Mike and Katie's 911 restoration project

New Seats

2011-07-01T17:19:00.000-07:00

At long last I was able to score a nice set of standard seats, appropriate for our vintage car. I say 'standard' to distinguish them from the ridiculously overpriced and optional 'sport' seats, which sell for >$2500 even in unusably crappy condition. Among the many senselessly overpriced vintage Porsche parts, these are among the most egregious. But I digress..

Since getting on the road the old seats have been a horrible eyesore in an otherwise beautiful car. So I was very happy and eager to get the new seats installed as soon as they arrived. It wasn't too bad a job, although getting the tracks aligned so that they would slide was challenging, and there's still some improvement to be had there. But they can be made to work, and look great. I mean, how often are they really going to need to be moved. Ain't going to be no one's butt in the driver's seat but mine!

Lights, finally!

2011-04-30T21:06:00.000-07:00

It's been a busy spring, without a lot of car time. But this morning I decided to try and address our lack of headlights. I have had no idea why they weren't working, and the right one would occasionally light flickeringly. So I got out my trusty multimeter, and finally tracked the problem to the fuse block, where one of the contacts was a little corroded. That one bad contact was the cause of both lights failing. After cleaning that up everything was fine. So tonight we went for our first night drive. It was a lovely drive out under the Santa Barbara stars.

A sunday afternoon drive

2011-02-27T15:31:00.000-08:00

We took the car out onto the highway for the first time today. My confidence in it is growing quite a bit. It was a gorgeous afternoon, and we headed up the coast along 101. We shot some video, partly to capture the inimitable sound of an old 911 under acceleration. Enjoy... We did!

Wheel Nice

2011-02-20T19:16:00.000-08:00

It's been raining the past week or so in southern California, so that seemed the perfect opportunity to disable the car for a bit. One of the last big jobs awaiting was the refinishing of the wheels. I won't go into too much esoteric detail here, but there is one important disclaimer to add at the outset: these are 'Fake Fuchs', Fuchs being the manufacturer of the correct original aluminum alloy wheels for 911s. Apart from their fakeness, however, they're quite decent wheels. Their biggest issue was that they came to us as an unmatched set. One pair was more or less in the original finish (black and brushed aluminum), while the other had been stripped and polished to a mirror finish. A picture from the archives...

Of course matching wheels would be nice, but how? Strip and polish them all? Unpolish the polished wheels and paint? There are many opinions as to what looks best on the older 911s, but I decided to go with the original finish, which is the black and brushed aluminum. All four of the wheels were in rough shape, so even the painted ones needed a lot of work. I started with 220 grit (relatively coarse) sandpaper, and worked up through a 600 wet sand, and finally a '00' steel wool rub, to achieve a fairly uniform surface over all the unpainted sections. The black paint was very tough, and I just removed enough of that to let me mask a matching pattern on all the wheels, which I spent about 2 hours doing on saturday.

Finally today the sun came out, and although it was a little windy, I was able to get these primed, painted, and clearcoated. I'm very happy with the result. It's hard to tell which of the wheels are which. Here's a nice picture of one of them.

Last week I ordered a set of tires (a more appropriate size for a vintage car than what we had) at a nearby shop, and should be able to get those installed tomorrow or tuesday. I can't wait to see the car with an original-looking set of wheels and tires. That will bring the outside of the car very nearly to completion. A few minor details, but this is close. Then all we really need is good seats.... Maybe it really will be 'done' someday!

First official outing

2011-02-12T11:01:00.000-08:00

There's lots to report on the car front. However, for the moment I'd just like to post a couple pictures of our car's first official outing. We drove it downtown to the semi-monthly breakfast of the local chapter of the Porsche Club of America. The only other time I attended this event was right after I bought the car, and all I was able to say was 'I've got a car, it doesn't run, but I've got one'. This time it felt great to be able to say 'Yeah, we built ourselves a beautiful car. It's right out front!' It was also fun taking it on a lovely drive in the sun, along the coast, with the wind in our hair... Just how I've been imagining for so long!

Here's the car, in good company.

And Mike, the proud parent.

Getting closer to completion

2011-01-23T16:07:00.000-08:00

We're edging ever closer to having a nice, driveable car. Over the last several days I've been getting more interior stuff finished, doing a lot of electrical work, and especially tuning the engine. The carpet is now all in, and looks great.

For the purposes of driving I put the old, totally junk seats back in. We'll replace these as soon as a nice, correct pair presents itself. Even these beat milk crates, though, hands down.

Tomorrow I have my date with DMV to return this car to 'active' registration. After that we can do whatever we want. In the meantime, we've been sneaking little drives around the neighborhood. We get some admiring looks, for sure. And, as if there could have been any doubt, here's a picture of Katie ready for this afternoon's spin, looking great in the car..

Our first drive

2011-01-17T15:58:00.000-08:00

Ah, who doesn't love long weekends... After a couple wonderful days up in Big Bear, there was still weekend enough left to get the last of the critical control issues sorted out and then to take the car for an exciting first drive. The main issue was getting the clutch properly adjusted. The 1970-71 clutch is known to be finicky, and with us reusing some slightly worn parts, I was not entirely confident it was going to work well. Adding to my apprehension was the fact that the first attempt, with the old (seemingly solid) clutch cable, went badly, the cable creaking and stretching on the first push. So I ordered a new clutch cable and swapped them out yesterday afternoon, and today went about adjusting it again. Everything seemed a little more secure, so it was on to the next job.

Second issue was that the throttle rod was hanging up in the tunnel. You could pull it, but it didn't retract very easily, and needed a little manual encouragement through one of the access holes in the top of the tunnel. A stuck throttle could be serious trouble. So to figure out where it was sticking I had to pull the emergency brake panel (with manual throttle adjust and heater controls) as well as the shifter, to see the points where the rod passes through a few bushings. It turned out that the one under the shifter had gotten a little cocked, and was the problem, so I had to bend its bracket so that it would sit straight and firm. Then all those controls had to be reattached and readjusted. But at the end of that, the last of the mechanical controls all seemed to be functioning smoothly.

Of course, there was no way to really know how good a job I'd done until we took the car for a test drive. To make a long story short, everything works pretty well. The shifter needs a little more adjusting - it's hard to find first (but it's so low that starting in 2nd is fine). But all else is good, and we took the car for three little spins. The first I did on my own, in case of disaster. Katie rode shotgun on the second, and then she shot this video for number three.

All in all, everything feels great. It pulls smooth, and feels like it's got lots of power. I can't wait to get it on the open road. It's not running real smoothly. We've got a lot of backfiring, so I need spend some more time adjusting the carbs and timing. Also the brakes feel a bit weak, although I think a big part of that is all new pads and rotors that need to wear into each other a little. Still I'll bleed them once again before we drive.

Big Fun!

It started!!

2011-01-09T21:28:00.000-08:00

These past few weeks have been a whirlwind of holidays and fun, all the while knowing that the car was so close to it's first run. Finally this weekend I was able to spend enough time working on the last few issues that we were able to start it up today. It wasn't easy or stress free. But after a few tries, and some timing adjustments, it started right up. It was amazing. Katie was helping with all this, actually turning the key while I tweaked and monitored. After just cranking for several attempts I think she had almost given up. But when I knew it was ready, I knew. I had her crank it one more time, and it started immediately. The surprised look on her face was priceless. Unfortunately, I couldn't capture it, because the camera was occupied, capturing these initial videos. I know the start-up one seems so perfect it appears staged, but that's how it went. Later this evening when our friends Michelle and Shawn came over, I gave them a demo, and again it started instantly. It's like a new car.

Well, here's some video to keep you entertained. There's still a lot of work to do, but this is such a huge step forward, the rest will be gravy.

Engine Installed

2011-01-01T16:21:00.000-08:00

With the weathermen predicting New Year's Day rain, I had originally planned on working on my new 911 puzzle instead of my actual 911. But this morning did not look threatening, so I decided to take my chances. I thought I could at least make my final preparations for the engine install. But finding little that really needed doing, and seeing the sky clearing, I decided to go for it.

I had to roll the car out of the garage a ways, and then jack the back WAAAYY up - I needed about 3 feet of clearance to get the engine under. Those heavy duty SUV jackstands I bought really came in handy. That was no big deal for them at all.

After rolling the engine and transmission underneath, I dropped the car down a few inches, but then needed to raise the engine up at a slight angle to get the four mounting points (two at the front of the transmission, two at the rear of the engine). I was able to get the floor jack under the engine pallet, and with the engine balanced in the middle, it wasn't too big a deal to tip it to get all the mounts aligned.

It was a little tricky getting the tranmission bolts in. The new bolts I got were the correct length, 65mm, but they originals were tapered at the end, while I'd just gotten normal bolts. Turns out the taper was necessary to keep them from bottoming out in the blind mount, so I had to grind the ends. Then they fit fine, and Katie came out to lend a hand, and snap a few pictures.

5 hours later, our car's got an engine! Over the next few days I'll be hooking up a lot of things: electricals, oil lines, fuel lines, etc... But a start-up isn't far off now.

Closer... closer....

2010-12-01T19:00:00.000-08:00

Every day gets us a little closer to complete. But there are still some obstacles slowing things down. The transmission still refuses to get finished. It's practically all done. But I can't get it together because of one little gear (the speedometer drive) that I managed to bend by an indelicate first attempt at assembly. Over the three days of 'the speedo gear' drama I've seriously considered whether we really needed a speedometer. But good sense, and a fear of the law, keeps rising to the top.

Here's a shot of the gear shafts, back together and ready to insert back in the box. They've since gone into the box.

And here's the %*&!# little speedometer drive shaft that got bent.

While waiting on some of the parts over the weekend I made a good bit of progress on the interior. One of the first things I wanted to check out were the seat belts. Safety matters! I figured I could do some minor disassembly, clean up the belts, oil the mechanism, and make them at least closer to like new. There was a small misadventure along the way. Opening up one of the covers, a suddenly unconstrained spring became a pile of seat belt spring spaghetti in my face!

I was laughing even while cursing this. But amazingly, after a breather I managed to get it coiled back up, and reconstrained under the side cover, and the seat belt does work better than before. So I was happy I didn't ruin it.

I was also able to make great progress on the carpet, and in fact there are only a couple more front footwell pieces to be glued in. Then the main floor mats just get set in. The rear is basically done (the side panels will go in after the seat belts, ready any time). Katie said it even began to smell new. (Overcoming the old smell is no small miracle). It sure looks nice

Finally, with the help of our good friend Ray, we got the engine off the stand on onto a dolly last night. So it only awaits its completed transmission before they can be rolled under the car (jacked up about 2 feet), bolted into place, wired, oiled, fueled, and started! It could potentially be only days away (except for that $%$*%&!$ little speedo drive!)

Carpets coming up

2010-11-25T16:33:00.000-08:00

While waiting for 4th gear to arrive so that I can finish the transmission, I decided to make some progress on the interior. The first step was putting down some vinyl based sound-deadening. This is designed to absorb vibrations in the body panels, and reduce a lot of the 'hum'. The only downside is that it's fairly heavy, which is why it works. (Porsche owners are fanatics about keeping weight down.) I bought 20 square feet, about 12 lbs worth. I knew this wasn't enough to cover everything, but supposedly covering everything isn't really necessary. The larger expanses of flat sheet metal are the most likely to produce unpleasant noise, so the goal is to dampen most of the flat spots. First I sketched out all the interior panels (including all their raised strengthening ridges) and decide where to stick the stuff on.

Then did a whole lot of cutting and sticking..

The next layer is some foam, both to block out airborne noise, and to make a nice soft base for the carpets and such. I covered the back deck completely, since the engine is going to be the biggest source of noise.

I've still got a little more foam installation, but I started laying out the carpet, just to see how everything is going to fit. Installing it all is going to be tricky - the carpet pieces are flat, but there are a lot of curves to fit. But it's really going to look nice when done.

A slight diversion into the transmission

2010-11-23T19:29:00.000-08:00

The general blog's been quiet lately, while my Pelican transmission rebuild thread has been in heavy rotation. As I hinted in my last post, I started thinking the transmission was going to need a little more attention than just a fluid change. Well, to make a long story short, the transmission box ended up needing major work, with extremely (even unusually) worn gears & synchros, broken bearings, incorrectly torqued fasteners... the list of wrongs is long. I ended up having to take it completely apart and replace quite a bit.

It ended up being a classic case of the five stages of auto restoration: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance. Oh, wait, those are the five stages of dying! Well, it's not that different. Once confronted with the truth, there was no way that I was going to be able to put a junk transmission back into this wonderful car. We'll be glad to have it in good shape, I have no doubt. But it was hard to accept the delay, not to mention the added expenses.

This was Katie's reaction when I told her that we had a lot of work still to do (note the elevated digit):

And this is how the transmission looked at maximum disassembly.

It has since started coming back together. We're still waiting on a few more key parts (like 4th gear!) But it should mostly be done by the end of the long weekend. Here's a reassembled synchro mechanism. See the Pelican thread if you want to know more about this. It's been fascinating coming to understand how all this actually functions.

The delays in waiting for parts have let me take care of a few other important things. Probably the most valuable was making the brakes functional. This was 'merely' a matter of adding fluid, then bleeding out all the air. Not as easy as it sounds. But all four calipers (rebuilt by us, if you recall) do function. That'll be nice on that first drive.

I've also been planning how to get the 500 lb. engine off the engine stand. Katie's been working out, but she's not quite up to hoisting this thing single-handed yet. I wanted some way to do this that didn't result in broken backs or broken engines, and I think I've come up with it. I made a dolly from a braced pallet, and think we can use jackstands to first get it off the stand, and then drop it down in a few stages to the floor. Here's my mock-up:

Finally (for now), I've also acquired the sound deadening and padding for the interior, which means that we can install the carpet whenever we find the time. That'll make the car look nicely finished. The bare floor still clashes with the good looking exterior. Maybe we'll get started on this over the weekend too. We'll see.

Engine is finished!

2010-11-02T22:16:00.000-07:00

Another major milestone: the engine is complete! I spent most of the past week (and a couple of very long weekend days) putting the finishing touches on it. Another small mishap along the way slowed things down a bit. I broke a rocker shaft (that the rocker between the cam and the valve pivots on) while installing it. I blame this on a combination of technique and some hidden part fatigue. Tapping it in I encountered sudden resistance. Backing it out I saw it had fractured where it is supposed to expand and lock in place. Not good.

My cam supplier got another one to me quickly, but it halted progress on one corner where this needed to be installed, preventing the final installation of the oil cooler, the valve covers, the cooling tins, etc. (the ol' reverse domino effect). But I did almost everything I was able to do around this, and when the rocker arrived yesterday it was relatively quick work getting it in, making final valve adjustments, and closing it all up. The carbs went on, the exhaust, and most of the rest is just window dressing. It looks great. I can only hope it runs well.

During the downtime I spent some time getting to know my transmission. This 5-speed had been sitting in the corner, virtually ignored, during this whole project. I occasionally thought to myself 'gee, I sure hope there's nothing wrong with that transmission'. Rarely did my awareness of it rise above that level. But I knew eventually I would have to confront it. First thing was to drain the old fluid out. A fair bit can be diagnosed from the old fluid. The drain plug also has a magnet that attracts metallic debris floating around in the case. Generally metallic debris in the case is not good. I was confronted with a metallic version of a Chia pet!

But I dug a little deeper, removed the axle flanges and the differential, and all has looked good so far. No missing chunks or obvious wear. I also sifted through the debris on the plug, and it was really only fine metallic dust, sculpted by the magnet. Chunks are bad, but dust is normal wear. I need to go further on this, but now I'm cautiously optimistic that there's nothing seriously wrong. Clearly there has been wear, but maybe nothing worse.

Here's the differential assembly, looking pretty good, not to mention massive!

Next I open up the gearbox itself. Should be interesting to see. I just hope I can look, find everything in order, and put it all back together with fresh seals and new fluid. With the engine done I'm VERY EAGER to get it running!

Engine progress, and other details

2010-10-23T18:45:00.000-07:00

It has been quite some time since my last update, as I was recently reminded. I have been so caught up in getting the engine together, and dealing with a number of mostly paranoid concerns, that it's been hard to choose blogging over building. You may have read some of my Pelican posts, detailing these concerns. In a nutshell, the machine work that has been done to the case, by me, and perhaps that on top of what previous owners have done, resulted in some of the clearances being less than expected, and as a result the engine compression being too high to run well. At least that would have been the result if I just plowed through following a standard rebuild procedure. Fortunately, I WAS paranoid, and knowing this was a possibility made sure to measure everything thoroughly, including empirically determining the cylinder volume at the extremes. So I was able to make a few adjustments, and with a little strategic shimming think we're back where we need to be. In addition, I was concerned about the tightness of the piston rings, but after some discussions with other builders, was adequately reassured. All this slowed things down quite a bit, but finally things are back on track.

I found a day last week to dedicate to the engine, and got it very close to all together. I was nearly done timing the cams when I bumped my dial gauge into oblivion, and wasn't able to take the final measurements. Of course no one in Santa Barbara carries a metric dial gauge, so I'm waiting for a special order to arrive so that I can finish up. But after that it should be pretty quick work. I need to install most of the rockers still, but then it's just oil cooler, fan and alternator, and carbs, and the engine will be ready to run. Here's a picture just before I put the cams and chains all together.

In the meantime there have been countless other details to deal with on the way to getting the car running. This is my top priority right now, and finishing up the interior is taking a back seat (no pun intended) for the time-being. I really want to get some oil circulating through the engine because we know what happens to clean steel around here (and we're having a cooler and wetter than usual autumn).

Today I took apart the old grungy axles and CV joints. They needed complete cleaning and repacking. They're pretty complicated gizmos, which have been compared to Chinese puzzles to reassemble. I've always liked puzzles, so didn't have too much trouble, but when fully disassembled I was a bit anxious.

Other jobs over the past few weeks... The electrical system, especially engine related components, has still needed some attention. We had to get the alternator tested, and then when it failed the test, had to get it rebuilt.

The distributor needed some serious cleaning. The weights and springs that form it's mechanical advance mechanism were totally gummed up and non functional. It also got a new set of points. This distributor needs to be treated very gingerly, as it suffers from a bad case of NLA: rotors and caps for these are No Longer Available! There are others that will work in the car, but for now I'm going to trust the old Marelli to get us started.

I installed the new MSD (Multiple Spark Discharge) ignition box, replacing a bunch of obsolete switches and relays on our electrical panel.

On the other side of the engine compartment (actually in the fender behind the right wheel) I reinstalled the freshly cleaned and painted oil tank. Here you can see the filler tube and filter base sticking through into the engine compartment. I have to say, with all the difficulties these cars pose, it is going to be such a treat to be able to change the oil filter so easily!

Finally, with the oil tank in place I was able to install the right rear bumper, and with that could do a trial assembly of the whole back end. It's only a 'trial' because the center panel will be off for engine installation, but this is the first time we've seen it all together. Hopefully it won't be long before people will see this nice back end cruising around town!

Engine really coming together, at last

2010-09-27T19:32:00.000-07:00

Finally, I've begun assembling the heart of our car. After way too much time cleaning, and acquiring parts, and waiting, it was a great feeling to put some things together once and for all. Once everything was about as clean as humanly possible, I took the time for a couple trial assemblies. There would be nothing worse than sealing up the crankcase and then finding that some critical clearance was off, for example preventing the crankshaft from turning. Since a lot of parts going back into this motor did not originally come from this motor (crank, connecting rods, pistons, cams) there are significant opportunities for new internal collsions. So I needed to make sure all the parts were going to play nicely together. Fortunately those that needed to be checked in the case all checked out right, and after one last cleaning and organizing day (saturday) we were ready for some assembly.

Here's all the parts laid out and ready to go (including book and Pelican Parts online Engine Rebuilding forum.)

The first thing to assemble was the crankshaft and rods. The bolts that hold the connecting rods to the crank are single use - so you better get it right!

Then it was time for final case prep. One more wipedown with alcohol and lint-free wipes. Then assembly lube on the bearings, lay the crank shaft, intermediate shaft and oil pump in. Apply sealant to the other half, lower it onto the case half on the engine stand, torque the nuts, and voila! Well, it wasn't quite that easy. As we had near record high temps in Santa Barbara, the sealant was setting up fast, and the props holding up one chain and the connecting rods were not very sturdy. So Katie stepped in to offer an essential hand. Here she's making sure everything is in position.

We got the other case half on, and then frantically began putting on about 40 nuts and bolts (lubing o-rings for a number of them in the process). It took about 20 minutes to get it all done. Then we stepped back to look at what we accomplished: a significant chunk of the engine together, and moving smoothly.

For anyone interested in more technical details, I started a thread on the Pelican Parts forum, in order to get feedback as we go. Given the number of questions I'm sure I'll have, that thread is more likely to be current than our blog. Check it out:
our engine build on the Pelican Parts forum.

Engine work starting

2010-09-20T07:02:00.000-07:00

Hey Porsche fans,

I know, too long since any activity here. But things are moving again after some work-related travels. The past week I've been gathering up the last remaining parts needed for the engine rebuild, and have been carefully cleaning all the engine parts. It's said that the most important part of an 911 engine rebuild is the cleaning, and I've taken that to heart. Especially when working with assorted parts whose histories are largely unknown. There are many places for dangerous shards and hunks o' gunk to hide in the engine case, crankshaft, oil pump.. If you don't get all the nooks and crannies clean this thing will be dead again before it goes around the block. So I've been scraping, scrubbing, wiping and polishing every surface and hole I could stick a q-tip in. Plus cleaning all the fasteners that will be reused, like the through-bolts and head studs. I believe that once this kind of prep work's done well, the assembly should go pretty quickly. (But then I've been so optimistic before - we'll just take it as it comes.)

Here's a few pre-assembly pictures. More to come...

One crankcase half attached to the stand

The inside, clean enough to eat off

Some clean connecting rods

Upholstery nearing completion, about ready for the engine

2010-08-18T20:19:00.000-07:00

There's been a lot going on the past few weeks, on the car and off. I'm preparing for a work trip to Europe, and trying to mix that with plenty of car time and Katie time. What we've been doing on the car has mainly been driven by my wanting to begin working on the engine as soon as I get back. That has meant getting the body to a stable point, if not completely finished. We had begun with the interior stuff a while back, and I really wanted to get most of that completed. So we have spent several long days cutting, fitting and gluing. I have to say it was among my least favorite parts of this process. That's both because the interior is so visible, so the pressure to make it look perfect was high, and because there are very few guidelines for this kind of stuff around. The vast majority of restorers send their upholstery work out, or buy ready-made panels. I'm glad to say in the end it all looks pretty good, but we struggled to make everything fit evenly and tightly.

The biggest jobs were the rear deck and the door panels. Both these were based on thin plywood backing boards, with foam underneath the vinyl. First we test fit the boards alone.

The we glued the foam on with spray adhesive, then had to stretch the vinyl over the top. It was especially tricky on the rear seatback, because the seams made it obvious when things weren't square. It took us several tries of sticking it down, stepping back, shaking our heads, ripping it off, and starting over before we really got it square. Then we realized we barely left enough at the bottom edge to wrap around.

When we were finally happy with that we did the side panels, and then fit everything back into the car with the rear seats. I didn't really wipe everything down for the picture, but it is going to look nice. It'll still have to come out one more time for installation of sound deadening and carpet, but at least we know it's going to all fit together.

With that taken care of I've begun to get ready for the engine rebuild. This started with a serious garage cleaning. There was still bondo and primer dust all over the place, not to mention several almost empty boxes of parts. After cleaning I got to work on some of the engine peripherals. To help guide air flow around the air-cooled engine, there's a variety of sheet metal baffles that needed serious cleaning and painting. It took a couple mornings and evenings of scrubbing, washing, solvent cleaning, sandblasting and sanding to get to the point where I could paint all this stuff, which I did tonight.

Although it turned out to be a bigger than expected job, it's done. Now I'm really ready to begin putting the heart of this machine together, as soon as I get back.

Relief

2010-08-02T20:32:00.000-07:00

Well, it took a day longer than planned, but more importantly an extra pair of hands, to get the rear window installed. But it's done! Our friend Ray came over for a few hours this evening, and with his help we got this bane of Porsche restorers taken care of with surprisingly little drama.

The rubber and aluminum trim had stayed attached through a couple unattended days. That was a good start. We began tonight by inserting the well lubricated string in the body flange channel. We wore out nearly all of our fingers getting the string inserted all the way around this very tight space. We used two short strings meeting in the middle, top and bottom, with a little overlap.

Then we carefully carried the window over to the car. As we approached Katie was soaping up the body flange, making sure there would be minimal resistance of the rubber on the metal. We seated the front lower corners, and then just basically had to apply four (occasionally five) hands of pressure to the edge of the window as I pulled the string from inside, pulling the inner rubber edge over the metal flange. We only had one minor problem, where the string pulled past the rubber without pulling it over, but were able to get that with a neat little hook that Ray fashioned from a nail. Other than that it was relatively painless.

This car is now unbelieveably nearly whole! These were some very well-enjoyed, and well-deserved beers.

Frustration and Pain

2010-08-01T06:02:00.000-07:00

This morning just a short progress report on a couple very difficult jobs. In part I'm posting this for the archives, to have a record of just how much I hated certain parts of this restoration (although I guess, now that I think about it, I haven't been shy about sharing some of the unpleasantness of this project; oh well.) It will be interesting to look back and see how much this has all faded away once we're driving it.

Anyway, after the success of the front window, I felt ready to tackle the rear. This installation is known to be significantly more difficult, although exactly why that should be, no one can really say. In fact it's been known to make grown men cry, and it nearly did yesterday. I naively thought these were lesser men. The first step of the process is fitting the rubber seal around the whole window, out of the car. On the front this was a snap, a non-issue. On the rear I spent almost two hours just trying to get it to stay on. I would fit the channel over the edge of the window most of the way around, but then it would pop off on the opposite side, and quickly fall off all the way around to the few inches I was currently holding in place. The tape you see in the picture was a recommended help, although not a huge one. In order to get the glass into the channel in the rubber you need to lubricate everything with soapy water, and the tape was not eager to stick very well, and the asymmetry of the rubber made it reluctant to stay on, even with the tape in place. Ironically, 'Joy' dish soap was used for this - it was the only joy at the table during this job. Eventually I did get it stuck all the way around, but by then my fingers were very sore, so I decided to take a break and work on the hood. The glass remains on the picnic table this morning. Oh, and I might add that some installation instructions consider this the easy part. Getting it to stick on the car is the challenge.

I won't go on at such length about installing the hood. It was more comical than anything. The difficulty here is that in order to install the hinge to hood bolts, the hood has to be closed (unless you have some kind of magical sling that would hold it in place at the perfect height and angle above the car while you bring the hinge up to the underside). The hinge bolts of course have to be installed from underneath. So Katie and I lifted the hood onto the car, with me ending up inside the trunk when we set it down. I had my headlamp, and all the tools, and felt ready. But I was not really prepared for how little space there really is in there. The last time we did this, for prepaint alignment, the car was about 18 inches off the ground. I was almost able to stand up under there (through the big hole where the gas tank will go). This was much more cramped, and when the hood came all the way down I could barely move, let alone insert bolts in the deep recesses of the trunk. But after much groaning and swearing I was able to get a couple of them started and wrenched down to the point where the hood could be opened with the hinges, and the rest could be done from outside. At that point, though, I'd had enough fun for the day, and completion of this also awaits me this morning. I hope tonight I can report both these jobs done!

We got us a windshield!

2010-07-30T18:24:00.000-07:00

Teamwork conquered one of the tricker installations - a very nice, period correct windshield. Our original windhshield was broken, and the original chrome embedded in the trim was long gone. So we acquired some new glass and chrome. Although the glass was beautiful, the chrome was not. So I spent most of the afternoon sanding down years of corrosion and polishing it back to a decent (although not truly chrome) finish, I declared it time to get the glass in. Katie lent a hand, keeping a steady pressure on the gasket as I pulled a rope out of the sealing channel (helping to guide the rubber lip over the metal lip in the windshield frame). I was pretty nervous, as lots can go wrong here, including window breakage, but it turned out to be a picture perfect install.

Engine parts pickup

2010-07-25T20:11:00.000-07:00

Katie and I went up camping and collecting in the Sierras this weekend, and on the way were able to stop by Competition Engineering, in Lake Isabella, and pickup all our newly machined engine parts. There will be more nice shiny photos to come, but for now, here's Walt Watson, one of the pillars of the Porsche engine-building community, showing off one of our now like-new heads.

There's still a little body reassembly to finish, but it's almost time to start putting the heart of this car back together!

Interior Progress - Katie Sews!

2010-07-20T21:30:00.000-07:00

While we cut out our vinyl a little while ago now, we hadn't had a chance to start piecing things together until tonight. In part this was due to difficulties finding the right thread. A 'heavy duty' thread we tried didn't work well at all, and we ended up with something a little lighter. After a few trial seams, Katie was ready to get to work.

There were two panels we worked on, one was a relatively simple three piece frame around the inside of the windshield frame. After knocking that one out successfully, we were ready to try the back deck, a pleated piece behind the rear seats, and a non-pleated piece that covers the deck under the rear window. It took some careful measuring and line-drawing (my main contribution to the evening).

Here's the new seat-backing panel compared to the whole old piece. This pretty much represents most of the interior vinyl as we found it - filthy, brittle, and basically trash.

Surprisingly quickly Katie announces 'It's done.' Nice!

Vent windows done

2010-07-19T06:59:00.001-07:00

Upon getting the vent windows out of storage, we realized that they weren't really in the 'basically useable' condition that I recalled them being in. The rubber was old, brittle, and in cases missing. The window channel guide was crumbly. So I've spent the past week or so disassembling, regasketing, and reassembling these windows. They posed some 'interesting' challenges. Namely some unique rivets holding the frames together. I probably spent a whole day trying alternative solutions (threading the holes, thin nut-bolt possibilities) before finally finding a pop-rivet that would do the job (the holes were bigger than standard pop-rivet diameters). Once that was solved, the rest was pretty easy (only a couple of drill-outs and retaps in order to get the few screws back in). The rubber in particular was unusually cooperative. It slipped right in.

This weekend a good friend was visiting, and most of the weekend was spent on culinary adventures, but I managed to put him to work for a bit helping to install the vents, and then the clip-in chrome on the outer edge of the windows.

Now we can happily report the doors basically done. Just have to work on the interior parts.

Front and rear glass, coming soon...

Serious interior work

2010-07-11T20:50:00.000-07:00

Lots of continued progress, mostly on functional elements of the interior. Of particular note is that we now have functioning doors and windows. I reinstalled the latches and main side window mechanism. Both of these were fairly straightforward 'clean and lube' jobs. All these mechanisms were horribly gunky, and slight rusty, so cleaning required a combination of scraping, srubbing and blasting, followed by metal treatment. Then all the moving parts had to be regreased. I'm waiting on a few replacement parts for the side vent windows, which provide the front channel for the main windows. My memory of how well-preserved the vent frames were was unfortunately too favorable. Some new rubber is needed there too. But everything else works well and looks good. Oh, you can also see the installed dash top in this picture, finally.

The next thing we're going to tackle is replacing most of the interior vinyl. This was something that I'd been avoiding even thinking about, let alone planning. But Katie's newly honed skills with the sewing machine made us think that we could do a decent job with fabricating and recovering just about everything. I found an interior restoration shop that was willing to sell bulk original vinyl, 3 yards please...

We traced all the old vinyl onto the new, which sounds easier than it was. The old stuff was very brittle, and not very easy to flatten for tracing. So it took a fair bit of eyeballing. But this stuff is pretty stretchy, and I think as long as it's close to the original shape, we'll be able to get it over what it needs to cover. Although we're saving tons of money over buying new or precut panels, we were both a little nervous to begin cutting up $45/yard fabric.

Here's all the old stuff, not quite destined for the trash heap yet. It's retained shape will help us align the new pieces on the very NON-flat panels. Should be an interesting job.

Preparing the interior for the dash top

2010-07-03T20:40:00.000-07:00

While Katie sewed today, I did manly work, like upholstery! I have been inching closer to putting the new dash top on, which in turn prepares us for putting the front windshield in. However, in the game of backwards dominoes (have to knock over the last domino first) that is Porsche reassembly, I had to get the chrome and vinyl front plates cleaned up, upholstered, and installed first. Why? Because they had to be installed in order to install the heat and vent controls. And the heat and vent controls had to be installed before closing up the access holes through the top of the dash. I also needed to make some provisions in the event that we ever want to put a dash speaker in the car. Where the original dash had a removable speaker grill, allowing a speaker to be installed from above, the replacement is a solid piece, so any speaker would have to be installed from below. So I made some studs coming through from above so that some speaker assembly could be hung underneath at some point. I have to say, as I put all this stuff back under the cowl, I find myself doubting that I'll ever want to take it apart again just to put speakers in. It's not a whole lot of fun. The doors will have speakers, and that just might have to do us.

Anyway, I spent a good bit of the day cleaning up the aluminum backing plates that go across the front of the dash, removing old adhesive, straightening, attempting to remove scratches. Here they've got polish drying on the exposed edges, while their vinyl fascia await nearby.

I used a spray adhesive to stick the vinyl to the aluminum. It worked pretty well, although you didn't get much time for adjustments. Once it's stuck, it's stuck! Then I cut out the holes for switches and such (although I left the radio hole uncut - will be easy to do when it's radio time.) Lastly the '911T' emblem on the glove box door got poked back through some holes in that plate, and then they were ready for assembly.

After getting the dash pieces vinyled, I used two-sided tape to stick them to the dash, reinstalled the glove box door (and inner box), as well as the knee pads under the dash, and the 'clamshell' around the steering column and column switches.

Then, for the day's coup de grace I was going to install the dash top. Thought it was going to be a quick drop in and bolt. Wrong! For some reason only about half the studs on the dash top pad lined up with holes in the body. I guess this is one of those year-to-year changes that aren't very well cataloged. Oh well. It will only require drilling a couple holes. Not a big deal, but too much to get done tonight. Before the end of the weekend though!

Small jobs galore

2010-06-15T20:10:00.000-07:00

The past week or so has seen the completion of a large number of small tasks. This post will be more or less a laundry list (illustrated of course) of some of the accomplishments.

We got the pedal cluster (AKA Katie's Nemesis) reinstalled, and reattached to a new clutch cable, new brake master cylinder, and a refreshed throttle linkage. This picture is just before the new aluminum floor board was installed over it, hiding our fine work.

A few posts down I showed a picture of the just-received engine electrical panel. It was not looking too nice, and need a little refreshing. So I took it completely apart, stripped and repainted the panel, and shined up the components (also installing a new voltage regulator, not yet wired.)

The emergency brake panel between the seats is shared by a heater control and a manual throttle (the 'poor-man's cruise control). This looked terrible (including a serious bend in the brake handle that you can't really see here), and needed serious cleaning, as well as refurbishment of all the linkages. This came completely apart, was straightened, cleaned, repainted, and reassembled to look and function very nicely. Before:

After:

On the beautification front, I decided to go ahead and install some of the fancy trim. This is part of my campaign to 'get stuff on the car!'. There are way too many parts sitting on the shelf compared to what's actually on the car. We now have decklid letters. They look very nice.

And we have a front bumper, which is especially gratifying. This car came with a fiberglass 'racing' bumper that I wasn't very crazy about. This is a significant step back to its original appearance.

Finally, we had a comment asking about our engine plans. The detailed plan will be posted to Pelican once the rebuild begins (probably late July), but for now, in a nutshell, the original 2.2 liter engine will be boosted up to about 2.5 liters through the use of a longer stroke crank (off a later 2.4 engine), and by boring out the cylinders by one mm (to 85mm). The new pistons are also higher compression than the original, 9.5:1 compared to 8.6:1, and the engine will be running on new 'E' cams. How will all this perform? Hard to say for sure, but I expect it'll put out around 160 hp. More details on all this to come...

New Engine Parts

2010-06-10T05:47:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a good mail day. We came home to find two boxes, one with the resurfaced cylinders and new pistons, and one with the new cams, resurfaced rockers and rocker shafts. Having these sitting on the shelf is really going to light a fire under my butt to keep moving.

The new pistons look just a bit better than the old:

It's got eyes

2010-06-06T18:08:00.000-07:00

Today I tried to wrap up the electrical work on the front end, with a bunch of mostly minor installations: passenger side dome light switch, defogger switch, lighter, wiper motor. The culmination of the front end electrical work was to be the final installation of the front lights. Well, we're almost there. Wiring-wise everything's sorted. Unfortunately, the single captive nut that holds the headlights on (a renowned poor design) was stripped out on both sides. I more or less successfully tapped a larger thread on one side, but there wasn't much to tap on the passenger side, and that light isn't very firmly attached. I'm afraid I'm going to have to weld a nut in there, not something I'm eager to do around new paint. There are a variety of other options, but none very secure. Will have to ponder this while appreciating that the front end at least looks good!

Assembly progressing

2010-06-05T19:43:00.000-07:00

Sorting out of the electrical issues is just about done, surprisingly. Things actually went pretty smoothly. I had a lot of connectors to replace, and chunks of wire with degraded insulation to swap out. But in the end it was all pretty straightforward stuff. I was worried for a while about an apparent short in the right rear light connector. For some reason the reverse light and brake light circuits were connected. Someone had previously tried to fix this by splicing in the inverse connections. So the wire for the tail light was butt-connected to the reverse light, and vice-versa. I wonder how well that worked? To be perfectly honest, I'm not 100% sure exactly what I did to fix this problem. It was almost certainly rooted at the main dash light switch, where none of the wires were connected where they were supposed to be. Whoever was trying to service this before was pretty clearly working without the aid of the wiring diagram. With the right information, it's not that tough.

So with that short addressed, I was able to fully install the rear lights, lenses and all, and they look mighty nice.

I also sorted out the last of the behind the dash wiring, installing a new turn signal (removed from car before I got it), new ignition switch (original partly dismantled and with some messy wiring work), lights and hazards. It's unbelievable how much wiring is crammed behind the lower left corner of the dash. It's no wonder these cars develop electrical problems. The insulation needs to be in good shape.

Most exciting of all, the new ignition switch came with a key (we did not get a key with the car), and even matching door locks! This makes it feel a whole lot closer to functional.

Aside from the engine compartment wiring, which remains to be addressed, the last major thing was checking out the condition of the fuse box. The only thing I thought was a problem (a ragged end of wire unconnected to anything but the box) turned out not to be (one input wire served to output terminals). Why the ragged wire was there at all is an open question. So I went ahead an installed new fuses. It's tantalizing to think that the electrical system of this car should now actually work! I am going to have to hook up a battery now and see. But we should have lights, turn signals... I could even install a radio!

Reassembly begins...

2010-05-27T20:45:00.000-07:00

Since getting the car back from the shop I've been almost overwhelmed by the question of what to do first. Not only because there's so much to do, but because there are some pretty important order-of-operation rules here, which are hard to fully foresee. While the temptation is to slap these beautiful panels together and make it look like a car again, I have to constantly be thinking about later access - 'ok, if I bolt on the hood now, what will I want to do later that will no longer be possible?' I almost have to reassemble the whole thing in my mind before beginning.

The other element of this is the unforeseen minutiae. I've been working in macro mode, thinking about large parts, shapes, overall appearance. Now it's literally down to the nuts and bolts... and screws, and washers, and wire connectors, and grommets.. I've spent HOURS thinking about grommets! And believe me, it's not because they're really all that fascinating. It's because they're required before running a good bit of the wiring around the car. They protect the wire from all the bare metal edges, and it seems like every single one of them is a different, nonstandard (almost, but not quite synonymous with 'metric') size. Inner diameters, OUTer diameters... I'm sure most of you never appreciated how many parameters it took to accurately describe a grommet! So while the wiring is the first thing I want to get back in place, I've been spending a ton of time scouring the internet and the tiny bins at all the local hardware stores for all the right pieces. I want to think it will end soon, but I know better.

Anyway, the one macro thing I saw could be done without creating problems was reattaching the decklid (=engine cover/rear hood). The other thing that I forgot to mention is that I really, really want to get all these parts out of harms way. I'm having to hone my gracefulness, waltzing around the garage making sure not to scratch anything. And the parts take up a lot more room separate than together. Back to the decklid.. With Katie's help I got it mostly aligned, hinged, and reinstalled the latch mechanism and trigger (inside the door frame), and put on the shock support. And believe it or not it all works!

One of the first electrical tasks, and in fact one of the most daunting, was reinstalling the gauges. There was quite a maze of wiring back there. Although I was reasonably sure I marked it all well on disassembly, and took lots of pictures, I was still not sure how easily it would be to run everything back to where it needed to go. But I had no problems. I changed out all the warning and illumination bulbs, added a fuse to a known unreliable circuit, and got everything back in place.

Soon I move to the rear of the car, to start seeing what I can do with the engine wiring. This will be a lot trickier since it wasn't there when I got the car! My only reference is my books and wiring diagrams. Here's the newly obtained engine electrical panel. The subharness that goes to the alternator, distributor, etc.. arrives tomorrow. I hope they like each other and mate up seamlessly.

Home safe

2010-05-22T08:55:00.000-07:00

It was a big week in Porsche-project land. Yesterday I was finally able to bring the car back home. What was going to be a quickie 3-4 day job (painter's initial estimate) turned into two weeks. There were just a few things that took more time than planned. Even now there are some things that I'm going to have to go back and have touched up later, mainly just spots in need of a little additional sanding and buffing. But sitting there in the parking lot on a friday afternoon with a trailer, no one was in the mood to deal with anything more on the spot.

Here's the crew of Anacapa Autobody standing proudly next to their work. I'm not sure if they're excited or worried that this job might lead to further excursions beyond their Mustang focus.

As soon as we got the car home Katie was ready to go for a celebratory drive.

A few more shots of beautiful parts. I must say I'm really gratified that everything turned out so well. Everyone always says that the gloss of real paint will bring out every little imperfection, and there are very, very few. Some parts that took major, major work, and might have been hiding all kinds of minor irregularities look practically perfect. The hood is probably my proudest accomplishment, given its original condition.

Last, but not least, this week I also sent out all our engine parts for machining. I visited the main shop where they'll service the crankcase, crankshaft, heads and rods, and met the owner. Turned out that not only is he an ace Porsche machinist, but he's also an insect enthusiast. So we spent as much time talking about beetles as about cars. This is someone I can trust.

Painting nearly done

2010-05-13T15:48:00.000-07:00

Today I went down and helped the painter with some pre-buffing assembly. Holy smokes the car is shiny! I could hardly look at it. It was definitely attracting the oohs and aahs of passersby. All is not absolutely perfect - there's a blister in the rear quarter that needs to be sanded down and reshot (right over a recent patch of spot putty). I also feel like the paint's a little on the light side, and that we probably should have gone with a lightly tinted sealer, rather than plain white, as I was advised to do. But I'm not going to dwell on it. Most of my body work on what were some really rough panels looks great, and the car looks fabulous. I'm looking forward to starting to put it back together. Lots of clean parts here waiting to be put on.

For those of you who come here from Pelican - apologies for cross-posting. I just can't resist sharing the excitement with everyone possible!

We're Tangerine!

2010-05-11T18:36:00.000-07:00

Stopped in this afternoon to see our lovely Tangerine car, and was not disappointed! By and large the job has gone well. There were just a couple tiny trouble spots where some of my body work showed through, but the painters felt pretty confident they could deal with them and leave no trace. Here you see the base coat only. The clear, the shine, goes on tonight. It looks pretty great already, almost like a brand new car.

Halfway there

2010-05-10T17:35:00.001-07:00

The morning drop-off was drama free. The painter was satisfied with my prep work, and thought the car was ready for final wipe-down, and then it could be rolled on into the booth. That made me feel pretty good about the months of sanding that it took to get here. I stopped by after work to see how everything was going, and he was just about to spray the first coat of color. So I got to see the car in sealer, fleetingly white. Hard to believe that primer gray is already only a memory.

Loaded and ready to go

2010-05-09T16:54:00.000-07:00

Paint prep officially ended this afternoon, and Katie and I are relaxing with some well-earned beers (which we totally forgot to offer our much appreciated helpers, Brian, Dan and Shane. We owe you guys!) With some assistance we got the tub loaded onto the trailer, and wrapped up all the other parts in nice comfy uhaul blankets. Everything actually fit easily into one pathfinder load. Tomorrow morning bright and early we head to the painters. I'm hoping to be able to check in with them from time to time ('pestering them', I'm sure they would say) to see the various stages of the painting process. I feel a little like an expectant parent (appropriate enough for Mother's Day), excited to see what my baby looks like when it emerges.

Ready for paint.... again

2010-05-08T18:50:00.001-07:00

I'm nearing the end of a 4 day paint prep marathon. As I mentioned before, I discovered too late that the primer I'm using shouldn't have sat more than a week before getting some real paint on it. [Next day edit: Sorry - I didn't mention this here. I'm getting all my blog/forum posts mixed up. Go to my thread on the Pelican Parts BB for more.] So I had to roughen it up, reprime everything, and then sand it back down again. This was no fun whatsoever, and I would much rather have spent these four days working on other things. But I was able to address some minor problems that I overlooked last time around (willingly or accidentally? I'll never tell.) And there's no doubt that an additional spray and block session made some pretty straight body work even straighter. So it'll pay off, I'm sure.

Tonight I was too worn out to get through everything. So tomorrow I still need to wet sand the hood, and then it's time for a very thorough cleaning, so dust doesn't come flying out of the crevices when the painters are laying the paint down. For fun, I did a quick trial fitting of one of the new headlight units, Bosch H4s. The chrome looks beautiful, and the eyes bring the car to life. Not too much longer before we can start putting this stuff on for real!

Tomorrow I pick up a uhaul trailer, and have a small group of local Porschephiles coming to help load it up. Monday morning it's spray day. It's going to be mind-blowing to see it in color.

Got Paint!

2010-04-26T21:56:00.000-07:00

We're in it now! Today I got all our paint, sealant, color, and clear. Being in southern California, and having to comply with strict air quality regulations, the paint is water based. So the large gallon jug of clear solvent is in fact $17.00 water. I'm sure it's really, really good. If there's any left over I'll make a pot of coffee with it and see.

Here is a very small, but very tantalizing glimpse of our color.

This really puts the pressure on. I want this to look excellent. So I'm going to be incredibly careful with my final sanding and prep. Monday May 10 is P-day.

Rolling again!

2010-04-21T22:04:00.000-07:00

As promised, the rear end is done. Got the emergency brakes attached tonight, torqued everything up tightly, put on the rotors, calipers, and we're looking very good. I didn't have time to form the last two hard brake lines, but that'll be a small job.

Much more exciting is that the car is rolling again! It took a few steps front-back-front-back to get it down to ground level. Once it was there, both Katie and I had the exact same initial reaction: We completely forgot how small this car is! We're so used to it sitting a foot and a half off the ground, when back down at normal height we tower over it. Oh well. We'll get used to it again. Actually, considering all the work it took to get here, it looks remarkably similar to how it did before. But stay tuned. There are big changes ahead...

Rear suspension progress

2010-04-21T06:02:00.000-07:00

This is a short progress report on the suspension. Last night I got a set of control arm bushings that actually fit the arms - what a concept! With a vice they slipped right in, letting me go on to get most of the rear put together. The control arms are mounted to multipurpose brackets attached to the torsion tube, also serving as the transmission mount points. At the sides they attach to the swing arms, linking them indirectly to the torsion bars. Here they're mounted at both those points, with the brake lines run a little further out.The most complicated part of the job following that would have been the emergency brake assemblage (the outward-facing drum brakes you can see below behind the hub). But I had assembled these off the car weeks ago in preparation for this day. So they went over the end of the control arm, then the hub and axle stub were mated up through the wheel bearing, and - voila! - we're nearly there.
I was hoping to get it all done, and at the wheel end there really isn't much more. But I realized I was going to have to link up the emergency brake cables. Without the tension on those there are parts of the system that are loose and will come out of place. So I've got a little cleaning up to do on those. Tonight should see this finished. After, that is, doing the final torquing on the axle nut. The spec on this is 207 ft-lbs, about 1.5x what my torque wrench is capable of. The generally accepted procedure for this is to somehow lock the hub (often with a bar between the wheel studs), and then to put a pipe on a breaker bar and stand on the end of it. I wasn't quite mentally prepared for such a delicate operation last night.

Brake Day

2010-04-17T19:18:00.000-07:00

I spent today fitting the brakes to most of the car. The most significant part of the job was creating the brake lines. I was given a set of brake lines for Christmas, but the kit is just straight lines, needing forming, and the Porsche brake lines are quite an interesting mix of shapes, no two the same. There are three lines coming off the master cylinder, one for each of the front wheels, and one leading to a long line down the tunnel to the rear brakes. These meet soft lines at the suspension (allowing them to move with the wheels), and then there are additional formed hard lines from from the end of the soft line to the caliper. Ten lines in all. I was initially worried about kinking the lines, or bending them too radically, but they were really pretty cooperative, and the last few were pretty easy. Here's a look under the front end, with the master cylinder (this hadn't seen the light of day in a while, and once I had a fresh look at it decided it needed replacement - today it just helped me get the lines set) and maze of front lines. Here's the one corner that's now 100% complete, with brake lines, functional caliper, everything. I discovered that the other front caliper's bleeder valve doesn't seal properly, and unfortunately that the problem is in the caliper, not the valve. So I need to get ahold of one more front caliper and rebuild it. Oh well. Above all you gotta have brakes!
Here's the arrangement of rear brake lines. You can just see the rear junction box just to the right of the tunnel, mounted under the rear seat, and the hard and soft lines on each side. Once I get one last set of bushings for the rear control arms (long, unpleasant story of failed monoball control arm bearing installation deleted) the rear suspension should go together very quickly.
And this is exciting because.... I have got a date with a painter! I met with a local shop this week and they're ready and willing (and do very nice work). I'm scheduled in the second week of May, and I am READY! It will be mind-blowing to see this car in tangerine. I cannot wait!

Front suspension done

2010-04-11T06:16:00.001-07:00

For this post pictures will speak much louder than words. The front suspension is basically done. All I have to do yet is final torquing. Everything's just snugged up, but not yet to spec. Mighty exciting to see another large task get completed. I'm waiting on some overdue parts for the back, but that should go together relatively quickly too. Then we'll be able to roll the car around the driveway again. What fun! (And of course on to a trailer to go paint it.)

Here's the finished steering rack with new 'turbo' (upgraded late model) tie rods.

These are the cleaned and freshly painted front hubs, with all new wheel bearings and seals.
A little front suspension anatomy: The shock bone's connected to the strut bone. The strut bone's connected to the A-arm bone.. the A-arm bone's connected to the sway bar bone. Etc...
Dust cover, rotor and hub installed.
And finally, a wheel!

Suspension Assembly

2010-04-04T15:23:00.000-07:00

Happy Easter everyone. I spent several chocolate egg-fueled hours today putting some suspension stuff back together. I didn't make a great deal of progress, but it was nonetheless incredibly satisfying to see things start to come together. It will accelerate as I wrap my mind around what all has to be done here. My brain is still numb from all the sanding.

One of the first jobs I tackled was one of our nicest upgrades to this 'T', the addition of a front anti-roll bar. This spreads the deflection across both sides of the front suspension, helping to keep the car level in hard cornering. 'Hard cornering,' you ask? From the beginning I always looked forward to DRIVING this car. No garage queen for us! So here I am, finally, after a year and a quarter, using my 2008 Xmas torque wrench for the very first time, getting the bar bracket firmly affixed to the body. Worked like a charm...

...and looks good finished!

Secondly, I headed to the rear to reinstall the torsion bars and spring plates. This was also an upgrade, from the original 21mm bar to a 25, stiffening up the rear considerably too. It will be very interesting to see how the car sits when all is said and done. There's an online calculator for setting swing plate angle based on torsion bar size, desired ride height, and car weight. Only one of those things are actually known. Ride height is a matter of taste to some degree, but I went with 'Euro height' which is rather low. We'll see how it looks eventually. For now it looks great. Love that shiny new hardware!

Painted dash

2010-03-28T14:57:00.000-07:00

Among the loose ends mentioned in the previous post was painting some interior stuff. I figured it would be easier to mask this stuff off later for full body painting than having to mask the entire body to paint this afterwards (although I understand the factory did paint this after the body - I'm sure they had their reasons.) The dash face around the gauges and above the flat area where the radio and air controls go are visible after reassembly, and are a flat black. The Rust Encapsulator we've used for many hidden areas has a nice smooth flatness to it, so I thought I'd try it where it would be visible. It came out looking pretty nice, although I might give it a fine sand and one more coat. We'll see how it looks after it dries.

I'm off to San Clemente Island for a week. So long Katie and car.

Close to paint

2010-03-27T20:51:00.000-07:00

Another long, arduous stage came nearly to an end today. I declared the body smooth and straight, and moved on to the final wet sanding. Sanding with water with very fine sandpaper (600 grit) helps to smooth out all the previous scratches, and gives a nice clean surface for paint. Although it's common practice in autobody work, rustophobia has made me incredibly paranoid about water anywhere near my now clean body. The sheet metal's all primed and protected, but still, I don't trust that sneaky water. Finally, though, I took the leap of faith, wet down a few panels (starting small with the bumpers), and started sanding. Oh, the results made me happy! Not only because it's smooth (Katie came out, felt it and said 'oh, it's like glass!'), but because it's so much cleaner! I'm so tired of working in a dustbowl. I'm really ready to move on to assembly. Here's the passenger door after sanding, looking very smooth under a coat of water, and that gloss... imagine it in its final tangerine.

In order to sand in all the door jambs, and along all the panel edges (not to mention that the panels will be painted separately), the car had to be taken apart for the last time. Here it is, fully blocked and smooth. Next assembly will be the final.

So with just a few minor issues to address, this brings me to the next major phase - the suspension reassembly. To get this thing to a paint shop, it's going to have to come back down on its wheels. All the parts are here, and I've even started some reassembly off the car. Below are the newly rebushed control arms. I've got new nuts, bolts and washers all sorted, and bagged by assembly. There are a couple biggish jobs involved, welding on a new bracket for the front suspension cross member being the most significant. If I had a solid week or so I could probably get it all taken care of. Alas, a solid week is not forthcoming very soon. Too much real work to do. But it'll get picked away over the next month, and hopefully will come together before too long.

Emblem placement

2010-02-21T17:20:00.000-08:00

One job that has been pending, and needed to be done before paint, was figuring out where to drill holes in the decklid for the gold P-O-R-S-C-H-E script. The decklid that I got with the car originally came off a later car on which the letters would have been stuck on or simply not there. A Pelican forum member kindly made a pattern for me from a decklid he was selling, so that gave me a good rough guide. But with the convexity of the lid, it wasn't really that straightforward. In the end I used it to judge spacing, but aligned each letter separately to make sure the holes were properly spaced and the right distance from the edge. I was nervous about drilling holes, but I needn't have been. It was a pretty easy job, and the letters look nice.

While I was at it, I decided the nearly-done hood deserved a photo-op with its fancy badge too. Fun to see these in place. It makes it easier to begin to imagine what everything will ultimately look like.

The blocking will now begin

2010-02-17T21:06:00.000-08:00

I was really eager to come home and start block sanding the car. I stopped at the hardware store for a little coarser paper (finding that the 220 grit bogged down very quickly knocking down the runs), and arrived ready. But soon enough common sense took over, and I realized that I needed to do most of the blocking with the car together. The memory of having to rework the seams after doing much of the bondo work with the parts separate is still fresh in my mind, and I realized I was in danger of heading down the same dark alley. So I put the sandpaper aside, got out the wrenches, and reattached the fenders...

..and doors and decklid.

All of these will have to mate up nicely, and blocking them together will be best way to achieve that. The hood probably will need this too, although the side seams there butt up to some serious curves on the fenders, and there won't be a whole lot of flattening possible. I'll do most of that with the hood off. But along the rear where the flat of the hood sides meet the cowl I'll have to block that seam too.

My last job for the night was spraying a guide coat on everything. This light dusting of paint will show me where the surface is uneven, getting sanded off on the higher spots and remaining in the low spots. After one whole pass over the car the lows will get a last coat of filler, a final sand, and that'll be that. I have to say, the slight gloss on this primer would help show up any unevenness, and not a whole lot is obvious. My fingers are crossed that this last step pre-paint will go well.

Presidents Day

2010-02-16T06:14:00.000-08:00

To cap off a fun and productive Valentine's/Presidents' Day weekend, I shot a whole lot of filler primer. It started with an innocent-enough visit to Central City Auto Body Supply to purchase the filler supplies. But when we got home with everything in hand, and a ~80 degree afternoon ahead, I couldn't help pushing on and spraying some of this stuff. I started with one last, fine sand of the epoxy primer and bondo. In addition to giving a nice smooth surface to start the primer on, it also gave me a good idea of where I was going to need the most fill. After that there was another round of garage cleaning and parts cleaning, to get rid of dust. Then the parts all got a final tacking and wipe-down with degreaser. Lastly everything got laid out where I could get at it; that is, all over the driveway.

Several hours later I had two coats on everything. I'm going to shoot one and maybe two more coats tonight on a few especially needy areas, but this will do it for a good bit of the car.

On an entomological side note, it was amazing to see how many insects were attracted to the fresh paint. We got the few diving beetles the other day, but yesterday was even richer, with at least 5 families of beetles, as well as aphids, whiteflies, and a few true flies. It may just be that most of these things were passing through, getting caught only because the paint was sticky. But I think there's something in the solvents that's attractive, too. The banded alder borer is a beautiful beetle that's known for being attracted to fresh paint. I've never collected one, but maybe these painting days will bring one in.

Bye-bye Bondo!

2010-02-13T14:40:00.000-08:00

I can't tell you all how happy I am to be able to say that the bondo work is done! I just got done shooting the last of the epoxy primer, and now it's on to filler primer next week. There's a little minor cleaning up to do still, a couple little runs in the paint, and a little more sanding to get this layer as smooth as possible before shooting the filler. I used this paint session to finish up a couple other loose ends, the undersides of the decklid:

... and the hood.
I was paid a celebratory visit by some friendly beetles while painting. On the decklid picture above you can see a couple dark spots in the lower right corner. These are Stictotarsus striatellus (diving beetles). They were out looking for a pond and apparently mistook the wet paint for a place to go for a nice swim. I wonder how they'd look in Tangerine???

2010-02-09T20:27:00.000-08:00

Hard to believe it's been over a month since I've had anything to say about our progress. With all those shiny new Christmas parts sitting around, one would think I'd be eager to get on with this already! I have indeed been hard at work finishing up the body work. Yeah, yeah, I know - wasn't I practically done with this a long time ago? When sanding a person has a lot of time to think, so one of things I've thought a lot about is that very question. And the best explanation I've come up with in my bondo-dust induced haze has been that body work is asymptotic: It's relatively easy to make rapid progress early on, but getting all the minor details right takes practically forever. At this point the best I can say is that I'm way, way out on the tail of that curve, and if I blur my eyes just right the curve and the goal are merging.

Well, enough pathetic rationalization disguised as deep thought. What have I done? After one full pass over all the panels with bondo, I needed to assemble everything to see how they all matched up. In a nutshell, it wasn't all that good. the doors and the front and rear quarter panels all looked good on their own, but when put together the curves didn't line up very well at all. I eyeballed it, and didn't get it right. So I had to do a lot of additional work bringing these parts into harmony. The previous work didn't go to waste, but was just a starting point. Part of what has taken so long getting these right is that the doors and front fenders had to be attached and detached many times during the process. It seemed at first like I could just leave it all attached and just work the seams. The main problem with this was that the parts of the door jamb and hinge area weren't really accessible with the door attached. Anyway, long story short, everything lines up really nicely now, and the curves are quite shapely, the gaps between panels is even, and I'm ready for the final priming(s).

This weekend I'm going to shoot one last coat of epoxy primer on all the bare metal, and then it's on to filler primer. The filler primer, as its name implies, fills all the minor scratches, pinholes, and minor unevenness. It gets sanded with very fine paper on long blocks to make sure everything's flat and smooth. After that, she'll be ready to paint. I'm still thinking this may happen in March. Think smooth thoughts!

Merry Christmas 911

2009-12-25T06:38:00.000-08:00

Between a conference and the holidays, I haven't had any time to work on the car in a couple weeks. But the holiday has brought progress of another sort: new parts! Check out these beautiful new bits.

Many thanks to one and all. These are a great motivation to keep this project moving along.

Happy holidays to porscheophiles everywhere.

The unbearable endlessness of sanding

2009-12-03T20:46:00.000-08:00

It was pointed out to me last night that there had not been an update in quite some time. While there has been progress over the past couple weeks, it has been slow. My goal with this blog is to convey the excitement of auto restoration. The sense of possibility, of becoming, of rebirth! I want everyone to get swept up in the project, sitting on the edge of their seats wondering what major task would be completed next. And somehow I'm having a hard time generating the requisite excitement when it comes to sanding bondo. That's not to say it's all drudgery. In fact there's nothing like that first minute after changing the sand paper on the block, when I begin to feel that sense of possibility returning myself. But before too long that edge is gone, and it's back to dragging the block back and forth over the rough spots endlessly. For fun I started counting how many strokes it took to knock a small bondo hump down. I lost count, and interest, at about 65.

Well, it's paying off, and there is a very small light at the end of this long tunnel. I've been working on the hood for the past several days, and it's beginning to take shape. Really, compared to what a mess it was before, I'm am quite proud of how it's looking now. I think one more major application, and then one more spot dabbing ought to do it. I want to get this completely done (hood and front fenders to finish still) before the holidays, and get it all back in primer.

Smoothing it out

2009-11-21T19:01:00.000-08:00

Over the past week I've gotten serious with filling and smoothing the body panels, prior to the final primer. Filler is the general term for what is better known as bondo. It is pretty much impossible for anyone remotely associated with autobody work not to say the word bondo without a distinct sneer, as all too often it is used as a subtitute for any actual bodyworking skill. We saw much evidence of this after we stripped this car. So it was a difficult psychological bridge to cross to be able to get to the point where I can publicly announce that I have been doing the filler work on the car. I suppose I can't really claim to be a highly skilled body man anyway, but I'm sure we're going to be using far less of the b-word than what we removed. So, here is the stuff: a gallon of goo (polyester resin), a catalyst (blue strip), palette (because this does require some creative skill), and a spreader. (Oh, and the other necessity, a Sierra Nevada, is just off camera to the right.)
Mix, spread, wait, sand, repeat four times, and here's what you get:
A smooth and shapely quarter panel! This was the worst, bumpiest, of all the panels on this car, and no amount of beating with a hammer was going to make it flat. So there's a shallow coat of filler over most of it, going all the up to the door joint. This was a lot of work (my elbows needed regreasing afterwards), but it's looking good now. At this point I've got the rear of the car about done, and there were quite a number of major and minor spots to do there. I've also finished the decklid, right door, and cowl (between the windshield and hood). This is actually going fairly quickly, and we should have this done and the car reprimered before taking off for the Entomological Society of America meetings, and then the holidays.

I'm thinking we'll be ready to paint by February. The temptation to do this myself has just about won me over..

Transformed!

2009-11-09T20:37:00.000-08:00

Well, once these body parts were all sanded and cleaned, there was no time to waste. I busted out of work early (sorry Maxi), and made sure to give myself plenty of time to get all the primer down. My sense of urgency was well-founded, because a couple panels had surface rusted even just overnight. Although I wasn't happy about it, it wasn't too big a deal to sand down and reclean. After that I arranged all the parts needing priming so that I didn't have to handle them, and could get at all the different angles. Several were hung from the rafters, and my nice tool chest served as a perfect prop for the right front fender.

It's been almost a year since we sprayed the epoxy primer last, and I wasn't sure how it would go, but I needn't have worried. It went down nice and smooth. This session took care of darn near everything that will get paint, including a lot of tricky areas like the door jambs and windshield frame. I must say, this went so well, I was entertaining thoughts that maybe I could possibly paint it myself. I don't think we really have the facilities to do it right, but people have fashioned functional garage paint booths before.. Something to ponder.

In the meantime we'll be sanding bondo. Still lots of work to do before any paint decision has to be made.

Big Changes Ahead

2009-11-08T17:03:00.000-08:00

The past week I've been dealing with lots of little and not so little niggly things that needed doing before we could at last get this whole car in primer. I left off with panel fitting, and had some more of that to do, most significantly the right front fender. This set off a chain reaction of fender work. This one had a few issues, and I hadn't fully stripped and exposed everything. This bottom corner behind the wheel well is notorious for rusting out, because it's supposed to have a drain channel into which a lot of hood and other water funnels into. This drain channel plugs, and before you know it there's water stuck and eating away at the fender from the inside. This fender had actually had this fixed once before. But not well. So I recreated the interior drain, and fashioned a nice looking outer piece, curved to perfection, and lining up pretty nicely with the new outer rocker. It now must be admitted that my door corner patch isn't perfect. There's a bit too much of a gap there that will have to be filled. But at this point this car and bondo are old friends. They couldn't live without each other.
Continuing on my upward march, I finished just about all the floor and wheel well work. I got some rubberized undercoating for the wheel wells, hopefully to deflect rocks without chipping the paint off, and then topcoated that with a semigloss black. Then I put the same semigloss black on the underside of the floor, and I must say it looks very nice. Just need some more undercoating for the front wheel wells, and then the underside of the car is DONE!, and ready for reassembly.
Finally, I spent most of this weekend prepping everything else for Epoxy sealing primer. This mainly entailed a smoothing and cleaning of all the areas that will ultimately be painted. This called for one last sanding, getting rid of any remaining old paint or primer, or at least roughing it up, and then lots of dusting. Actually I spent a good chunk of the day cleaning the garage itself. All the bodywork dust had settled on everything, and it would have been difficult to do a clean primer job with so much dust in the air. So first dusted the garage, then the car, then finally wiped the whole car down with laquer thinner to clean it up real good, and last, masked off all the areas that we don't want primed.
Tomorrow everything becomes gray. This is an exciting step.

Panel 'fitting and alignment'

2009-10-24T19:50:00.001-07:00

I've been making my way around the car, making sure that all the major body panels are going to fit nicely together. It's been fun seeing the car come together, and that actually things are not all that bad. Still, my quotes around 'fitting and alignment' are an indication that this is something of a euphemism for beating the crap out of any edges, corners or high spots that don't line up. I spent a good evening on the rear end of the car, lining up the two outer bumper pieces, the central license plate panel, and the chrome bumperettes. The first fitting had everything slightly but noticeably cockeyed, and some of the holes that allow it all to be bolted together were not lining up. So with my trusty hammer and wood block I 'persuaded' everything into position. Following some similar persuasion around the edges of the engine lid, we have a nice looking rear end.
Continuing to work my way around the right side of the car, the quarter panel required very little, but the passenger side door had some issues that had been looming. The front and rear corners both had some rust, and the front had a really ugly patch repairing some accident damage. So the past couple days I cut both corners and replaced them. This was pretty tricky since there are outer and inner surfaces that only meet at the very edge, and some hard curves away from the edges. Plus everything needed to line up nicely with the door frame. I managed to get a pretty nice result. Here is the rear corner of the door, before cutting about a 10 inch segment off of it. That hole does go through both outer and inner panels.
And here is the finished door, with new lower corners, front and rear. Everything aligns nicely. I am realizing that I mounted the outer rocker a couple millimeters too far inward, so the lower edge of the door is going to require some further persuasion inward, but it shouldn't be too hard to make it line up.
In the engine department, I ordered some used but working Zenith carburetors the other day. It will be nice to have these waiting for us at the end of it all. This car came with no fuel system, and I hadn't decided what to do - there were multiple carb options, a couple different possible fuel injection systems. But the Zeniths probably would have been original to the car, and were a great deal to boot. I'll post pictures when they arrive.

Beginning to take shape

2009-10-14T21:22:00.000-07:00

We're making great progress in the wake of my dedicated week of restoration work. The rocker job is done, and ended very well. Here's a few shots of that. First the new inner rocker:
Looks a little better than that 'before' picture. Then after welding in the jack tube (square open tube near rear of inner panel), and a support frame around that, the outer rocker went on. For this I had to hang the door to make sure it all lined up:
Then last but not least I needed to patch the gaping hole in the rear fender and door frame that needed to be cut to get access to the rockers. I am particularly disappointed that I don't have a clear 'before' picture of this particular area. I remember when we first stripped the bondo off this spot, and seeing it all beaten up, with at least a dozen 1cm holes where I assume a slide hammer had been used to pull it very roughly into shape. It was among the thing that really made me wonder if this car was worth the trouble. However, in the end this is one of my most satisfying repairs. I fabricated not only a curved patch panel for the fender, but also that multistep corner for the door (oh yeah - it was ugly too), and welded all together it looks damn near good as new.
Over the past couple nights I've also been cleaning up the last of the gunk on the undercarriage, and prepping it all for primer. Now the entire underside of the car is clean and a nice, flat black.
Then tonight, picking up where the door hanging left off, I did our first trial refitting of all the body panels. Both doors are hung, both front fenders attached, and the hood and decklid hinged and roughly aligned. This is only temporary, as everything will come off and on again multiple times yet. But it gives us the first idea of just how much work it's going to be to get everything to match up. Recall the deep bondo that we stripped off the hood and rear fenders. This is the first time we've tried to see how it all fit together since it came off. So we were about to find out just how much of that was really necessary. The shocking and very pleasing conclusion is that little of it seems to have been. Just spending a short amount of time adjusting the hinges and moving things around got us much closer than I ever could have hoped to a good fit. Even the hood seems to fit very nearly perfectly. It amazes me to think that what we found passed for professional body work. Well, no matter. We're thankful. Here's a couple shots of what could almost pass for a real car.

Rockin' the rockers

2009-10-06T20:39:00.000-07:00

Whoa - two posts in two days?! That can only mean one thing.. Mike Week! The Museum keeps giving me vacation that I keep not using. So our little car is the beneficiary of my enjoying a few paid days off.

I dove right from the floors into the rocker panels. This job was precipitated by a bent right rocker front corner (some early wreck, badly repaired with bondo), which was also concealing some ugly rust on the inner rocker (a vertical vane between the outer rocker panel and inner longitudinal). I was fairly hesitant to dig this deep, in part because the removal of the rockers has the potential to result, especially in targas, in 'taco car' (imagine the front and rear folding upward). This is because the roofless targa does not have all that much structural support along the length, only the floors and rockers. Remove the rockers and, well, I might be needing a side order of guacamole. But then by the same reasoning it seemed pretty important to fix this to give the car all the rigidity we could. Anyway, to keep the car straight I welded a temporary brace between the targa bar and windshield frame, and got busy cutting. Below with the outer rocker cut and peeled down you see serious rust between the two panels (and can maybe see the long gap along the lower edge of the rear half of the inner rocker - I DID know about this already from the floor job).Here the outer, inner, and the hidden heater tube are all free, and the inner sanctum is exposed.
I ended the day by rust-encapsulating the cavity and all the replacement parts. Tomorrow I should be able to get it most of the way put back together. There's only a couple tricky patch pieces that might slow me down, mainly the lower corner of the rear quarter panel that I cut away to get to the whole rocker. Wish I could just put back the piece I cut out, but it is totally swiss-cheesed with holes and bondo from, once again, a supremely lousy earlier repair.

The floor is in

2009-10-05T20:45:00.000-07:00

At last, at last, the floor pan job is done (mostly - see below). This was definitely the biggest and baddest rust repair challenge this car had to offer, and I can now say it's been met. It's gone slowly, but I didn't want to rush something so obviously critical. There were many minor and not so minor repairs to make along the way.

This was a fun one. Below is a picture of one of the main front suspension mount points. Not pretty! It sits at the front corner of the floor pan, and bridges the old and new sections. How's that for a puzzle? I ended up cutting it out completely and replacing all the surrounding and mounting areas. The actual mount is a piece that gets spotwelded onto the floor. I have a new one of those that will have to wait to go on until the car can be at least temporarily umounted from the rack (since the other suspension mount points are the rack mount points.) The position of this has to be perfect.While many such things were being taken care of I also prepped the floors themselves. There was some other spotwelded hardware that could be mounted, like the pedal cluster mount and footboard mounts on each side. I also primed all the areas that would be hidden inside the body.
Then I decided it would be easier to mount one floor pan instead of two. Making these mate up cleanly after mounting them separately seemed like it could have been hard to do well. (In the end I probably could have done it all right, but seating them against each other where they couldn't be clamped would have been tricky.)
Then after about a hundred trial fittings, hours of pounding, grinding, and bending the surrounding parts into submission.. And after about a hundred spot welds around the outside edges and a good 5 feet of solid weld seam along each inner rocker.. I now present for your enjoyment - a floor, from above:
and from below:So the only part of this task that isn't done is the seam along the outer edge of the passenger side rocker panel. I just received the replacement rockers, and will be tackling that job over the next week. Then there remains a little patching here and there, and then it's time to put the body together (temporarily), and start applying primer and filler, making this thing look like a car again.

Brake calipers: before & after

2009-09-16T21:07:00.000-07:00

The parallel tracks of body work and suspension work continue. The major leap forward of having floors is so close I can almost taste it (or maybe that's just lacquer thinner). Tonight I sprayed a coat of primer on the parts of the floors that will soon disappear forever, hidden under the rocker panels on each side. The front and rear are fitted on all edges except where they meet up. I need to trim that overlap down to just about an inch (or since it's a German car, I should say 2.54cm). After that it's time. They're going on. Can't wait to show you.

However, I will now make you all ohh and ahh in appreciation of the brake caliper transformation. The obligatory before picture:

..not pretty. And worse, nonfunctional. I couldn't begin to describe how unfun it was trying to get these things apart. The accepted method is to apply air pressure to slowly push the central pistons out. If they're sticking you are told to apply heat and penetrating oil. Well, this turned out to be necessary. In just getting three of these disassembled I probably contributed significantly to global warming, and the pistons of the fourth absolutely refused to come out. I saturated it in oil, heated it beyond handleable, applied about 200 psi of air pressure, and THEN started beating on it with a hammer, all to no avail. SO, truth be told I ended up giving up on one and purchasing a used replacement, which thankfully only required moderate amounts of oiling, heating and beating.

Once they were apart I cleaned them, painted them (an admittedly 'blingy' metallic gold - I think it will look great on the final car. Katie is reserving judgement), lubed them up and put them back together with all new seals. Not bad, eh?

Sad that they just now sit wrapped up on the shelf for the foreseeable future, but the more of these sorts of things we can get done now, the faster it will all go back together when we reach that point.

Body & Suspension progress

2009-08-30T17:52:00.001-07:00

We've been progressing on several fronts the past several weeks. I've been trying to get through the last of the rust repair on the body. This has been slow and the novelty of welding is wearing thin. I've cut out and welded in more 1 inch by 1 inch patches than I can remember anymore. And it seems as my skills have improved my tolerance has decreased. So little problems that I once planned on overlooking, now are unacceptable. Good, in the long run, but it's making things go slowly. There is, however, light at the end of the tunnel. I have started fitting the floor pans, which is the last really large metalworking job to do. There are a lot of parts that all have to mate up, and a lot of the body that the pans need to weld to are requiring additional repairs along the way, but I'm now at the point where the rear half could be welded in. All the flanges are prepared, and everything fits. I'm going to get the front half all aligned and prepped too before doing anything, but it's going to get done soon.
Meanwhile, we're moving along on the suspension refurbishment. Today was kind of a milestone there too: We began painting most of the major suspension parts, control arms, swing arms, banana arms (and occasionally our own arms), torsion bars, etc.. We got a good coat of rust-encapsulating primer down, and from there will be putting additional semigloss superdurable chassis paint on some parts, making some aluminum-colored, some gold (like the calipers - can't wait to show those off). Then we can begin putting things together, finally! Below Katie lays down a mean spray of Rust Encapsulator, and at the bottom, the parts painted and drying.

Katie Learns to Weld...Sort of...

2009-08-17T16:21:00.001-07:00

Mike gave me a short lesson in welding yesterday morning. I attempted tack welds, butt welds and T-welds (I think the is the correct terminology?). Let's just say none of them turned out very well, but it was a fairly decent first try. More practice will lead to much success, I'm sure. Here is a photo of me attempting my first weld on scrap metal...

After a few tries, Mike let me at the car. I couldn't believe it! I was only making the tack welds to hold the piece in place, but man was I nervous. I sort of got the tack welds in there, but I can't say it was a huge success. [edit by Mike - she made the patch panel stay where it belonged. That's what counts.] Here I am working on the car...

It was a fun learning experience and I'm excited to practice more. Then hopefully I'll be less nervous when Mike lets me have another whack at welding the car in the future.

Suspension work begins

2009-08-02T19:33:00.000-07:00

This past week we started doing some work on refurbishing the rear suspension. I had to put the rust repair on the back burner for a bit because I apparently ran my compressor into the ground. With it out for service it wasn't possible to do all the cutting and grinding that the metal work required. So we decided to work on cleaning up suspension parts. I placed an order for a pile of new bushings, gaskets, grommets and such for all the rear suspension & brakes. With this stuff now sitting in the back bedroom, we were motivated to get serious about cleaning and prepping the parts to install it. Today we got the control arms, spring plates, and one of the brake calipers all debushed, wire-brushed, and rust-morted. Below is a before picture of the grungy spring plates with the original bushings beaten up but still semi-permanently attached.

...and an hour and a half later, following heavy chiseling, scraping, scrubbing, and heating, Katie shows off the clean spring plates, ready to be painted and rebushed.
Most of this time I was working on the brake calipers. One just won't come apart. The pistons are frozen in place. So it's soaking in anti-corrosion fluid right now, and eventually I'm hoping things will loosen up. I decided to haul out the front calipers and start them soaking well in advance.

Starting at the Bottom

2009-07-25T08:26:00.000-07:00

I know the blog's been quiet lately. But it's not from lack of progress. Far from it. I've been spending a whole lot of cramped, grungy time underneath the back end of the car. But the last couple of days have seen some big leaps forward. One of the scariest findings with this car was significant rust and decay around the rear torsion tube (nested within the rear 'longitudinals') on both sides. Rust in this area is enough to make a lot of Porsche restorers say that the car's too far gone to save. Others will say it's fixable, but a very difficult and unpleasant job. Well, probably due to inexperience, combined with the fact that we're too far invested to stop now, I decided to give this repair a shot. A PITA? Definitely. But Doable? Yep.

Here's are a couple of 'before' shots. The inner edge (lower right bend in frame), showing big holes:And from underneath, where a very poor patch job had been done previously, just barely welded over the old rust:After cutting all the inner, bottom, and outer rust away, I cut three patch pieces, one to sit on the outer face, cradling the torsion tube (round hole into which the torsion bars are inserted), one to fit up underneath this, to mate at a flange with an inner panel. Here's the outer patch, partly welded in. And jumping ahead because this post is already getting long, here it is all done and primed. Is it perfect? No. But I'm confident that it's strong and will be completely hidden anyway. This also let me clean up and rustproof a good bit of internal structure that probably needed it.

Finally, one upgrade that I'm very happy about. In part because of the somewhat rust-weakened chassis, but also because the targa in general suffered from a somewhat flexible body, I decided to undertake some stiffening. Almost undetectable, I welded in two small patches connecting the inner parts of the torsion tube (at the transmission/suspension mounts) to the body above (the undersides of the rear seats). This should greatly help to prevent flexing in the back, and will give additional support to the repaired longitudinals.

In summary, the car is really coming along. It doesn't look like much from above, but it's in good shape where it counts. Just about time for the floor pans...

Car week

2009-07-10T16:57:00.000-07:00

Today marks the end of my week off work, and my (mostly) dedicated week of working on the car. I had a long to-do list, not all of which I can claim to have accomplished. But in the end I'm very happy with what got done. A lot of time was spent dialing in the new welder. I started with a few not-very-conspicuous spots that needed repairing, mainly in the front wheel wells. I also took on the right side battery box, which had been both crushed in a wreck at some point, and then badly rusted. These things all together took me the better part of 2 days. While there were also a lot of smaller issues taken care of (the pedal cluster for one), the crowning achievement was getting the front end primed. Below you can see my parents, visiting for the week, admiring the work to date. I'm happy to report that the front wheel wells are pretty much done. You can scroll down a few posts to see the before pictures. All that rusty and holey metal has been cut out and new metal welded in. Then it was all covered with 'Rust Encapsulator', practically guaranteed to prevent the emergence of rust from beneath. Looks good!Rear wheel wells and some important longitudinal repairs are up next!

Welding at last

2009-06-28T19:09:00.000-07:00

It was a truly great weekend. Our welder arrived on wednesday night, and after playing with it on the living room floor for a few evenings, Saturday it seemed like it was time to move it to the garage, plug it in, and see what it could do. I admit the first few attempts were not pretty (although I have excuses galore: the free flux-core wire included with the machine isn't ideal for sheet metal, mainly). But with little trial and error, after a couple hours I was able to lay down a pretty decent bead (below). I was experimenting with the old floor pans, cutting out pieces and reassembling them, and got to a point where I feel ready to do some real work on the car.

(Oh - the other reason saturday was such a good day was the Santa Barbara Wine Festival, hosted at the Museum. Katie and I tallied up our tastings, and somehow managed to try 27 different wineries, and yes that includes multiple wines at some. Pretty shocking, I know. But even more shocking was the fact that first thing Sunday morning, I was ready to get back out in the garage and do some Porsche work.)

With some confidence that I could now fix whatever damage this car has suffered, I wasted no time in starting to cut. The fenderwells, especially that right side where the fender joining panel had been 'fixed' by a previous bodyman, had some serious integrity problems. Below you can see the swiss cheesy metal in this area.

I wanted to cut out all this rust and replace it with clean metal. I outlined some patchable shapes, and proceeded to cut away the offending areas. Amazingly, it looks better with the rust simply cut out, with big holes instead of small ones. But most of these holes have patches now cut, shaped, and awaiting their turn under the welding gun. I didn't fire it up today, but next time I've got a few hours, we're ready to make some fast progress. Tomorrow I'm going to pick up some additional raw sheet metal to fill some other spots. Then there'll be no stopping us.

Sparks'll be flying!!

2009-06-16T21:27:00.000-07:00

The time has come to get down to business. We'll be cutting and welding within a week or so. I just placed an order for this sweet little number:
This is the Hobart Handler 140. Runs on household current and pretty much comes with everything we need to start welding like the pros. Just need a tank of Argon, and we'll be ready to able to create all the metal animal yard art we could ever want.. Oh, wait, wrong blog.. We'll be able to put our car back together, patch all its holes, and make it strong again! Can't wait.

Degunkification

2009-06-06T20:32:00.000-07:00

These days we've been spending most of our car time removing years of dirt, grime, and rust from the car. While it's a dirty job, consisting of scraping, sanding, grinding, wire brushing, and sandblasting, the work is getting us somewhere. It's fortunately not a very large car, so the number of places dirt can hide are pretty limited. Still, we can blow an entire day on a few square feet. Below is one of our recent conquests, the right front wheel well. In the first picture you can see the layers of gunk built up on top of the thick rubbery undercoating. We knew all too well what rust could be hidden under such filth, so it all had to come off.
Here Katie demonstrates the 'wire brush through to clean metal' technique.
Several hours and a coat of Rust-mort later, it's almost like new, and ready for priming!
I'd say we're about at the half-way point for this kind of work. The rear wheel wells are a real bear, since those fenders don't come off. I've gotten up in there with my headlamp on to see into all the corners. But they're coming along too. Soon we'll have a nice clean body, ready for serious metalwork.

Happy Birthday, Mike!

2009-06-02T19:23:00.000-07:00

We recently celebrated Mike's birthday and I decided it was time for a tool chest upgrade. Mike has been using an old dresser to store his tools, but after 3 trips to OSH (longer story than you need to read), he is now the proud owner of a new shiny red Craftsman tool chest! Happy Birthday, Mike!

The old "tool chest":

The new tool chest:

PS by Mike - This is an awesome present!

Rolling again

2009-05-05T20:11:00.000-07:00

Continuing the interminable disassembly, the rear suspension came off completely. It was easier than it might have been, probably in part due to our new-found skills and tools (dang I love that propane torch!) You can see the 'banana arms' and rear hubs & rotors lying on the floor, connected only by the emergency brake cables. Most of this has now been disassembled and packed away, and I've been able to inspect all the bushings and connections and see what will really be needed to get the suspension back in shape. Mostly just rubber replacement, although I'm feeling inclined toward some upgrades from stock to improve handling a bit. (The 'T' wasn't considered the highest performance version in its time.) So I'm looking at larger, stiffer torsion bars, higher grade shocks, and such. Those decisions will have to be made before too long.

As I mentioned in my last post, we've been trying to get the car onto a more secure and useful platform. This is finally done, and I'm quite proud of the result. We've got a rolling stand, made from 2x4s and 4x4s and some heavy duty casters, and it works perfectly! It's more stable than it was on jackstands, and we've got plenty of mobility - we can turn this thing around completely in the garage, which is really nice since we don't have all that great of lighting in there. The other thing is that all the things we need to access are open to us. All the undercarriage repairs, and all the floorpan work can be done with this in place. This evening I spent a few hours starting to clean underneath, especially around the obviously rusty areas. The news isn't all good. But it feels good to get to this point, and be able to start the most fundamental repairs.

Nearly stripped bare

2009-04-20T06:03:00.000-07:00

It's been some time since an update. Partly that's due to fieldwork getting in the way, but there has been some solid Porsche-time mixed in too. We've been focusing on getting the 'tub' down to nothing but sheet metal. The biggest trick here has been that the wheels finally needed to come off the car for good, for the time being anyway. At the same time we've needed get better access to the underside for removing things, and eventually to start repairing things. So I've been working towards building a rolling stand, bolted into the suspension mount points, that would give a solid two feet of clearance underneath and let us still move the thing around. That remains in progress, but anything that might have been in the way is nearly gone.

The latest success was the front suspension. As with many disassemblies in this project, a fair number of these 40-year old fasteners had grown rather fond of each other. In order to get things apart it was necessary to stock up on a few new tools. Below you can (barely) see two of these in action. One is the gear puller (functioning as a tie-rod separator). The other is the propane torch. (Getting apart stuck fasteners is a popular topic of conversation and frustration among car restorers. Application of heat, as here, is a fairly refined approach, whereas many swear by their BFH for any PITA fasteners - I'm a big fan of acronyms, and the restoration world has some good ones. These are Big F***ing Hammer and Pain in the A$$. Both are very useful!)

Finally after many hours spread over a few weekends, the entire front suspension is out. Here's an exploded view of most of it (and the steering rack). The hubs, rotors, and struts were too big to fit on the table. Notice especially the torsion bars (two foot long bars with splines on either end). For some reason, these were the most satisfying things to see emerge. They function as the front springs, their rotational resistance permitting limited vertical movement, but are hidden deep within the control arms. I'm pretty sure these haven't seen the light of day since they were first installed. In the final count only one bolt was sheared off, although virtually all of them have seen better days and will need replacement.

Here's what the car looks like now. The rear suspension still needs to come off, and then we're ready to bolt my rolling rack up underneath. Then it's time to get serious about the structural repairs to the body. Meanwhile we'll be cleaning up the suspension parts, replacing a lot of bushings and such. After cleaning, repairing, and painting the undercarriage, that'll be the first thing to go back on.

Having a blast

2009-03-15T19:09:00.000-07:00

I am finally putting my Valentine's Day gift to use. Katie got me a sandblaster (I know, I know, how romantic!) And it's taken a month to get it up and running - blasting media ain't easy to get ahold of. But it's been worth the wait. This let me take care of some nagging rust in some tight spots, and get a number of smaller body parts prepped and primed. My memory of using one of these had been a little rose-tinted. I fantasized about the rust and grime just instantly disappearing under an 80 psi barrage of 'Kleen-blast'. It took a little more than that, and dang was it dusty. But it did eventually cut through a lot of ugly stuff. Below is my crude attempt to contain the mess. And further below is one of the neediest parts, the insides of the rear bumpers, all stripped, blasted, and primed. Nice!

Working on some critical components

2009-03-08T23:41:00.000-07:00

This weekend we worked several hours on small but important tasks. I continued working underneath the car, in preparation for the rocker repairs, floor pan replacement, and general undercarriage cleanup. The brake fluid master cylinder and fuel pump both hang under the car in front of the passenger compartment, and needed removal, inspection and cleaning. At least the first of these is done. They look pretty bad, but hopefully they're still functional. Replacements are pricey. I also spent a good bit of time working on the tunnel. Some rust had crept up from the floor pan into this central conduit. The picture below shows this from below and behind (formerly covered by floor), with all the essentials passing from front to back or vice versa: fuel lines, brake lines, throttle cable, clutch cable, wiring harness, shift linkage (removed, but meets the transmission at the large central hole), and I forget what all else.

Katie, meanwhile, was tasked with beginning the pedal cluster rebuild. All the pedals link up to a single base, which looks like a virtual rat's nest of cables and linkages, below. In fact it was a literal rats nest at some point during this car's dormancy, and is, even disregarding that, aged, creaky and grungy. She began disassembly, and will be cleaning, painting, replacing various bushings, and generally making sure the things going to work when reassembled. We quickly conquered what is considered one of the most difficult parts of this, removing a 'roll pin' holding the whole thing together. However, it did not magically come apart when this pin was knocked out. An hour of WD-40, beating on it with several large hammers, and various attempts to apply force with a vice failed to drive the clutch pedal off the central shaft. Katie's taken this as a personal challenge. To be continued..

Look Ma, no floors!

2009-02-28T19:03:00.000-08:00

After a too-long hiatus I got back out in the garage for some serious work this afternoon. Finally, after several fits & starts, I got the whole floor pan out. It turned out to be quite a challenge, mentally and physically. It's one thing to know that it was rusty and needed to be replaced. It's another to actually go in there and start cutting. And it's yet another to figure out how in the world to get at all the myriad welds holding it in place (without, hopefully, cutting anything important, like the lifelines going through the 'tunnel' in the center.) I must admit, too, I was very apprehensive about what would be uncovered in the rockers (side rails below the door openings) when the floors came off. This is still unfolding, and although it looks bad, I think I see some relatively straightforward fixes. The passenger side is pretty rotten underneath. But it will be a good area to do some early and practice welding, in that it will never show. I'm sure we can make it structurally sound.

So here's where things stand. Maybe we could take it for a run around the neighborhood in Flintstones style. Brontosaurus burgers, anyone?

Porsche apparitions

2009-02-01T19:47:00.000-08:00

We have not had a lot of car time lately, and today I thought my guilty conscience had taken over. We were having a nice hike up into the San Gabriel Mountains, when suddenly, in a clearing, an orange Porsche appeared! No, it turns out my mind was not playing tricks on me. There it was, plain as day, a 69ish 912 (the 4-cylinder model) coupe, a couple hundred feet up the trail. Some cabin owners had apparently figured out a driveable path to their door, and the fact that their car was a classic was not stopping them from driving it through the woods. Well, delusion or not, my conscience is weighing on me. It's time to get back to work!

Priming at last

2009-01-10T19:28:00.000-08:00

Today we got to do something CONstructive intead of DEstructive for a change. With all the body panels removed, stripped, and derustified, it was time to get some real primer down. This was an 'epoxy primer' a non-sandable basecoat/sealant. Whatever the technical reasons for getting this down before worrying about filler and sanding primer, it felt damn good to spray some paint and see most of the body parts become the same color, even if it is semigloss gray!

First everything had to be hung up, free from touching anything.

We both enjoyed our new spray gun. It took a while to get it dialed in, but by the end of the day we were spraying pretty smoothly.

At the end of the day, we had our hood, decklid, driver's side door, and driver's side fender all nicely primed and ready for filling and sanding. Now we need to get serious about finding a new passenger side fender, and fixing some ugly holes on that side's door. Then we'll have our next few months work cut out for us.

No doors

2009-01-10T18:42:00.000-08:00

In a brief, overdue post, this was the last official action on the car of 2008. Just before Christmas, our fancy 'triple square' socket arrived, allowing removal of the doors and door latches. This allowed us to get serious with body prep, as you'll see in the next post, coming shortly...

Totally stripped

2008-12-07T18:46:00.000-08:00

This weekend we achieved a major milestone: the entire exterior is stripped! In the post-Thanksgiving days we got serious with the stripper and the sanding, and got both the rear quarter panels stripped, and this weekend finished off the passenger door and windshield frame. The only outer surface with paint is the passenger fender, which I still haven't decided is a keeper. It's got some serious rust+dents+bondo+poor previous repairs (=junk?) We'll hold off on that for now. Here's where things stand now:

Pretty much all the orange & red you see remaining is on inner surfaces that will be covered with carpet, gasket, or something. We're feeling pretty good with things. Not too many unpleasant surprises along the way. It is becoming ever clearer that this car has had some extensive work in the past, probably due to bad rust issues that were sort of fixed. Most notably it appears that both rear quarter panels were replaced at some point, and that on the driver's side not very well. There's a long welded seam parallel to the engine opening that was filled with a good half inch of bondo. I'm not ready to say what we'll do about that just yet.

Probably our other most unpleasant surprise was when we found yesterday morning that the panels (door, hood, rear quarters, one bumper half) we'd stripped the previous weekend had a thin film of surface rust on them. Here we were spending all this time removing rust, and then we'd gone and given it some fresh meat! This is what the formerly freshly stripped bumper looked like:

After an initial panic, we spent a good chunk of this weekend sanding those down and treating them with my new favorite chemical: Rust-mort (presumably 'rust-death'). It apparently converts the rust to a harmless iron chromate, and leaves some kind of protective surface. So after sanding we scrubbed everything down with this wonder-goo, and it looks terrific. Check out the door. But this is a temporary solution. We need to start priming. Hopefully before the holiday...

Giving Thanks

2008-11-27T14:21:00.000-08:00

Today we give thanks for many things. Out in the garage we were mainly giving thanks that not all our body panels were as bondo-loaded and difficult as our hood was. The door was easy as pie. It was amazing - brush the stripper on...
...scrape paint off, and VOILA! There's actual metal underneath!

Finally, speaking of pie... time to start cooking. Happy Thanksgiving to all our friends and family.

While Mike works, Katie plays

2008-11-25T15:07:00.000-08:00

While Mike has been at work the past two days (someone has to bring home the bacon) I spent part of each day working on the car. Yesterday I wire brushed a good portion of the ventral side of the deck lid to bare metal. My hand was very tired after an hour and a half so I didn't quite complete it. I'm not sure there's actually much more to do there anyway...Mike will need to check that out and direct me further. Today I completely stripped the driver side fender to bare metal. It was a much more pleasant job than the hood as it only took a couple of layers of stripper to remove all the paint and primer. As you can see by the pictures I started working outside and about an hour into it, it started raining so I moved my operations inside the garage to finish it off. What's next Mike?

Hood & Floor progress

2008-11-23T17:48:00.000-08:00

Halfway through our 6.5 hour day we ran out of stripper, Mike broke the last drill bit for drilling out spot welds and the razor scraper was no longer holding the blade. We decided we needed to make a run to Sears and Larry's Auto Shop to pick up more stripper, a new razor scraper and some new drill bits. We decided a quart of stripper would not be enough for the job ahead so opted for a gallon figuring it will get us through the rest of the car. All of these supplies allowed us to finish drilling out the floor panel spot welds and after many applications of stripper and lots of broken and dulled razor blades, we were able to scrape off the rest of the paint and bondo on the hood. As you can see, we made significant progress on the hood and will soon be able to grind out the floor panel.

Wire Brushing and Paint Stripping

2008-11-01T19:07:00.000-07:00

Today was my second day working on the car. It was a day of discovering treasures. We spent a good amount of time wiring brushing bondo to find out what it was hiding. We found rust, holes and unsightly welds. It wasn't pretty and there is a lot of work to do to fix the mess we uncovered. We also had fun stripping paint and bondo from the hood and deck lid (the engine cover). We applied an aircraft stripper, let it sit for a little while and then scraped the paint and bondo and tried to get to bare metal. We were successful in some places and most of the deck lid is finished but we still have about 1/2 the hood left to do. The hood metal isn't looking good so far -- the person who painted it last didn't allow the bondo to bond to the metal which eventually led to cracks in the paint and a lot of rust on the metal underneath. Yet another thing to be fixed. In short, we spent 6 hours creating a whole lot of dust and paint strips.

The team, united

2008-10-26T18:12:00.000-07:00

We're getting back to work on the car, and getting Katie oriented to what needs to be done. We've figured out what our top priority rust issues are, and are about to order a bunch of replacement body panels, and the much-anticipated welder. Probably the most interesting job will be the complete replacement of the floor pan - there will be a stage when the entire passenger compartment is floorless. It's not really ALL that terrible, but around the edges there are quite a number of extra ventilation holes, and it should be about as easy to just put in some new panels as to patch most of the perimeter. Below you can see us hard at work cleaning up the many spot welds holding the floor in that will need to be drilled out.

Symmetry

2008-10-08T22:19:00.001-07:00

We have achieved symmetry, if not yet beauty. Earlier this week our little shop acquired some fun new tools, an air compressor and a variety of cutting, sanding and grinding implements. The right front fender had been awaiting a tool capable of cutting the welds that held it on. Unfortunately, after cutting the one seam at the front corner that I knew about (and removing a couple more easy bolts), the fender did not magically fall off. So I started hunting around, and found that it had also been welded not only at the bottom of the door post, a pretty easy cut, but also at the back of the inside of the wheel well. That was not fun. As you can see below, this required getting the wheel off, and getting up inside the well with the angle grinder, enjoying a shower of sparks while cutting through a good eight inches of seam.

After it came off, though, I was really pleasantly surprised. I spent a while scraping and wire-brushing off undercoating, expecting to find a rust-o-rama, and it was actually not too extensive. A few little holes, but overall pretty solid. With one more major diassembly in front of us, taking the doors off, rust prospecting will be our next major job. We'll start stripping paint off some of the most typical problem areas and hoping for more good news.

The best news of all though is that this team is only a few days away from being reunited. Katie has finished her Master's degree and will be joining me in Santa Barbara next week. Finally she'll get to see this car first-hand. The two of us together should be able to make quick work of the rest of this!

De-wiring

2008-10-04T22:36:00.000-07:00

Today I tackled something that I had been avoiding, dealing with the wiring harness. In fact, I'd been hoping it could be avoided completely, but auto restoration is really just one long slippery slope. Once you get started cleaning, it's hard to stop. The maze of wiring in the upper part of the trunk, leading to the dashboard and all the various gauges and controls, was concealing a lot of grunge, and was going to be in the way and vulnerable during a lot of the upcoming body work. The number of wires leading to some of the gauges was pretty daunting. This is the back of the dual oil pressure and temperature gauge, with a couple warning lights as well.

In the end I wrote out tape labels for every disconnected wire, and took lots of pictures, and don't think it will be too terrible getting it all back together. Also the wiper motor and windshield washers came off, as did the last of the heating ductwork. Not much left to do before stripping, sanding, and rust repair can finally begin! - Mike

Rear bumper - we're nearly whole

2008-10-01T21:05:00.000-07:00

Last night the rear bumper did indeed arrive, and I couldn't resist a trial fitting. The final fitting is going to require a few 'adjustments', as few of the mounting holes lined up, and those that did had sheared off bolts in them from someone's last bumper removal. Hopefully we'll be able to do better than the packing tape mounting you see here, but for now it's enough to give a nice idea of how the rear's supposed to look. Love that chrome! - Mike

Glassless

2008-09-29T21:11:00.001-07:00

I can report slow and steady progress on the car. First and most exciting is that we got our bumper needs sorted out. The front bumper (picture below) is now in hand and the rear is in a FedEx truck somewhere headed west. Both of these were found through the discussion group sponsored by Pelican Parts (www.pelicanparts.com). This parts dealer has provided a great service to the Porsche community by hosting this group. Why, you ask, is a Porsche parts company called 'Pelican'? I have to say I don't know. I do know that just about everything on my Christmas list this year will be available there.

Getting back to this post's subject, all of the glass is now out, and the car is really starting to look stripped down. All of these were a real challenge. The combination of sun-baked rubber and decades of corrosion make every new goal an adventure. But we're definitely getting somewhere. Almost everything that can come off the car has come off, and it's about time to start patching some rust holes and starting to make things look better instead of worse.

Windshield out

2008-09-23T06:53:00.000-07:00

As we get more and more serious about the body work, there are a lot of things still in the way. This morning the windshield came out. Not too bad a job. Starting to look less and less like a car, and more like a vaguely shapely arrangement of sheet metal.

Getting serious

2008-09-20T18:44:00.001-07:00

A good day of disassembly! The body has been beckoning, and while there are still a few ongoing engine cleaning tasks (disassembled crank and connecting rods today), I've really been eager to see what we're really dealing with rustwise. The most obvious problem areas had been in the right front fender and in the bottom of the passenger door. So the fenders had to come off. Below you see I was successful getting the left front fender off, because it was fairly clean.

Unfortunately the problems on the right front go back some time. During a previous repair it was WELDED on where it should have only been bolted. Not only that but many rust holes were filled with gooey black caulk-like stuff. It's bad. It's going to have to be cut off, and is probably going to need complete replacement. Now, back on the 'good' left side, well, turns out there are some problems here too. In the next picture you can see few nice holes in the inner wheel well. Looks like someone's been working in here before too - there are a couple welded patches, and a different kind of fill putty occupying that hole under the gas filler. Things are getting interesting.

The last job of the day was removing the gas tank. This was much easier than expected. It basically just sits on a flange in a hole in the front trunk and is held down by a few clamps. I had no idea if there was even any gas in it, but was glad to find it empty. This really opens things up for some of the floor pan work. Stay tuned. The fun is just beginning... - Mike

The Whaletail

2008-09-17T22:15:00.000-07:00

Well, I put out a teaser for the whaletail a few posts back, and I guess I can't leave everyone hanging. While it's true that we're going for a more traditional look with this restoration, I can't deny that at one time in my life I did fantasize about having a car with a whaletail, and I think we're going to paint both the original flat engine lid and the tail, and leave the possibility of switching them out when the mood strikes us. So here's a 'before' picture with the big tail. I admit it. I like it. - Mike

2008 Ventura German Autofest

2008-09-14T12:15:00.000-07:00

Mike spent this morning at the Ventura German Autofest, perusing beautiful cars and scrounging around the swap meet bins. I picked up some good things, including one rear bumper part, a trunk hinge (one of ours was broken) and some engine parts. Almost got a great deal on the rest of the rear bumper, but it turned out to have been just a year off. While an awful lot of parts on 911s can be interchanged among years, this was not one of them (at least not from an earlier year). Oh well. The search continues.

There was one very nice Tangerine Targa, as well as many other nice cars of our vintage. I gathered a lot of good info, talked to several enthusiastic owners, and took lots of pictures. Our car's sibling is below, and many other pictures can be seen on my Picasa site.

Shiny vinyl and a smoking gun

2008-09-13T20:19:00.000-07:00

Today I (Mike) was was able to spend an entire day bonding with the car. It was a fairly sunny day here, so I pushed it out into the driveway and started cleaning up the car itself, a nice change from the greasy engine parts. I also spent some time removing what interior was left in the car, basically the back 'seats' (consider yourself lucky if you never have to sit back there). The was also a nice change, because this stuff, having been sheltered and rarely used, was in pretty nice shape. I pulled all the seats, carpet and panels, washed and armor-all-ed, and it all looks pretty spiffy. Lastly I packed it all in a box to pulled out at whatever time we're able to start reassembly - a while.

Today's engine cleaning included the last of the pistons. I had seen this was damaged before, but cleaning it up reveals an amazing amount of damage. This is probably why this car had to be taken apart in the first place. This cylinder would have been nonfunctional. Note that you can see right through the crown to the inside, and the rings were pretty much welded in place.

Chemical resistant, my foot!

2008-09-11T07:02:00.000-07:00

Those mineral spirits are harsh! Check out my chemical resistant gloves. Three days of serious parts washing and they're trashed already. At first I just seemed to have a little coordination trouble, and I began to wonder if the solvents were getting to my head. But after a while (don't worry mom - the garage is well ventilated) I realized that the fingers of the gloves were getting noticeably distended. Eventually they became like elephant hands and this morning began tearing easily. I guess I'd better stock up!

Cleaning

2008-09-10T21:24:00.000-07:00

As the project slowly moves from the planning phase into the doing phase, I've been spending a lot of time cleaning. This poor car is filthy inside and out. We're thinking we'll probably tackle most of the body work first and put the engine rebuild on the back burner for a while. But before packing the engine away, it seemed worth doing a lot of the major cleaning, and making sure any rust problems were dealt with sooner rather than later. So to make a long story short, I've been spending many hours with a bucket of mineral spirits and various sized brushes, scrubbing off years of accumulated gunk. I know - it sounds incredibly fun. Well, it is at least very satisfying to see much of this stuff clean. It's also giving us a better idea of what parts are going to be reuseable as is, what will need some reconditioning, and what's complete junk. And every part has a number stamped in it somewhere, which is also useful for figuring out just how original this car is. Check out the clean camshaft. This one is original for the 1970 911T. It will at least need some reconditioning. A few of the lobes are pretty worn.

Coming up this weekend is the German Autofest in Ventura. There's usually a big used parts swap meet on Sunday of this two-day Porsche extravaganza. This is perfect timing for us to stock up on many needed things. Top of the shopping list will be body parts: bumpers, a rear license plate panel, front and rear light housings (ours are useable, but really corroded), front and rear lenses, and one hood hinge. I'll also have my eyes open for an engine fan, fan housing, alternator, and some axles. Wish me luck.

Assessment and beginning disassembly

2008-09-05T12:57:00.000-07:00

Today (before flying to Montana to consult with my partner, I might add) I started tearing into this thing. The seats came out. The pink carpet came out (to be carefully preserved for later reinstallation). Then I got started on the front end. The porscheophiles among you will have recognized the non-standard fiberglass front bumper (and you have yet to see our whaletail - I'll have to stick it on for at least one photo-op). We're not necessarily going for 100% originality on this car, but the faux-racing panels did not remotely improve on its original
appearance. We will be bumper shopping in the near future.

Additionally some light housings came off, and I began to try and make sense of the electrical system, thankfully mostly intact. Once the blower and defroster came off, I was excited to see some original tangerine appear, hidden for who knows how many years behind the dash. Once we expose some more we'll clean it off and have a good idea of what color this car really should be. Probably won't paint over this part as a nod to its past glory.

The arrival

2008-09-04T11:39:00.000-07:00

Ah, breathing easy at last. The rest of the car was delivered this morning. It feels good to have the deal done, and everything in one place. It looks really good in the garage. Here are a few more 'before' pictures. And before you even ask I will say that YES, we are absolutely keeping the pink shag carpet! It's a '70s car after all.

The vision

2008-09-03T17:33:00.000-07:00

Here is what we aspire to. The car was originally 'Tangerine', and it will be again.

Phase 1 - Aquisition

2008-08-31T20:55:00.001-07:00

After a grueling month-long search involving ebay hijinks, attempted speculative gouging, but above all the support and advice of a small circle of friends and Porsche cogniscenti, we acquired a 1970 911T, targa top, original color tangerine. The body is straight, and with minimal rust. The engine had been previously removed and disassembled. It ain't pretty, but it's mostly all there, and with time, $$$, and a lot of elbow grease, this car could be fantastic.

See lots more photos at http://picasaweb.google.com/caterinomichael/1970Porsche911T.