While vacationing in Germany this summer, a friend there called me a “Weichei.” We were in Regensburg at the time, and our friend and the rest of the family wanted to check something out. I did not want to be under the hot sun so I said I would wait for them on a park bench under a tree. That’s when she called me a “soft egg.” A wimp. A Warmduscher. A Schattenparker. All of the above, that’s me.
My favorite city, Regensburg, back when the it still had a sugar factory (11/2003)
Of course, I have my lame excuses for sitting in the shade. For all of the technical advances Germany is known for, they have apparently not invented air conditioning yet. And it was hot everywhere we went. The only time I was in an air-conditioned environment besides the rental car was in the Munich airport when I left the country. (It wasn’t even on when we landed there.)
Hot town, summer in the city
Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty
—The Lovin’ Spoonful
I was born in a tropical country, so when I arrived in Michigan as a kid, I loved the summers and marveled at the winters. Now I hate both. My temperature tolerance over the years has converged to 72°F, ±1°. This is one reason why I don’t like driving the Porsche 944 Turbo in the summer. It gets hot in there, and its air conditioner (a/c) hasn’t worked this century.
For those who don’t know, a 944 Turbo generates a lot of heat. There’s heat from the motor. There’s heat from the turbo. There’s heat from the transmission in the back. There’s heat just from sitting on the black leather seats.
If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the 944.
—Harry S Truman
A few years ago a $2.25 tiny plastic clip that held the rod that controlled the flap for the HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) broke while I was driving home. The failure mode when this happens is to immediately channel heat into the passenger compartment so people don’t freeze to death. Unfortunately, this happened to me not in winter but in June while sitting in I-75 rush hour traffic. At least, that’s when I noticed it because I realized I was literally baking. Hot air was blowing on me from the vents. I shut the fan and closed the vents, but there was still air coming from under the dash somewhere. So whenever the car was moving, it air fried me for my entire hour drive home.
The Clip of Hell. Literally.
The problem with the a/c was a leaky Nippondenso (now Denso) compressor. It seemed like all the Denso compressors of this era eventually leak. So as I was dreaming about fixing the a/c, I stumbled onto griffiths.com, who sell a/c compressors for old Porsches. In addition to Denso compressors, they carry a “house” brand they call Kuehl (kühl is cool in German). I don’t know who makes it for them, but I decided to try it out. It’s not quite a drop-in fit for my car. A hose has to be cut and an adapter added; a mounting ear has to be removed; and some other fitting has to be adapted. But after much time and money, it was installed and running.
The a/c in the car had been converted to R134 years ago, which is when I first found out the compressor was bad. I can’t say if this new compressor with R134 is colder than the Denso compressor with R12 it originally came with, but it’s more than cold enough.
So of course, like bringing an umbrella with you when there’s a chance of rain, now that the a/c is fixed, the temperatures of our late Michigan August dropped unseasonably low, hovering around 10°F below normal. But whenever the temperatures climb again, this Weichei will at least keep from being hard boiled by the 944.
And now that my life is so prearranged
I know that it’s time for a cool change
—Little River Band
Crankiness Rating: 
Money, money, money / Must be funny, in a rich man’s world
Feature photo: Nikon CoolPix P900, 1800 mm, f6.3, 1/1000 s, ISO 100 (August 2023)
Taken in the early morning during the Canadian wild fires that year. The spots in the image are not from the camera, they’re on the sun.
