1974 Carrera Coupe - RHD, UK car

[Ferry Man]

Very nice too. They will certainly add a sparkle to the front end.
It was a nice treat un-boxing those, bolting on shiny new parts never fails to please.
Jewellery for boys.
And they proved to be not too expensive either.

[Ferry Man]

[Ferry Man]

[DustyM]

All you need now are some original Bosch lenses! These new lights seem to come with the AL mark on them now unfortunately.

[Ferry Man]

The front indicator units were also found in amongst the box of stripped parts.
And looked rough but salvageable. So I set about cleaning them up.

The orange plastic lenses were transformed with cutting polish but one had a crack in it so really needed replacing.
And both reflectors had decayed to dirty grey plastic.
I tried, but painting them bright silver didn't really put the freshness back, they really need to be chromed.
I didn't feel they were good enough.

[Ferry Man]

I didn't feel they were good enough.

So, time to enlist the help of my pal PayPal.

[Ferry Man]

Complete front indicator units from Porsche were only about £70.
That's unit, lens, bulb & wiring.
I say 'only' £70 but there I go again.
£70 is a lot of money but in the grand scheme of this restoration those shiny new, squeaky clean, ready-to-just-bolt-on bits, make all the difference.
I was happy to spend.

[Ferry Man]

[Ferry Man]

Having bought new parts for the rest of the lights I was just left with the rears.
I'd already sourced new lenses for them as the cost for those was modest enough.

[Ferry Man]

I imagined that once the lenses were installed the state of the units behind would be masked.
However, I realised that wouldn't be good enough. The units were poor and it would be well worth changing those too.
Only trouble is they were expensive enough to make even the hero of this story hesitate.

You can get chrome plastic reproduction ones on eBay.de but they don't look correct and may not fit as well. For me not worth a risk, despite being about half the price.
So I dwelt upon it a little longer. And then stopped faffing and wired sufficient funds to my local OPC.

[Ferry Man]

They are lovely, with no corrosion and no brittle wiring.
The bulb holders hold the bulbs perfectly, the reflectors are nice and reflective, areas that should be white are sparkly white and Nick won't get his hands dirty fitting them. Which is very considerate of me.

[Ferry Man]

[Ferry Man]

I'm doing my best to restore the car back to standard specification (albeit with a colour change).
And one important part of that was to make sure the car rides and handles like it would have done back in 1974.

So I wanted to configure the car with original dampers and suspension.
A large part of the handling characteristics and the general 'feel' of the vehicle would come from the rubber bushes.

It's tempting to 'upgrade' the suspension when rebuilding and there are many aftermarket kits that can modify the ride. Options include Neatrix replacement bushes, poly bushes (many different brands available) or Elephant bronze. Each has different characteristics and different compromises.

However I wished to retain the standard Porsche parts.
They knew what they were doing back then and I'd trust their good judgement.
So, that meant buying more genuine Porsche parts. Anti-roll bar bushes, front & rear (8 of them), rear trailing arm bushes, etc, etc,....

[Ferry Man]

New gearbox mounts and new engine mounts (2 off each).

[Ferry Man]

New top mounts for the fronts.