Back in beige

[jamie]

Great to great to hear it's all working at last! Time to enjoy it
Are you bringing it to Spa at the weekend?

Afraid not - the mag gave me the wrong dates and I'm already on another job

[Gary71]

Gutted! Even if you are working it's a great weekend

[Darren65]

I kinda guessed Jamie was enjoying the fruits of his labour when I received this random out of the blue message.....



.....I can totally empathise with the sentiment!

Well done dude

[jamie]

[Barry]

Excellent!

[neilbardsley]

All looking good and moving in the right direction. Although I was a little surprised when you said your flywheel wasn't balanced

Sent from my MotoE2(4G-LTE) using Tapatalk

[jamie]

Yeah, that doesn't makes sense. I meant balanced to the crank. I'm sure it's balanced on its own.

Out again tonight. I love it.

One thing that's bugging me is the exhaust - it has a resonance right at cruise RPM on the motorway. Sounds a bit like pinking, but it's a continuous metallic ring rather than the 'marbles on sheet metal' noise.

I'm going to try wrapping the non-visible parts of the exhaust pipes with pipe wrap. Full Hoxton motorcycle-hipster-bellend-spec. Part of me hopes it doesn't work...

[inaglasshouse]

I'm going to try wrapping the non-visible parts of the exhaust pipes with pipe wrap. Full Hoxton motorcycle-hipster-bellend-spec. Part of me hopes it doesn't work...

I think snakeskin.
Suits you, sir.

[jamie]

Well, annoyingly, the pipe wrap works. It has removed a lot of the 'zing' resonance from the stainless back box and the car sounds great.

At the moment only the base of the two tailpipes are wrapped. I might add a bit more to the muffler box.



http://vid493.photobucket.com/albums/rr ... wxdbjy.mp4

I also got worried about my Prototipo blocking the oil low pressure warning light at the top of the temp / pressure gauge. So I moved it to a bright LED in a rubber-coated P-clip, screwed to the side of the steering column. The cables are covered with mesh cable sheath, heat-shrinked at each end to keep it all tidy.

(BTW - my speedo cable is still broken, so the odometer is a... bit... off the mark)

[Darren65]

Car sounds great.......actually found my muffler sound is improving with age, might not bother going to steel now.

Must run together sometime soon

[jamie]

OK - restoration complete. Time to start wrapping this up, although I'm not sure I can sum it up with any great wisdom. It's been a somewhat meandering adventure.

Back at the end of 2013, whilst my parents were over visiting, I took my dad out to the garage to show him the car, which I was in the process of stripping down. My dad isn't practical, and has no idea why anyone would want to rebuild an old nail like this 912. He looked over the ugly, rusty mess, aghast, and asked me how long it was going take. 'Three years' I replied. 'How do you deal with something that's going to take three years to complete?', he asked. And I didn't have an answer.

All I did know, which is the first for any project I've ever started, is that I would definitely get it done. It helped that I had loved owning an old Porsche in the past, that I had somewhat lucked into the car, and that it was cheap enough that I could go any which way with it.

So I employed the classic coping mechanism on any substantial job, which is to break the project down into smaller projects and not fixate on an end result. In my office are two large bookshelves. The one on the left of my desk holds work stuff, the one on the right became a repository for new and refurbished Porsche parts. Things went off to be plated, others went through the dishwasher when my girlfriend wasn't paying attention, and some were discarded and replaced with new. All these bits were then packaged neatly on the shelves, waiting for a car to fit them to.

This strategy helped the project progress at a fairly steady rate, but also meant that the task suffered from a massive case of mission drift. At the start, my grand plan for the car was a satin silver restomod with hotrod details. I lost hours (cumutively, days) of sleep agonising over how the paint should look, how it would be applied and so on. The end decision turned out to be a bad one, and so the paint came off and a rather predictable alternative colour was chosen.

After much messing about and another bout of application failures, the car disappeared to be painted elsewhere. At no point until then did I ever imagine the car being painted in a standard colour by a paint shop, but the end result is a thing of wonder. I have never regretted not sticking to my original plan - tastes change. I got older. I only wanted one car, and I wanted it to be pretty, tidy, unassuming and quick. So the lesson here is - it's OK to make this up as you go along, so long as whatever you do is done well.

[I've just realised this would be the perfect place to post a bunch of shots of the car as it sits. But being a photographer, I haven't actually taken that many of it. I'll add some later].

Time to say thanks to a bunch of good people who were involved in this project (listed in no particular order)...

John Glynn - John and I used to travel across California in search of great Porsche stories to photograph and write about, and ultimately sell on to magazines here in the UK. We didn't exactly make money doing it but each trip was non-stop rib-aching-crying-with-laughter from start to finish. Some of the happiest days of my career. On one trip John bought a fantastic 911SC which he nicknamed Varmint, since it was so tatty (albeit rock solid and fast). On the last trip we made, I bought this car.

John Gray - I first met Gray at the 2009 RGruppe treffen, on my first trip to shoot Porsche stuff in US with John Glynn. He was there in his beautiful 71T in Metallic Green, which he has owned since the 80s. The second time I met Gray was on his doorstep - I'd just covered 2700 miles of backroads riding a Honda C70 from Chicago and didn't know anyone in California where I could stay. John Glynn told me Gray could help out, since that's what John Gray does. Since then, I've taken advantage of Gray's (or mostly, his lovely wife Marti's) hospitality repeatedly. It was his garage that the 912 lived in from the day I bought it to the day I drove it down to LA to ship it home.

John Carey - I'm pretty certain John is the nicest person in LA. On the 23rd December 2012 I was hammering down a very wet I-5 in a rusty, leaky 912 with failing electrics and an accelerator attached to the engine via a ball of tape and zip-ties. Due to a string of subsequent mechanical failures, I arrived in LA at night, much later than expected, and well after the shipping yard had closed. My flight home was the next morning. At this point in time, the only friend I knew in the whole of the city was living in Michigan, so I sent a text to him in a panic. 'Take it to my friend John Carey - he'll sort it for you'. I got a cheap hotel and the next morning drove over to the address I had been given. The deal with LA is generally that, the higher up a hill you go, the posher the houses get. As my shitty old car wheezed its way into the driveway of a very nice house at the top of a small mountain, it became apparent that I may be about to dump something horrible into the hands of someone who might not be that accustomed to horrible things. John drove me to the airport, dropped my car to the shipper, and even sent me an email to let me know the car was safely delivered. 'I haven't driven anything that bad since I was a student. It was great fun'. A top guy.

Russell Grover - Russ does vehicle transportation and collected the car when it arrived in Thamesport. He is friendly and always helpful. Southern Vehicle Services - 07949 778 747

Michael Jelinek - My good friend Jels stored the car whilst I finished building my new garage. He is based near Woking and does welding and fabrication stuff - https://www.facebook.com/83engineering

Envirostrip - I've never seen a shell as stripped as clean as ones from here. More expensive than going at a car with a scraper and flapper disc, but quicker, cleaner and way less aggro. Even supplied a CD of images of the job in progress. http://www.envirostripukltd.com/

The Dude - Engine builder and VW drag-racing guru. Unfortunately I fell out of favour with him and had to do the last 0.5% of the engine build myself, but it didn't detract from the end result - a unique, beautifully modified 616 motor that goes like a motherfucker.

Mike Bainbridge - Like the Oracle at Delphi, only male, not based in a Greek temple, and more knowledegable about overhauling Porsche gearboxes. http://www.mbporsche-engineering.co.uk/

Darren Tompkins and Rich at Swindon Car & Van Accident Repair Centre - Darren (Darren65 on here) came to the rescue when it became very apparent I was crap with a spray gun. His painter Rich did a better job than I could ever have wished for and without doubt raised the bar on the project. As a result, the whole came out much better than anticipated. PM username 'Darren65'

Barry Carter - doesn't need explaining on here. Amazing invisible metalworking skills have made this never-smiles-in-photographs man true DDK legend. Barry's fee accounted for a large chunk of the total cost of the rebuild, but it still feels like brilliant value. Like starting a rebuild using a factory-fresh BIW. PM username 'Barry'.

Chris Jury - sent me some CV joint dog bones FOC. Thanks!

Hayden Burvill at Wevo - I've known Hayden since I sold my 72T, as he looks after some cars for the buyer. I enjoy absorbing his seasoned mechanical knowledge as much as I enjoy his zero-bullshit outlook on life. His business is well known in the Porsche world for making 915 shifters, uprated gearbox parts and clever engine mounts. As well as being my go-to for dead-ended reassembly queries, Hayden let me fit a prototype 901 shifter for my car, plus some engine mounts. Both are fantastic - in particular the shifter which, in combination with Mike Bainbridge's gearbox overhaul, give a really clean, positive action to the usually foggy 901 gearchange. It's also looks totally stock. http://www.wevo.com/

Nick Moss - I took my wheels to Nick to be refurbished and they came out great. http://www.early911.co.uk/

Dougal Cawley at Longstone Tyres - I won't go into the details of how I ended up with a full set of Pirelli Cinturatos on this car, but I'm glad I did because they're really good - proper delicate classic car handling, and just enough grip to exit a roundabout or T-junction like a t055er, if you're feeling that way. I'll be ordering again once I've ruined my existing set. http://www.longstonetyres.co.uk/

Thomas Lubbock / Bootsy - for DDK, and providing me with 95 pages to ask inane questions, celebrate, moan and collect my thoughts during this journey. The best internet quack-shrink I've ever had.

And lastly... Livvie, my girlfriend. Enthusiasm generator, multiple windscreen fitter, inaccessible spanner holder, colour advisor, future rear seat populator...



And on to the next project

[Gary71]

Nicely done Jamie. And not just the car! Best of luck:)

[sladey]

Ha! Congratulations. I've got 3 kids and it took me 5 minutes to realise that was a scan. D'oh!

Your 912 will remain practical child-carrying transport until they are 12 so you've got a while

Well done on the resto, good luck with the parenting!

[Bootsy]

Congratulations Jamie

[yoda]

Great story (all of it) and well told. Refreshing to hear a warts an all account of restoring a car rather than just the edited nice bits. Glad you are up and running!

But we do need some pics!