My 912 restomod

[stichill99]

Hello James At the Thirlestane castle show last Sunday I spoke to a young man who has 15 years experience of resto work and set up his own business in 2018 at Rosewell just south of Edinburgh.I was enquiring about getting the sunroof cartridge removed from my Mk1 golf campaign,a few holes welded up and then put back in. He told me no job too big or too small but he prefers the big ones! Have a look at their website www.mlmotorsport.co.uk

[jamesm912]

Cheers all for the tips and encouragement. I think I will bite the bullet and get the loom out; seems like the prudent thing to do really.

Hello James At the Thirlestane castle show last Sunday I spoke to a young man who has 15 years experience of resto work and set up his own business in 2018 at Rosewell just south of Edinburgh.I was enquiring about getting the sunroof cartridge removed from my Mk1 golf campaign,a few holes welded up and then put back in. He told me no job too big or too small but he prefers the big ones! Have a look at their website www.mlmotorsport.co.uk

Ah great stichill99, thanks a lot for that, I'll check them out. Rosewell is very local to me. Alas I couldn't make the Thirlestane show this year.

I have found a guy fairly local in Cockenzie that seems to know his stuff with classic cars and has done a fair few old porsches so might go down that route to get the serious welding done

Off on holiday now for a couple of weeks...

[stichill99]

I also had a friend had some paintwork done at cbc autobody Dunbar if you are on the East side of Edinburgh. There was a guy in the unit next door was restoring an old 911 but can't remember his name!

[jamesm912]

Hello everyone, I'm still here and the project is still going, if rather slowly. Looking back at my last post, no, I haven't been on holiday for the last 7 months (more's the pity). Didn't make all that much progress last year for a variety of reasons (including apathy) and was dismayed when I totalled up the tally of hours for 2023 to be a meagre 55. That's been the reason for the lack of posts...just didn't make much progress. So had a serious word with myself and with renewed enthusiasm have managed over 40hrs this calendar year already.

One of the hurdles to get over was getting my (first) MIG welder and getting to grips with welding. So, early xmas present in the form of an R-Tech MIG 181 and I've done a few small patches and gradually getting the idea. Some pics of one of my efforts. (I'll drill the holes later when re-fitting the column):

I do find it immensely satisfying to be able to repair metal in this way.

I still need to decide about tackling the more structural welding. To start with...at the front, where I've got replacement sections for the noses of the front inner wings, entire front nose panel and a large section of the front floor (with the front suspension mounts on). I didn't use the local guy I mentioned above because, despite all the chat about me paying in tranches once work done, suddenly announced he would invoice me up front. Declined that offer - feel like I dodged a (£80per hr) bullet there. Haven't decided whether to use another guy I know or very slowly, carefully and methodically tackle it myself having braced everything with angle iron and dry-fitting the subframe for reference. Related to this point is I really would like (i.e., should) to get the whole shell onto a Cellete jig but initial efforts to find (some)one have drawn a blank.

Meantime I am amusing myself and clocking up the hours with the never-ending job of scraping off underseal and paint getting the shell back to bare metal. The interior is especially fiddly and covered in some sort of tarry/rubbery stuff. But sometime I quite enjoy the mindless graft and there's some reward in the sight of shiny metal (even if often pockmarked with surface rust).

[jamesm912]

Was relieved to find replacement hood strut brackets on Design911 even if they were over £40 each. I was never going to be able to fabricate anything close to those and would have had to make do with a crude approximation that was functional. In hindsight I maybe drilled too many, too small holes (and didn't pay attention to the short section that doesn't make contact with the body, hence the two unfilled holes, doh) for plug welding them into place but they're nice and solid now.

[jamesm912]

Front right inner wing mostly sorted apart from the rotten nose section that awaits the repair panel being welded in:

The primered bit has been taken back to bare metal and as much of the surface rust removed as possible (only in fairly small, isolated patches, most of the wing was good condition). A couple of small areas of wafer thin steel cut out and patches welded in. Rust converted the surface rust. Red oxide primer all over then the grey epoxy primer over that. This is not just a quick blast over, doing the best I can to eradicate the rust and keep it at bay.

Because that inner wing nose section is welded to the front nose panel can't decide which to do first. Because I can save quite a bit of the existing inner wing I think I should probably leave this bit until after to provide guidance for the replacement floor section and the nose panel and so don't fully weld up the nose panel edge to the wing front edge prior to then cutting out the rotten area of the wing and fettling in only the portion needed off the new repair section.

The sort of inner lining of the shock tower is badly rusted away but I'm leaving that until the shell is repaired and strong enough to go on my rotisserie in order that I'm not tackling the shock tower upside down (me I mean, as the shock tower will then be upside down!). It's going to be challenging enough for me to remove the bad steel and somehow fabricate a cone-shaped replacement and somehow weld it in place. Suggestions or links to any articles covering this gratefully received.
The other 'skin' of the shock tower (inside the frunk) appears solid and am not wanting to mess with the whole thing given the criticality of its position for the suspension geometry (esp. since this is an early shell without the adjustable top mounts).

[jamesm912]

I have got replacement wing mounts (in front of the A pillar) for both sides because they're rotten. Am a bit concerned about making sure I get them replaced perfectly true given how that'll affect the fitment of the outer wings but I saw a pic where someone had welded in place a kind of temporary jig for getting the wing mounts right.

But I'm leaving them for now until I get a better handle on the state of the A pillar because it doesn't look too clever at the top and bottom areas with evidence of shonky previous repair:

I also need to educate myself about how the A pillar joins to the top of the outer sill because I can't go by the bodge I seem to have on the car. Haven't looked yet but if you know of close up reference picks to help me understand that would be smashing. I did see a repair section on Design911 for the bottom of the A pillar but they were £300 quid each (did look quite intricate/complicated from what I could make out in the fairly poor picture) and because I'm not doing a concourse resto here I just need to have something functional because I don't think it will be seen tucked down there.