Help, Need some young eyes... - 986 Forum - The Community for Porsche Boxster & Cayman Owners

I was trying to remove the owners manual bracket from below the steering wheel, I hit my shins on it and really don't like it being there. I shined a flashlight on the attachment points and laid my head on the floor to see what size fastener it is but was too close to be able to focus on them and I could not tilt my head back far enough to get my bifocals in the right place to see them. Isn't getting old wonderful. So anyway, does anyone know what type/size fastener it is or could one fo you young bucks look for me? Thanks!

Get your knees moved...it's cheaper.

That's one of the first things that I yanked out, as my knee always hit it. Very annoying. They are held in by way of two plastic rivets. You can either take a punch and push the pin thru and it will fall right out, or do what I did and just pull down on the shelf hard at each end, and the thing will just pull out.

Thanks! It is the simple things that give me pleasure and removing that thing will do the trick.

LOL ! never tought of taking that out

I have a proactive approach to modifying my vehicles after years of land rover ownership. The best tools to work on them are an angle grinder and a pop rivet gun. Parts are not so much a destination as they are a good place to start and the miracle of interchangeability has not made it to the shores of the UK quite yet. You get the part, hold it up, modify whatever offending other part that is keeping it from lining up or bolting in and then install it. Then the other parts get jealous and they fail because they want some lovin' too. After years of this, it has carried over to my other vehicles. The only difference is the parts actually fit out of the box!

Landrovered I can just say I picked up a 2010 Range Rover Sport and build quality is not what I thought it would be from our British friends! Someone is sleeping in the quality care section of the assembly line!

A great friend is in the highline used car business. He makes a boatload of money on Land Rovers, especially teh Range Rover. He says they are like boats: The two happiest days in his customers' lives are - #2, the day they get their Range Rover and #1, the day they get rid of it!

They weren't sleeping they were just semi-drunk after having one too many at the pub with their bangers and mash. The Land Rover story is a long and arduous one. In reality quality control was improved quite a lot by the Ford lords and masters. They were quite brutal about improving quality at the cost of many peoples jobs. Their heavy handedness was cause for lots of hard feelings and I imagine in the vacuum that occured during the transition to Tata ownership that standards slipped a bit. Overall I think Tata will improve things in a very positive way but implementing effective programs takes time. Land Rover has been the red headed stepchild of British Aerospace, BMW and Ford. In retrospect LR was much like Porsche in its culture, they made a few models and released minor changes to them year after year. The Range Rover Classic was made from 1971-1995. Over the course of its life it was improved and got better and better. Same with the Defender which has been made from 1984-2010. Solvency forced LR to become part of BA and under their mismanagement they created the Discovery and P38a Range Rover. Under BMW they re-designed the RR and brought out the MKIII and changed all of the Lucas systems to Bosch and improved the Discovery with the release of the D2. I have an 03 RR HSE with the BMW M62 V8 and in spite of having 23 computers to run everything it is really an excellent car. Everything in is stamped with BMW. Enter Ford, they raided the cookie jar and spread LR's advanced technology to its other brands in PAG, like Jag and Volvo but more imprtantly Ford increased the number of new models to be rolled out to crazy levels. In 06 the Range Rover power train was changed from the tried and true BMW/ZF combination to Jag. They rolled out the RR Sport, LR3 and LR2 in very short order. Design was accelerated on the LRX concept and the new Defender was in the works as well. Not to mention rumors of the "new small range rover". Ford's aggressive schedule for new models obfuscated the traditionally strong brand identity and blurred the lines in the mind of the consumer as to what a Land Rover was and then after upsetting the whole apple cart Ford sold the comany off. The sad part is LR has been an industry shaping marque and they have technology that will change the future of 4x4 luxury vehicles. Think about it, in 1989 there was only one 4x4 in the whole world with burly walnut dash, heated leather seats,electric windows, electric door locks, built in telephone, heated door locks, heated windshield washer fluid, cd players and the other luxury items that created the SUV boom. It truly was the first SUV before SUV was a bad word. The biggest problem with LR as a company is that it has lost its traditional customer base and has muddied its line of products so that the average joe can't tell them apart. I still love them but they do not always love you back, they act out because of bad parenting.

The reason I posted this history of LR is that I heard yesterday that Porsche now has eight new models in the works. I hope that VW does not repeat the mistakes that Ford made.

I was chatting with a guy at my local Porsche dealership while we both had our cars in for some maintenance. He had his Cayenne Turbo and his 997 in at the same time. Anyway, we start talking cars, and he tells me about his Range Rover, so I ask him how he compares it to his Pepper Turbo. He tells me it's an in thing to get the "Range", but in all honesty, it rides rougher than the Pepper and also is always in the shop. I then ask him if it's the small or big things that go wrong in that car that keeps it in the shop, and he said, "both!" After that conversation, I pretty much told myself I'd never need a "Range". LOL

Good long post, I didn't want to waste the bandwidth here quoting it!! My wife's cousin has lived Downunder for over 30 years now. Her husband would not own anything but a Land Rover until about 10 years ago. I don't know the timing of your posts above. He said the original model Land Rover was repairable by anyone with a crescent wrench and some wire. They weren't the most reliable thing on the planet, but would go anywhere - critical 100 km outside Perth - and you could always make it back home. The last model he owned had to be trucked to the dealer if it hic-cupped. On it's third trip he took it instead to the Toyota dealer and left with a Land Cruiser. With 5 grown children and over 100k acres spread around the area, they now own 7 FJ Cruisers (can't remember the different name in Australia). Ross says he still misses his old Land Rovers and wishes Rover had just kept building the original.

It is about staying true to the thing that made your reputation. Land Rovers were the go-anywhere do-anything vehicles that conquered africa and other uncivilized places. I have a 1972 Series III 109 Safari Wagon and it is still awesome in its simple rugged design and easy servicability. But LR has strayed far from that to be come the Mall Crawler of choice for pro ball players, rappers and succesful men's wives. Porsche made their name producing fast sports cars and race cars. Now the line up has an SUV and a luxury saloon. Nice cars don't get me wrong but I hope the focus says on HP and handleing and not on electric wizardry and soft leather. It should be interesting to see what happens.

We could end up owning cars from the last generation of true Porsches.