Last weekend was the annual weekend for getting the garage ready for another Michigan winter. This involves getting all of the cars, the lawn tractor, etc., back into the garage in a somewhat orderly and efficient arrangement — with the goal being that I can work on any of the four cars during the winter without having to put one of them outside to make working space.

I refer to it as garage Tetris. The biggest challenge, of course, was the 1965 Oldsmobile that consumes roughly 18 feet of space end to end. A little quick work with the measuring tape yielded an answer: take the bumpers off the red 944 (I had to do that anyway for another winter project) and stack it end to end with the Olds.

Problem solved, minimal time wasted.

There was another problem, though. A check of the trip odometer reminded me that the brown 944 had been driven less than 300 miles this past season.

I had addressed all of the typical maintenance items in anticipation of this year's driving season. New timing belts and water pump, reference and speed sensors replaced, new Porsche factory engine mounts installed, new shocks and struts, fuel level sending unit, power steering lines, new fluids, and a fresh set of tires from Belle Tire. The difficult work had done by the techs at Rennstatt in Ann Arbor, but I had done the rest at home.

All this work, yet somehow I didn't drive the car much. What happened? The primary purpose of owning my P car is to drive it, not garage it. I blame the internet.

Like many engineers, I occasionally suffer from a condition called analysis paralysis. This condition is characterized by said engineer analyzing a problem or issue for an indeterminate and usually protracted period of time rather than making the decisions necessary to address and resolve it in a timely fashion.

While this condition can, in fact, result in a highly optimized and well developed product, those advantages are lost if the product is late to market. Therein lays the origin of the phrase "shoot the engineers and ship the product."

Apparently I had lapsed into a bout of internet-fueled analysis paralysis. The onset of this condition began in May, just after my first one or two drives of the car with all of its updated parts. The car still did not drive right, or sound right.

The driveline/transaxle was rattling on closed throttle decels much more than I thought it should. I also noticed the car lurched heavily if I lifted off the throttle too quickly. Something was obviously wrong, and it made the car unpleasant to drive.

Clearly something needed to be corrected. What was it, I needed to know. So I headed off to the internet — that source of infinite knowledge — with the intention of conducting a "quick" root cause analysis, which of course resulted in a self-inflicted analysis paralysis and the car remaining parked in the garage.

At some point I finally convinced myself the issue appeared to be clutch related, and I should not be driving the car until it gets resolved. Just change the clutch, simple right? Nope. Here comes the next bout of analysis.

What gets replaced? Whose parts should I use? How much should it cost? Can I do the job myself? Do I need to buy more tools (always a good plan in my book)? Do I need to consider finally buying a hoist for my garage? How long will it take me to do it?

One Excel spreadsheet, lots of internet research and many weeks later, still no plan of action. Changing the clutch in a 944 is, shall we say, "involved," as well as being extremely time consuming. And if that didn't fix the problem, then what? If the clutch has gone south, then it needs to be changed before driving the car very far. What to do?

Prior to the internet, the simple answer to my driveline issue anxiety would have been to skip the research and analysis and take the car to an experienced Porsche mechanic for a diagnosis. I knew that and I've done that, but in this case the bottomless pit of knowledge known as the internet sent me into an analysis-driven frenzy parking the car for the duration.

Fortunately, at some point, I had a random memory moment and recalled what my senior engineering design professor Prof. Dwight Baumann (also a P car driver) once told us: "I don't tell my mechanic how to fix Porsches, and he doesn't tell me how to teach engineering."

Yup, old soon, smart late. Luckily, via a fellow PCA member, I found a 944 specialist less than 10 miles from my house, a safe driving distance with a wounded clutch.

One diagnosis trip and two shop days later both issues were resolved as were several smaller ones I would never have identified on my own. The car was now fabulous to drive, but unfortunately it was already September.

An entire summer driving season wasted. Lesson learned. Less thinking, more driving, stay away from the Internet.