a different course with different rules that I didn't do as well as maybe I could have.

A picture of my car on the starting grid:


This gives an impression of how long the course was:


So for my fourth local AutoX of the year, I just wanted to repeat my good results of the third AutoX. I used the same settings and managed a 6th place finish. Some of the heavy hitters were not there; so, I won't say it was a better result than the third AutoX. But, it was close enough.

For my next AutoX, I am going to swap in my RE-71s. I wanted to burn off my stock tires so I can put all seasons on the OEM rims for winter. The new rims and tires still meet stock class rules for SCCA but are 255/285 versus the stock 235/265. Bonus, the RE-71s are much stickier than the Michelin PS4S tires but still 200 treadwear.

Picture of the meatier 255/35R19 and 285/35R19 tires on my new BC Forged wheels:


I saw the entry list for the next AutoX and many of the big hitters will be back. It will be interesting to see if I can stay in the top 10.

My wife and I attended Porsche Parade 2021 in French Lick Indiana. We attended in Parade in 2018 when it was at the Lake of the Ozarks and thought we would try again this year since it was in the mid-west(ish) again.

When we started planning all of this earlier in the year, we were no sure how the pandemic was going to impact things. We decided to get a Airbnb just outside of town so that if things were canceled we could still take a week away from home and just enjoy the time away alone. Thankfully, the Parade happened.

Shot of our little converted school house rental:


The pandemic might have cooperated to a degree but the weather did not. The concours that is usually a highlight of the week had to be held in a parking garage instead of on the saturated golf course. My pictures are horrible here because the artificial lighting was poor with bright natural light leaking in from outside the parking structure.





I will say that I saw a definite trend. PCA members like their Spyders. I saw more than a dozen as the week went on - 987, 981, and quite a few 718. Given how many were (are still being) made - you have to wonder what percentage are actually owned by PCA members.... I didn't even take pictures of them after a while because they just didn't seem that special.



At Ozarks, we did a bunch of the dinners but this time decided against. We tried a couple tours this time. We went on the Dallara / Indy Museum tour and a tour to Griot's Garage distribution center. Both were not the best driving tours but the destinations were not bad. I heard the Buffalo Trace and Churchill Down drives were much better.

Dallara:


Indy Museum:


My wife and I both did AutoX which was fun but not well organized. It was two days. We stopped by the first day around lunch time to watch and potentially walk the course between the morning and afternoon sessions and they had not even started the morning session yet. I heard they went until 7pm that night trying to finish and lots of people in the second session just left in frustration. The second day went better but it was still a mess. Of the 145 people in the official results - 22 did not get any times at all (think people that left in frustration) and another 13 people DNF'd on all four runs and did not get a time at all. The course was very long (1.25 miles), very fast ( I was going over 65mph) and not well suited for first time drivers. The course was so long that the worker stations were so far apart that when a cone got knocked over you really had a hard time getting it put back in place before the next car. As a result, too many cars got red flagged to stop as a result and had to re-run. In my opinion, a PCA parade AutoX should be short and easily memorized so that people that are trying out AutoX for the first time are encouraged to try again some day.

Video of the fastest time of the day in a 914/6 race car:

Probably, the highlight of the week for me was the Parade of Porsches at the end of the week. Saturday morning, about 150+ Porsches of all generations met up in the parking lot outside of the resort. With police ******, the group drove through town and out to the local winery where we turned around and drove back. The mid point was interesting as you drove this small lane into the winery and got to pass all the other Porsches as they were heading back out.

Panoramic shots of Porsches in Parking lot:




Mid point turnaround:


In all, it was a fun but frustrating week. Lots of things just didn't seem to be organized well. There were not as many sponsors there as in prior years. Porsche USA was not there in force. They had a few cars on display but the only really new thing I saw was the new Taycan Cross Turismo. I'm not sure how much of that was due to the Pandemic. The weather really did not cooperate. I left Ozark's three years ago thinking I had to do another Parade some day and I left this one thinking I'm not sure I'll go again.

Taycan Cross Turismo:


We did pick up some posters from the hospitality room and I decide to frame and hang them in the garage.

Set of three Porsche Taycan posters on our stairs to the mezzanine:


Framed poster of 60+ years of Porsche Parade logos:


If you want to see more pictures, I have an album on flikr:

Great trip. Thanks for sharing the experiences.

This is definitely been a summer of car events. As I write this, I have done 8 AutoX events (7 local plus Porsche Parade) and 2 track weekends. My daughter has done all the local AutoX events with me and while my wife has not done all the AutoX events - she has done a third track event (that will get it's own post). Just keeping up with all the maintenance and inspections has been fun.

I have been getting more consistent with my AutoX placing. When I had last posted here, I had just placed in the top 10 (8th place) for my first time with the Cayman. My last 3 places have been 5th, 6th, and 5th place. A combination of the understanding the new car, putting on the better tires, and just plain old seat time has helped me hit the top 10 four events in a row. I grabbed some screen shots of some of the course layouts from my iPhone app to show here. The guy that sets up the courses has been having fun with cross overs, optional directions of slaloms, and weird slaloms with rows/sets of cones that force a a wider turn. It has been fun to see what he will come up with next.



Nancy and I also got a chance to visit a new track. We went to Heartland in Topeka, KS for a two day HPDE.





This was a new track for us so we were in the beginners group with instructors. I had a great instructor that had done tons of laps at the course and was extremely knowledgeable. Both Nancy and I were able to solo by Sunday morning. It was a three day event for the intermediate and instructors so many cleared out by Sunday noon. Our run groups on Sunday afternoon where very thin and allowed us to get some great lapping in without a lot of traffic. I actually ran my iPhone app on my second to last session. It is interesting to see the differences in speed compared to AutoX. Heartland also has some elevation differences where our AutoX location is basically a flat parking lot.



We went with a group of people from the STL Porsche Club so we had people to hang with in garages and for dinners in the evening. Nancy and I are already trying to decide which new track we will try next year. Putnam or Autobahn are in easy driving distance and the group we went to Heartland with visited both this last year and probably will again next year.

My wife participated in a special event in September sponsored by the STL PCA group. The head instructor's wife was the main instigator but another 3-4 women from the club helped to drive the organization and execution of the event. The women called themselves "Track Sisters" and the event was a women only HPDE event at Gateway (World Wide Technology Raceway). The idea is that some women might feel intimidated to participate in an event that is 90% male. By having the event women only, it was hoped more women might try and then participate in future HPDE events that are not women only once they know that it is something they like to do. Their goal was to get 15 women to sign up. They worked with Gateway to find a free date and decided on a single day event rather than a full weekend to also lower the bar of entry. The sign up went live in July and quickly surpassed the 15 person goal. On September 18th, 35 women showed up for the inaugural Women on Wheels HPDE.

Nancy was going to both work and participate in the event so we showed up early (pre-sunrise) on the day of the event. I was there in a support role and took some photos to document the event. They had a more professional track photographer but I figured I would take some pictures anyway since I was there.



My wife greeted people as they arrived and pointed them to the garages and parking spaces. The next step was to get teched by the PCA instructors and get registered. All the participants had already had a tech inspection at a shop but there is always the last minute emptying of the cars and torqueing of lug nuts.





The Track Sisters had arranged for long sleeved shirts (need for safety) to be handed out as part of registration and loner helmets to be available for anyone that did not have one.





The first item on the agenda was a drivers meeting to get all the instructors and participants together and go over some of the basics. This was followed by the first track orientation session that was done at highway speeds with no helmets. The instructors drove first and then the drivers in the participants' cars.







The E in HPDE stands for education and after that first foray on to the track, they group headed back in for some class time. The instruction included basics on how to adjust your seat/car, the track and corner numbers, the anatomy of a turn, friction circle, flags, etc. This was just the first class but there were a total of four instruction sessions for the day.



That was just the first class but soon the first real track session started. Helmets went on and the women went out on track at speed. In total, not including the orientation session, the women each got 4 class sessions and 4 track sessions. There were four run groups with the beginner women broken up into run group 3 and 4. My wife was actually in a very small (4-5 car) solo group (group 2). The instructors also have their time on the track as well. As I mentioned before, there was a photographer with much nicer cameras and lenses taking track photos. I took some of my wife but really did not get many of the beginner drivers.





One of my official jobs of the day was to pick up lunch. Between the drivers, the instructors, the volunteers, and the course workers; I had to go pick up 105 lunches from a local restaurant - Chicken Salad Chick. I was a little worried but it did all fit in our Macan with the seats down - barely!! The PCA club also provided bottled water all day gratis to make sure people stayed hydrated and safe.





There was quite the variety of vehicles at the event from a Toyota Camry and Honda Civic up to full on trailered in race cars. There were at least two Teslas and quite a few Porsche SUVs. PCA only allows SUVs if they are Porsches but there were still at least 3-4.









After much more driving and learning, the track went cold. I saw lots and lots of smiles from all the participants. A group photo was taken for posterity and a social gather occurred. They called it a "Wine Down Wind Down". They set up a small bar with wine/beer and one of the sponsor brought in some olive oil and bread (they own the farm that produces it!).





I'm really proud of my wife and the other Track Sisters for putting on a first class event. It had a lot of special features that were included in the price of the event such as the tee shirts, lunches, and happy hour. They even sent everyone home with a souvenir water bottle. The best part is they saved some space in the regular October Fall STL-PCA HPDE specifically for women that did the WoW event and wanted to do another event. It will be interesting to see how many repeat women we get a future events.

Naturally I had to skip the Heartland Park DE that you were able to attend. Glad it went well.

I have always liked the historical adds that Porsche has used in print media. In case you are not aware of those campaigns, here is a picture that I took during our visit to the Peterson Museum two years ago.



I thought it would be cool to recreate one of those historical ads but re-done with a photo of our current Porsches. First, we had to select some historical ads that we thought represented our current cars. My wife liked "Kills bugs fast." She always liked that phrasing and liked the rear end view of the 911 turbo, We also like the fact that the original 993 in the ad was a 400 hp AWD car that really was similar to her 385 hp AWD 997.2.



I was scanning through the pictures of ads on google and happened upon one that I thought fit will with my new Cayman GTS. My GTS 4.0 revs to 7800 rpm and the induction and exhaust noise definitely ramp up over 5000 rpm. I also liked that it was another 911 turbo ad to add some linkage to the ad my wife picked. I only have a small picture of this one but you get the idea.



I searched our photographs and found some action shots of our cars. I spent way too much time looking for pictures and even considered hiring someone to take professional photos. In the end, I decided to just go with what I found. I kept the original catch line the same as on the original but re-wrote the copy below the images to talk about our actual cars. So, this is more of an homage than a re-creation. The "Kills Bugs Fast" text underneath the photo was easy to update with matching info for her car. I had to get a little more creative with the Cayman one. There was not the equivalent text under the "Passenger Scream" historical advert. I knew these would be on the same wall in our garage so I wanted them to mirror each other more. The "six appeal" quote was actually used in some GTS 4.0 ads but I made up the rest.

I did my work in PowerPoint with the slide size set to a custom 16"x24" slide size. I chose that size because I had already bought frames for the posters I picked up at Parade and I knew the frames were reasonable sizes and liked they way they looked. I found a site (PosterNinja) that would take a .png file and make a custom one off poster. I really had no idea what I was doing but figured at less than $20 per poster I could try something and if it failed I would not be out much. I selected the "high quality mylar" option because the PosterNinja site said it would handle moisture well and this is a garage after all.

So this is our 2009 997.2 Carrera 4S "Kills Bugs Fast" homage:



And this is our 2021 Cayman GTS 4.0 "Passenger Scream" homage:



As mentioned before, I bought some more frames from Amazon and hung them on the wall near the Wi-Fi speaker. I was planning this all along when I mounted the cable routing for the power cord on the speaker. The frames were another $20 a piece so the total cash out was small - if you do not count the time I put into it.



I think the posters actually look decent in the frames. I'm posting a couple more close up photos here just so you can see how they turned out.





I'm not done on the wall as I still have something planned to fill in the space between the posters. You will have to wait for the next post...

Nicely done.

The space between the new advertisement posters needed to be filled in. I had a plan from the beginning and that was to fill the space between the wall art in the form of famous Porsche quotes. I know there are all these quotes that are attributable to Ferdinand and Ferry Porsche. I collected different ones that I ran across in a little text file on my laptop - figuring I would eventually narrow down the list. Here are a few but not all of them from that list:

Our cars are meant to be driven. Not polished.
-Ferry Porsche

The perfect racing car crosses the finish line first and subsequently falls into its component parts.
-Ferdinand Porsche

I wanted to build cars that were not something to everyone
but meant everything to some.
-Ferry Porsche

Change is easy. Improvement is far more difficult.
-Ferdinand Porsche

It is better to enter a turn slow and come out fast,
than to enter a turn fast and come out dead.
-Ferry Porsche

If one does not fail at times, then one has not challenged himself.
-Ferdinand Porsche

It has always been a philosophy of our company that
function and beauty are inseparable.
-Ferry Porsche

Porsche ... there is no substitute.
-Ferdinand Porsche

Again, the internet is your friend and I am amazed how easy it is to find places that will make custom stickers, posters, and wall art. A quick Google search showed a dozen or more companies that would create custom quotes that are basically stickers that can be applied to your walls. I picked Words Anywhere more or less at random off the search result list. I figured a single quote would not be enough to fill the space and settled on two quotes from Ferry Porsche. It only took a few minutes to enter in the quotes and pick sizes and fonts for the quotes on the site and then less than a week them to ship to our home.

The wall art quotes come in a rolled up sheets. Basically, you position the quote level on the wall, tape on the upper side, fold up to peel off the backing paper, fold back down to stick the letters to the wall, and then carefully pull off the sheet that covers the front side of the text. I was glad to have my wife's help for this part because she is much more patient about delicate tasks like this.



I really think it helps fill in the space between the posters. The 997 is a car that has meaning to my wife well beyond transportation so the first quote resonated there. I also really believe that Porsche has the form/function equation nailed. There is no doubt that the vehicles are beautiful but working on them it is also very evident that there is significant amount of engineering behind them.



But my favorite quote has always been "Porsches are meant to be driven". My wife and I say that all the time at different Porsche events. I did 10k miles in my new Cayman this year including 10 AutoX events and 6 track days. My wife did not do all of the AutoX events with me but did 5 track days herself in the 997. We also do a bunch of cars & coffee events, back road driving, and even daily to work occasionally. So this quote I placed right by the hose bib where I store all of our car wash equipment. The full quote is, after all, "Our cars are meant to be driven. Not polished." I placed the quote by all the car wash equipment to remind myself as I wash and find stone chips, track rubber, and cone marks that I need to take a deep breath. It is a car and it has to be driven to enjoy it.



I still have one more project in the works. I have not even ordered it yet but here is a clue....

Greg_STL said:

I placed the quote by all the car wash equipment to remind myself as I wash and find stone chips, track rubber, and cone marks that I need to take a deep breath. It is a car and it has to be driven to enjoy it.

Click to expand...

Great perspective, Greg. No matter how clean the paint is, I'd rather see someone driving the cars than washing or polishing one. Just hit fewer cones, though, huh?

The same concept can be applied to virtually anything people place great value on.

“Kills bugs fast“ ….. you wouldn’t want them to suffer

This post is a bit out of order. Remember when my wife took part in the WoW (Women on Wheels) event in September? My daughter and I played pit crew for my wife that day. Turns out that our daughter got bit by the bug that fateful day and asked if they could go to the track someday. Our local PCA chapter still had one more track day in October at WWTR (Gateway) - so my daughter and I signed up and my wife got to play pit crew!

My daughter drove her BRZ and was assigned group 4 with an instructor. She did very well surprising her instructor and others in her run group about how composed she was for someone so young. I think the 8 AutoX events she had done this year prior to the track event really helped out. The BRZ did very well in the infield sections but was really down on HP on the long straightaways.







I was assigned group 2 which meant solo on WWTR (Gateway) which would be a new experience for me. We were doing the longer 2.0 mile track layout. I was a little hesitant about my first session - mainly about keeping up. I had run the course earlier in the year but that was with a slower run group with an instructor. It turned out well as my pace was mid-pack in the group. We quickly learned the order to line up so that we could go out with a minimum amount of passing required and lots of time to work your own lines.



I thought this was a neat set of shots that my wife took. This is me coming off the back straight and diving into the infield. You are going fast coming off the NASCAR oval banking, have to brake very hard, turn 90 degrees into the infield, and turn 90 degrees again almost immediately to accelerate down an infield straight. The turn is designed to slow cars down so that people do not enter the infield too hot and spin off track and into the concrete walls. Don't critique my line too hard - I think I turned in a little early! This is not quite a video but it is like an old school flip book and is kinda cool...






The weather was awesome and my daughter and I had fun. I think my wife even enjoyed hanging out with the PCA crowd without driving. My daughter heads out to college next year and has applied to multiple colleges out of state as well as Mizzou as a back-up. We laughed about how "horrible" it would be if she wound up at Mizzou and could still drive events with us. I would love it but I'm thinking she will be heading off - I'm just glad we got to do all the AutoX and track events together this year.

I thought I would do a year end update on AutoX as well. In prior years with my Audi TTS, I would typically place around 15th-20th place. One time in 2015, I placed 10th and that was the highest I ever placed with the TTS. I only ran a couple times a year and I always felt that the car would fight me with the stability control system that could not be fully disabled. So with the new Cayman, I made a concerted effort to run all the events with out local club this year. My goal was to make it into the top 10 at least once. I would say I exceed my goals. I placed in the top 10 six times out of the 9 events and my highest place was 3rd in the second to last event. The club gives points for placing in the top ten and I wound up with enough points to place in 5th place for the season. In theory, I will get a trophy but I think it is a little foam cone. They are trying to set up a trophy ceremony at an indoor karting facility but I think the current COVID spike is getting in the way. I'd feel really good about it all except the last event was a mess for me.

The last event was in November and it wound up being a very cold day. I really did not know how to set up the car and wound up just going on my RE-71s and that may have been a mistake. My first run was like driving on ice and I fish tailed multiple times just trying to apply power. I eventually warmed the tires up but I was driving too conservatively by then and not really sure how hard I could push. I knew going in that I really could not gain or lose a place in the season points. The people ahead of me were more than 10 points ahead and the people behind me were 8 points behind. I wound up placing 16th for the event and I was not really happy but maintained my season position.

But that is not the whole story....

I had gotten help talking through how to get my car set up with one of the regulars in the club. He is a very good driver that I believe placed first for the entire season for both of the last two seasons. He drove a 981 GT4 two years ago and a GT3 in 2020. He sold his GT3 early in the season this year to put a deposit down on a 718 GT4. He wound up begging and borrowing runs from other people in other cars in the final events this year. He asked if he could drive my car in the summer and I declined. At the time, the car was brand new and I was still trying to get used to it. As the final event approached, I offered to let him run the last event in my car. We set it so that I would run the first heat and he would run the second heat. I'm not sure that it mattered but he at least started with warm tires!! As I said, he is a very good driver and placed first in the event. The picture below is of him and you can see a GoPro attached to the driver side 3/4 window. The YouTube link following the picture is of his best run (and winning run) of the day.



YouTube Video - Cayman GTS 4.0 AutoX

I enjoyed driving all the AutoX events this year but I'm not sure I'm going to try to do all 9 next year. We had to skip some other events that we wanted to do this year to make sure that we were available for 9 weekends. We wound up having to decline multipe PCA drives and weekend events to be able to hit all of the AutoX dates. I think we want to mix up events more next year. Nancy and I have already signed up for a weekend in Indiana for a track day at Putnam in April. I also may have set my self up for failure in the SCCA classing for next year. During the Black Friday sales, I decided to pick up a cat back exhaust for my Cayman. I thought that was one of the few things I could do and stay in the stock class for SCCA. No sooner than I had bought the exhaust than the SCCA posted a ruling that the inactive and unmonitored GPF filter was considered a polution device and could not be replaced. Oh well... It is possible our club won't care as they are not super strict but if I only run a couple events it will not matter either way. I have not installed the exhaust yet but I am looking forward to the sound - I've listened to dozens of videos and I think this particular exhaust sound awesome.





I still have one more post I'd like to do but I'm not sure I will get it in before the ball drops tonight. Just in case I don't get it done...

Happy New Year Garage Journal!

Last post of the year...

My wife and I spend quite a bit of time in our garage - working on cars and frankly just hanging out. On December 11th this year, we were heading down to The Place to do just that - hang out for the evening. One the way down, we were driving along Edison on a long straight away when there was this huge bolt of lightning that filled the sky off in the distance. It was one of those bolts that strokes down then just seems to hang in space forever. My wife and I were both like - Thunderstorm in December??? Missouri is certainly no stranger to thunderstorms but they are usually in the spring and summer. My wife and I did not even know it was going to rain and it had not started raining yet when we saw the huge bolt. We still did not think that much about it and continued driving. It was not long after that our phones went off with that warbling warning - Severe weather alert. We were were closer to The Place then home so we kept going. It had still not started raining yet. When we were only about a 1/4 mile away from The Place, our phones went off again. This time it was a Tornado Warning. We figured it would be a bad idea at that point to turn around a be in our car when the weather hit so we went in the gate and got in our unit. The wind and rain hit pretty quick after that. It was exceptionally windy and the garage door kept rattling in the tracks. I opened our man-sized door just a few inches to look outside and the wind was horizontal and very strong. We were afraid to go up onto the mezzanine and were not really sure where the safest place would be as there are no basements in a tilt/pour garage in a flood plain. The lightning, thunder, rain and wind was crazy for a bit but it eventually calmed down. We thought - yeah just a Midwest storm.

Fast forward to the day before Christmas. It was 70 degrees out, which is a bit crazy, but we thought we would take advantage of the weather and go on a drive. I have a loop I like to take that starts at The Place and goes out Wild Horse Creek, then down St. Albans out to Washington, Mo, crosses the river, then comes back Femme Osage Creek and Highway T to Defiance. It takes about and hour and half and has some great two lane twisty roads to enjoy.



The first half of the loop was uneventful but as we approached Defiance on Highway T we came upon some houses that had some wind damage. As we drove some more, it was not just a little damage but trees that were just broken off and houses that were down to foundations. There were even a couple cars that were just balls of metal that had obviously been thrown and rolled. It was frankly pretty scary. I had known there were tornados that had hit on that weekend earlier in December but I had not put 2 and 2 together to realize they occurred on the path were were going to drive. Most of the news had gone to the Amazon warehouse in IL or the candle factory / Corvette factory in Kentucky. As I was driving along, I started to realize I was driving in a direction as the crow flies that would take me to the Place. The pictures posted here are some that I found on the Post-Dispatch website from the day after the Defiance tornado.





When we got home, I did some Google searches and found the path of the Tornado. It literally goes about 3/4 mile from The Place. The first picture is of the entire path of the Tornado. It was an F3 where we drove by just west of Defiance. It was down to an F1 when it went by The Place. The second photo is a close up with the path of the tornado and The Place circled in yellow.





I'm guessing we were lucky that night. I also am thinking I need to pay attention to what is going on in the world a bit more. I didn't know it was going to even rain that night. Even after the tornado happened - I didn't know that it had been that close. It took me driving by the damage to put it all together. It also makes me wonder what is the safe thing do do when you are in a concrete building with no basement when a Tornado hits....

So, at the close of 2021, I am just really happy to be here. It has been a rough couple of years for so many people and I feel lucky to have gotten through so much of it with fewer issues than most. Our garage has been an outlet for us and I hope everyone else on GJ has been able to spend time in their garages as a relief valve as well. I hope everyone is healthy and safe! Happy New Year all!

Happy New Year Greg, and please pass that along to Nancy as well. The storm debris in Defiance is sobering, as I witnessed running that exact loop a couple weeks ago.

Damn close call with that storm. Yeesh. Wishing you and your fam a big Porsche HNY. You are indeed blessed to have such a supportive and participative family.

@Jon69RagTop @slik560 Thanks for checking in. Nancy doesn't post on GJ but does have an account and follows along. I am indeed lucky that my wife and daughter both enjoy their cars and work in the garage. Nancy is having sections of her 997 re-sprayed this winter and is planning on putting on some stripes. It is all her doing and I'm excited to see how it will turn out. It should be done in plenty of time for our trip to Putnam in April.

I've bought a bunch of t-shirts (and stickers) from Blipshift over the years and I am on their regular e-mail distribution. I saw they were offering a neon light of their Flatspiricy logo. It was a no brainer to pick one up.


We installed it at The Place and put it on the back wall to the right of our Neon Porsche crest. I placed it directly under the emergency lights as anything else would have looked off. No good deed goes unpunished as now the back wall looked unbalanced with the crest in the middle and the bright blue boxer engine logo off to one side. I thought about moving the crest but I really like it where it is located and it has a solid mounting there. Sorry for the blurry pictures but it is very hard to take good pictures of neon signs with an iPhone.


I started to look for another neon sign or logo to put on the other side. I ran across these custom signs on Amazon by a company called ADV PRO that use edge lit acrylic to create a neon sign effect. The next two pictures are downloaded directly from the Amazon page where they sell these signs. The first shows the sign lit up with two colors to the sign. The second shows what the sign looks like when it is turned off. It is hard to tell from these pictures but there are actually two layers of acrylic and two lights. The items on the sign that you want blue are machined into the first layer sheet and the items that you want to be red are machined into the second layer sheet.


I was not sure that I wanted their exact design. However, if you follow down this rabbit hole you find out that they are willing to do 100% custom signs of pretty much any design with from 1-3 different colors. They have a web site away from Amazon (advproduct.com) that has more options and the best part - an e-mail address to contact them directly.

I started messing around in PowerPoint to come up with a design. I started by getting the dimensions of the sign off of the manufacturer website and setting the PowerPoint slide size to that custom dimension (24" wide by 16" tall). I decided quickly that I wanted to use the name of this thread, "The Garage at The Place In The Valley", as the words on the sign.


I had two colors (at least) to work with so I thought of using The Place logo in a different color for the "P" in Place. It was still pretty boring. I started to try to think of other items to put into the blank space and tried to think up some new logo for the garage part and the valley part. This added some more red to the image but I was really not that excited about it.


I wanted an image to add to the sign that had more personal meaning. I thought adding a Porsche to the sign would be nice but I knew I could not just give them a picture of a 911 and expect it to miraculously show up as line art on the sign. I looked through some of the images that I took of Nancy in her 997 at the inaugural PCA Women on Wheels event at World Wide Technology Raceway. I figured if I started with an image from a special event it would remind us of that event each time we looked at the sign.


I imported the image in PowerPoint and then started to trace the outline of the car using the freeform shape tool. You can edit the individual knot points to get the free form curve to match closely to the image. There is a little bit of a artform in deciding what lines to trace and what things to just ignore (like the side mirrors). I tried to keep it simple but still get the features of the fender line, the big wing, and the recognizable 997 taillight.


I was then able to pull just the freeform curves into another slide and do a final clean up. I mainly was just filling in gaps so that the curves looked line a single set of connected curves. It is not perfect and potentially could have had more detail but I was not sure what level of detail the manufacturer could support and decided to go minimalist.


I also spent a little bit of time working The Place logo so that it was not just a "P" with a crown but looked a little closer to the actual logo with the crown being the top of the "P".


I pulled in the 997 image and new "The Place" logo. About this time, I also hit on swapping the color the the "G" in garage and "V" in valley to be red to match the red of "The Place" logo. It still looked a little unbalanced so I added a Est. 2016 to the lower left of the sign to balance out the 997 on the upper right. It was also a good reminder of how long we have been in the garage. The final touch was adding some bars at the top and bottom just to fill out the image and add more elements to light up.


Now that I had my design, I sent an e-mail to ADV PRO with the above image to see if they could manufacture my design. I received a quick reply that it would be no problem at all. We traded a couple quick e-mails on how to pay and they were off and running. A couple days later I received a proof image by e-mail. I requested a small change as they had colored the entire "Valley" word red. They did a quick turnaround with a new proof image that I approved. It then took about 2 weeks to manufacture and ship from somewhere in the Far East. I think it went through three shipping companies: SF Express -> UPS -> USPS for last mile delivery. The sign arrived yesterday. It was packaged well and included a mounting wire and white gloves to use when installing to keep fingerprints off of the clear acrylic sign. I have not hung it on the wall yet but this is a picture of it sitting on a tire stack and leaning against the wall in the back of our unit.


I think I could have gone for a bit more detail. But, as my first try at doing anything like this, I think it turned out reasonably well. I still need to get it up on the wall and I want to hook up a remote trigger for it. The other two neon signs are hooked up to an iDevices outdoor smart plug. It has two plugs so I could just split one of them. Chances are I will want to turn on all three signs at the same time. I've also thought about swapping it out for some Lutron smart plugs since my whole mezzanine at the place uses Lutron Cassetta smart light switches. I would also like to monitor my energy usage on the battery chargers that are plugged into those same outlets on the lower level. I need to give that some thought as to how to best set up the outlet with plugs that allow independent light activation and simultaneous monitoring/activation of the battery monitors.

I'll take pictures of all three neon lights when I get the the new sign hung.

Installed photo of the three "neon" lights:



And a big one with all of the latest improvements:

Looks great. My wife would paint the electrical cords to match the wall or else insist I put wall outlets behind each fixture.

slik560 said:

Looks great. My wife would paint the electrical cords to match the wall or else insist I put wall outlets behind each fixture.

Click to expand...

I used paintable conduit for my cameras and speakers. I'm not positive that the paint that I have from 2017 is still good. I thought about just putting on the white conduit on the sections above the red stripe. The black cords will blend into the grey walls just fine. But, I want to figure out how I am going to wire it all first as far as smart plugs are concerned.

I know that this is a garage journal but we would never have bought into The Place had my wife not bought her 2009 997 Carrera 4S. The still runs great but the paint was looking a little tired in spots. It was nothing too bad - door dings and road rash mainly. When we picked up the car in 2015, we put a clear bra on the front bumper and to a point half way up the hood. The paint looked much nicer under the clear bra and much much worse just aft of where the protection ended on the hood. There were even paint chips under the clear bra because we had it put on sight unseen before I drove it to STL from the dealer we picked it up from in Florida. From a 100 yards the car looked great but less so from up close.

Either way, my wife decided that it was time to re-paint portions of the car, have the remaining paint be corrected, and put new paint protection film and ceramic coating on the car. Here is a picture from before we started in its natural habitat on the track at Gateway.



It was hard to see it all stripped down before being painted but we knew it was only temporary.



You can see here where it is in the paint booth that they are painting big chunks of the body but not everything. The fenders, doors, and front bumper are being shot with paint separately. The roof, however, was deemed to be good enough and was left alone until the paint correction step.



This shot is actually post paint but before everything is re-assembled.



The car then was moved to the detailers to due the paint correction, paint protection film and ceramic coating. Nancy did the track package that includes PPF on the front bumper, entire hood, front fenders, a-pillar, lower rocker panels, a small strip on the leading edge of the roof and a small strip behind the rear wheels. Ceramic coating was then applied to the remaining paint and a different type of ceramic coating was put over the PPF.

While they were at it, my wife had them add 997 GT3RS style flag graphics to the side of the car. She also had them do the end plates on the spoiler and wanted to do the mirrors but the detailer did not think the wrap material they use would cover the mirror shape well.





So here is the money shot. It may not look much different on the screen shots but up close the paint is beautiful.

It looks like it is speeding while standing still! Great looking car.