This Speedster was H O T

Icon of Porsche 356 Times Trials












Von K knew only two speeds: Off and Holy Sh*T










Edwards Air Force base Time Trial



Riverside Intl Raceway POC Time Trials late 1960s


Very Early days, Slalom 1963

In the very beginning of POC Time trialing, the club could not afford race tracks as event sites.

Von K was organizing and running most of the POC time trials in the beginning. The POC used the Pomona drag strip, Mojave air port, Tecate Landing strip in Mexico, and others. Then Harald saw an aerial photo of Edwards Air Force Base that clearly showed a huge deactivated runway, ideal for a time trial venue. Air Force General Curtis LeMay was a great fan of SCCA racing and did some go-karting himself (whilest smoking a cigar!). He had Edwards Air Force Base within the Strategic-Air-Command at the time. Harald had military connections, and pulled some strings , and soon had obtained approval from the General himself to give the POC access to that deactivated runway. The rest is history!

I had previously said that I searched for Von K as if I was looking for a long lost relative, not knowing if he was even still alive. It has been over 30 years since we have seen each other. Well, it did not take too long before I located him, comfortably enjoying a retired rural lifestyle on 20 acres somewhere in the eastern part of the US. He enjoys his privacy, so I am not going to reveal too much, but am happy to say that he is over 80, healthy, still driving (much slower now) and only gave up his racing hobby a couple years ago. His last German supercar was an Audi S4 wagon, that he tweaked to over 425 HP. He surprised more than a few folks in that sucker I'll bet! The photo above is the man himself ca. 1960

A much Simpler time

No, that's not James Dean up in the top photo. It's me, in what seems like a different lifetime. Way back in 1970 before everything got real complicated (and expensive). Back then, one could buy a 1957 Porsche Speedster with nerf bars and baby moons, for $1500. This is the one I bought, I think from some guy in Torrance, CA. I had it repainted a robin's egg blue (I don't know why), and sold it a few years later, probably for about $2000. And I replaced it with a red 1960 Roadster, that had disc brakes. For the life of me I can't remember where I bought that, or who I sold it to. If anyone does, I hope you will drop a note on this blog. I would have sold it in Van Nuys, because that is where I grew up.

Anyway, I used the money from that, and money I had saved to buy Von K's Speedster. I paid $4000 for the car. It had a finely tuned 1800 SC engine in it then, and the 4 Cam 904 motor (with busted crank) was disassembled and packed in a crate in his garage. Harald offered to sell the 4 Cam motor for another $2000, and I declined it. It was all I could do to muster up the coin to buy the car,,,,, How'd I know that 30 years later I could sell the 4 Cam engine for well over six figures!! Remember, life was a lot simpler back then.

Welcome to Don's Porsche Speedster Blog

Hello fellow Speedster nuts.

I thought now would be a good time to pay homage to one of the all time great backyard Porsche pushers (at least so far as I know,,,,,,,,,) in California, and maybe the whole dang country.
Harald Von Keszycki (Von K).

I had scoured the internet searching for information on Von K, and found scant little. I wanted to find out if the man was still living first of all, and try to make contact with him. You see many years ago, when I was still a teenager, I met him at a Porsche Owners Club Time Trial event at Riverside Raceway, Riverside, CA. He was driving the most badass radical looking, (and sounding) 1958 Porsche Speedster that one could image at that time. Oh, did I mention it had a freakin 904 engine stuffed in it's backside! And 911S disc brakes all around! And 10" wide mags, with Goodyear Slicks inside lightly swelled rear fender wells! Sweet!

I soon came to learn that in the POC, Southern Cal Region in the late 1960s, there were all the other members who owned 356s, and then there was Von K. Von K was an honest to God rocket scientist, whose hobby-passion was tweaking his Speedster to get every last nano-HP out of it, so he could run FTD at every POC Time Trial he entered. And he usually did.

Early in the 1970s, Von K determined that he had reached the limits of his imagination in modifying his Speedster. There just was no bigger engine to pack into the confines of a 356 backend, and Harald wanted to move to a mid-engine setup. So he decided to let someone else enjoy the Speedster, and he stepped up to a 1971 Kremer Bros 914-6 with a proud racing pedigree that he picked up while on vacation in Germany. That car has been chronicled a few places in the web, so I won't dwell on it here.

My intent is to talk about the Speedster, and anything else that comes to mind. You see I was the guy who bought Von K's Speedster, ( and the dumbs**t) who later sold it! Yeah, like many of you, I owned a killer Speedster, and sold it, way back when they weren't worth crap compared to today. Oh yeah, it was my second Speedster, and I had a 1960 Roadster, and a 1965 Cabriolet too. If I had all those soft top bathtub Porsches today I'd have enought money to replenish all the money I lost this year in the stock market!

All I have are some photos of the cars from my youngmanhood, and some great memories. And, the pictures aren't real good, and my memory isn't what it used to be either.

I am hoping some of you out in the world wide web will stumble on this blog, and share some stories with me, and others who love old Speedsters.

Please do,

The Von K 1958 Porsche Speedster

Harald bought this 1958 1600 Normal Speedster from the Parts Manager at Beverly Hills Porsche in 1960. The car had been club raced and the engine was apart. Harald rebuilt the engine himself in the dealership shop, before he took possession of the car. The rod journals had been chromed because the car experienced oil starvation in long hard turns. When Harald had the car running, he pretty quickly snapped the crankshaft in half at a POC time trial. This was the motivation to upgrade the engine to full 1600SC specs, but with an 1800 cc hi-compression kit from Ray Litz in Altadena, CA . That engine also featured an SC counter-balanced, polished crank. Shot-peened and heat treated connecting rods, extra light push rods, high lift cam shaft, ported heads, sodium filled exhaust valves, larger venturies and jets in the Solex carburetors. A CD Ignition and Burch Exhaust system. It also had special crankcase oil baffles to keep the oil in the sump and not all out in the port side valve cover and push rod tubes when the car was flying around the RIR hi-banked sweeper turn #9. Harald had also upgraded to a set of 550 Spyder big drum brakes (bought new from Vasek Polak Porsche in Redondo Beach, CA), which were found to be prone to warpage when subjected to Von K braking abuse. Harald changed them out to a set of ventilated 911S discs all around (bought used from Roger Burch of Pasadena CA), which solved that problem nicely.

Harald heard of a 904 four-cam engine that Johnny Thomas (the parts man at Jack McAfee Porsche - VW Motors in Burbank ) had lovingly built. Harald talked him into selling it and it went into the Speedster. Its dry sump oil system required a remote oil tank and a front mounted oil cooler. A surplus aircraft parts dealer in Burbank proved to be an excellent source for these parts, and they were added to the Speedster, with all Aeroquip plumbing parts and hoses.

To put more rubber on the ground, Harald got Eric Caldwell in Pasadena to provide Goodyear racing slicks in exchange for having his store name lettered on the Speedster. Of course, new wider wheels were necessary to fit the wide slicks. Harald went to Centerline in San Diego for a set of newly introduced extremely light Centerline monocoque wheels, 8” and 10” wide. Since they were solid disk wheels, Harald had to improve front brake cooling by adding two large diameter duct tubes that scooped ram air from under the car directly onto the front disk brakes. Of course, the wider wheels also required the rear fenders to be flared.



This was my set up after I bought Von K's Speedster. I had a 1970 Chevy El Camino as my tow vehicle, and pulled the Speedster with a tow bar.

Harald Von K's 1958 Porsche Speedster