A significant number of our sponsors and advertisers are open for business, both physically as well as virtually. We will be updating this list as more information becomes available. You can also find this information available on our Facebook page.
Porsche Warwick (service open, new steam-cleaning & disinfecting service, sales is closed)
Porsche Norwell (service open 9-2 by appointment, sales is closed)
VR Motion Labs (open via phone only)
Kachel Motor Company (open for drop-off only)
European Performance Engineering (closed, free phone consultations available 10-4 M-F)
South Shore Autoworks (open)
Musante (open, door is locked and by appointment but open for business)
It’s a painful and difficult time and car care isn’t a driving priority for me right now, but one of my cars did need a regular service done and I was curious to know how local dealer service centers were dealing with the new challenges of COVID 19. So I decided to take a trip down to see how they were handling service at this time. I was expecting to be impressed, but I was pleasantly surprised to learn of a new service offering – deep cleaning your car interior with a new process in ways we can’t do at home, even if you are a home-car-detailer extraordinaire. They can sanitize the interior workings of your climate control system! They demonstrated for me how they have a steam cleaning machine running an isopropyl alcohol and water mix that can actually go through the vents of your car and sanitize the fans and tubing down deep in your dashboard. I hadn’t even thought enough about that challenge to know to ask for it. As expected, they are a step ahead.
In these difficult times, it’s great to know how much Porsche and their dealerships are thinking ahead and how committed they are to our safety. If you need service, Porsche Warwick and others, I’m sure, will pick up your vehicle from your home, service it, and return it to you. The deep steam cleaning service can be added to other procedures or done on it’s own for your peace of mind. Check out the video above to see the new processes they are using for keeping your car and their loaner fleet cars sanitized and safe. We thank them for their proactive thinking.
Please be sure to support those businesses and people who support our club. They give to us in our time of need and now is our time to give back to help these companies and especially their employees. Let’s all come out on the other side of this together!
https://porschenet.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Deep-Clean-Porsche-Warwick-notext.png7201280Sterling Vernonhttps://porschenet.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/NERegionVectorLogo-siteicon.pngSterling Vernon2020-03-28 15:50:582020-03-28 15:50:59Deep Cleaning Service For Your Porsche
As the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) situation develops, we want you to know that the safety and health of our club members, volunteers, event staff are always a top priority. Now more than ever, safety is our primary concern. While many spectator-based events around the U.S. have been postponed, we are not planning to cancel upcoming club events.
That said, we will be monitoring the directives of local, state and federal authorities for direction. The most common local mandate that could affect club events is a limitation on gathering size, although many of these may be specific to indoor activities.
When contemplating participation in an upcoming event, please consider the health of other participants. If you are ill, have traveled recently to a highly infected area, or have been in close contact with someone known to have the virus or the flu, then please stay home. Please exercise elevated personal hygiene and personal space etiquette as is recommended thru all public health information organizations.
Additionally, NER leadership advises Club members to analyze each individual situation and make their own decisions on whether to participate in any given activity.
If you have a question regarding refund policies, please refer to the information you received during the registration process.
The safety of participants at NER events is always a high priority. NER leadership will continue to monitor the CDC and other official national recommendations and may adjust plans accordingly based on further updates and/or restrictions imposed.
Thanks
NER PCA Board
Steps to protect yourself and others:
Stay home when you are sick
Wash your hands frequently with soap and water for at least 20 seconds
If soap and water are not readily available, use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer with at least 60% alcohol.
Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth
Cover your cough or sneeze with a tissue, then throw the tissue into the trash and wash your hands
Clean and disinfect frequently touched objects and surfaces using a regular household cleaning spray or wipe
Resources PCA is closely monitoring for updates and information:
To kick off 2020, our first issue of the NOR’EASTER has been published! Please check it out. We’ve worked extra hard to nail down dates early this year so there is no excuse for you to not fill up your calendar with what interests you most from our club. If you don’t see something you’re interested in…please let us know! We’ve covered many of the bases, we think, although there may be some new and different types of tours to be added. Autocross, Driver’s Education, Concours, Social, Porsche on the Mountain…the dates are all set and ready for you to reserve on your schedule (registration for many items may open later, of course).
Porsche has grabbed pole position for two classes – GTLM and GTD – for the 2020 Rolex 24h of Daytona! This should be a spectacular race with Aston Martin entering some of their cars at the 11th hour, the new C8.R Corvette’s making their maiden voyage, BMW M8’s, Lamborghini Huracan GT3’s – all kinds of machinery to watch battle it out.
Nick Tandy in the 911 car got a new track record for the class and GTLM pole position with his time of 1:42.207, besting the record he set at Daytona in 2019. Laurens Vanthoor was just 0.049 seconds behind in the 912 car.
Zach Robichon topped the time sheets for GTD in his 911 GT3 R (#9) with a time of 1:45.237 minutes, record setting time as well – the fastest time ever in a GTD-class qualifying at Daytona.
Porsche does not run cars in the DPi or LMP2 classes. Mazda Team Joest will start first in the DPi class. PR1 Mathiasen Motorsports will lead the LMP2 class from the start.
The 24 Hours of Daytona gets underway on Saturday, 25 January, at 1.35pm EST and will be initially viewable on NBCSN.
https://porschenet.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/pfaff-911-GT3R-jpg.webp506900Sterling Vernonhttps://porschenet.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/NERegionVectorLogo-siteicon.pngSterling Vernon2020-01-24 18:24:372020-01-24 18:24:40Front Row Is The Place To Be
Get out from under that blanket! Don’t throw another log on the fire! Hold off on that next glass of mulled cider! And join us at Herb Chambers Porsche in Boston for our annual Winter Warmer event. You’ll get a preview of what the club has in store for us this year. You’ll be among friends and see lots of folks you haven’t seen since the flakes started flying. And you’ll be able to win some amazing prizes (“Racktrack Rick” Scourtas always over-delivers!) to take home. You can ogle a Taycan and get a glimpse into the electrified back-to-the-future Porsche. Come on out and join us!
The NER Annual Winter Gala will be hosted this year at the Andover Country Club located at 60 Canterbury St. Andover, MA 01810.
The Gala is the club’s featured social event every year and provides attendees with a great “off-season” time to connect with friends while some of our cars are hibernating dreaming of warmer days. Please visit the event page to register by December 25, 2019. Looking forward to seeing you there!
https://porschenet.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/L1090546-jpg.webp7661200Sterling Vernonhttps://porschenet.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/NERegionVectorLogo-siteicon.pngSterling Vernon2019-11-13 17:56:102019-11-13 17:56:13Annual Gala Registration Open
As a good New Englander, you probably own a car that is “good in the winter.” That may mean simply fitting snow tires, driving more carefully in the snow, or adding some mechanical advantage – such as front wheel drive or all wheel drive (or four wheel drive – yes, it’s technically different, I know). Whatever your solution to the problem of slippery surfaces, how much do you think about how your vehicle does what it does?
Porsche recently introduced their latest Carrera 4 and 4S models with, beyond the standard 992 changes, new tech: a liquid-cooled front differential for the all wheel drive system. As an owner of a 2007 Targa 4 with AWD (not to mention a string of Cayenne’s), I was curious why they would bother investing time in a system that most of us won’t ever really think about. Liquid cooling implies that the goal is to disperse heat, right? Why is there heat here to worry about? I was curious so I did what anyone does these days and Googled it.
If You Can’t Take The Heat
As I’m sure you know, when a car turns, the wheels on one side go faster than on the other. This is because the wheels on each side are suddenly following two different arcs with two different radii. All that high school geometry is coming back to you, right? But why clear those cobwebs? Well, if you solidly connect all those wheels together, they literally get themselves into a bind. The binding pressure builds up and has to go somewhere. To get out of this bind (known as torque-wind), the parts might deflect and bend or they will break. This, of course, is bad. We need to add something with a bit more give – a “differential” – a brilliant little bit of engineering that allows a wheel on one side to temporarily “slip” a bit and go a different speed. The price you pay for this controlled slippage without breaking? Usually that energy from the “slip” is dissipated as heat, often through a clutch pack or viscous coupling device of some sort. There is always a price to pay.
It was a great story arc that went from an origin of concerns about the fuel economy of four-wheel-drive systems born in the 1970’s and how saving every drop of fuel became a primary design goal – sound familiar? The Borg Warner chaps decided that being able to disengage a four wheel drive system’s front wheels manually at the hubs just would not do. Would you want to have to hop out in the snow and mess with turning some big dials on the front of your car? How plebeian. Our computer overlords could surely do a better job of doing this for us.
Gone are the inconveniences associated with part-time-four-wheel drive. Drivers don’t have to ruminate over their choices; they don’t have to wonder whether they’re in four-wheel drive; they don’t need to possess a shred of knowledge about the technology.
In the 1980’s they set to work fitting a dodgy station wagon with a prototyped computer-controlled torque sensing/splitting central transfer case that did away with the center differential completely – by using sensors to react to wheel spin by sending more torque to the front wheels via an electronically-controlled clutch (clutches are basically two spinning discs that rub together to different degrees to vary the rotational speed differences between them – but they get hot with all that friction). The computer to control the new transfer device took up the whole back seat.
Eventually they found that constant measurements of the change in RPM between various bits told them what they needed to know about slip to tell the central clutch pack to engage and grab some power for the front wheels. They packaged it up and sold it to Ford. And shrunk it so it didn’t take up the whole back seat anymore. As a side note – the clutch material was paper-based – odd choice for a heat-dependent system, no? But they tested it and raced it and it worked – after they made it bigger…to handle the heat.
Porsche’s Brand Of AWD
About the same time Borg was getting Ford on board, Porsche was putting an all-wheel-drive system into their 959. Interesting case study in economics right there if you consider the cost of an ’80’s Explorer versus a 959… Porsche’s system was similar, though, in that it used lots of computer-controlled sensors and a computer-controlled clutch pack to go from a pretty even front/rear torque split to as much as 20/80. As far ahead as Porsche was in some ways, the 911 had to make do with a passive viscous-coupling system for all wheel drive up until the computer-controlled clutch pack system went into the 911 Turbo in 2006. The fancy computers didn’t go into the base Carrera 4 until 997 gen 2 in 2008, after the Cayenne helped push the technology along a bit. [ed: some great member feedback – Nick D. pointed out that the 964 C4 had a fully mechanical AWD system with electronic controls that were very similar to the technology in the 959. The 993 went to a more simple and lightweight viscous-coupling system that was much more rear biased but slower to correct for wheelspin. Thanks, Nick!]
Once the technology was in place, what has changed since is…power! (In Jeremy Clarkson voice, of course) The latest base 992 is up to 379bhp and 331lb-ft of torque. My 2007 only had 325bhp and about 270lb-ft. These new turbo base cars are really bringing the torques! I’m betting that this new power, along with ever better and grippier tires, is the reason Porsche is adding some extra cooling to the package. More power means more slip means more heat.
So where did we wind up? All that torque wind-up wound up getting me all wound up. And all this so you won’t wind up in a ditch. It truly is all about where you wind up.
https://porschenet.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/911_carrera_4_2019_porsche_ag_1-sm-jpg.webp6751200Sterling Vernonhttps://porschenet.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/NERegionVectorLogo-siteicon.pngSterling Vernon2019-09-11 09:34:442019-09-11 14:18:59It’s Where You Wind Up That Matters – Porsche All Wheel Drive
