Lee Sibley Poole, UK
9WERKS Radio
Model 996.1 CARRERAYear 1998Acquired JANUARY 2019
Model 996 40 JAHREYear 2003Acquired APRIL 2023
I’d like to share with you the nocturnal nightmare endured by myself and my neighbours from a couple of weeks ago. At 2:29am in the Sibley household, all was quiet. That changed at 2:30am. Myself and Her Ladyship woke to a very loud car alarm. “I think someone’s trying to steal your car,” my wife said. However, I knew it was much worse than that.
The story began around 10 days ago, when my parents visited, and I took them out for a drive in the 40th Anniversary 911. We got back to Chez Sibs and, in all the excitement, I forgot to hook the car up to its CTEK charger. And as the hours turned into days and the business of life took over, I forgot about the car entirely.
That was until 2:30am when the car’s alarm went off. I knew what it meant: the battery was flat. I hurried outside with both keys, but neither one was talking to the car, so it wasn’t a case of unlocking the 911 to turn its alarm off. Manually unlocking the car and starting the engine would be pointless, as the flat battery meant the engine wouldn’t start. Furthermore, the car was parked nose first at the very back of my driveway and I didn’t possess any jump leads or cables long enough to reach the battery. Ah, and about the battery… that was nestled under the front hood of the 996, which was closed – and electrically operated.
And so I stood there, panic-stricken, as the alarm preceded to go off every 10 minutes, keeping the neighbourhood awake. I realised my only hope was to access the battery in the frunk via the manual release cable. This is located behind the driver’s side front wheel arch, just to the side of the headlight.
I removed enough of the wheel arch liner to be able to see the cable, but there was no way I could reach it by hand. I ran back indoors, fetched a metal coat hanger, fashioned it into a hook, fed it through the wheel arch and latched it on to the cable hoop. Makeshift hook latched on to hoop, I pulled… and the hook unfurled. Grrr.
Prototype V2 of the hook was fashioned out of the coat hanger and again inserted into the arch. Eventually, I latched on to the hoop and pulled. A ‘thud’ from the nose of the car revealed the hood had released. Hallelujah.
Only then did I realise the alarm hadn’t sounded for the last 30 minutes or so. Still, I decided I couldn’t just leave the car ‘as is’, having fought my way into the frunk. How would I sleep knowing the car alarm could go off again at any moment? I wasn’t sure why it had stopped.
I decided to connect the CTEK charger. I did so, and within a few seconds, saw life once again grace the 996: the boot light came on, and the CD changer was making an erring sound after its enforced reset. And then the bastard
