DDK - Die Deutschen Klassiker

Hang in there Steve, once you get it on the road you'll wonder how you ever dreamt of parting with it. Good luck, great thread!

Steve

You must have the patience of a saint I might have killed someone by now

Looks like it's coming together now.

wow I'm shocked at the route you have taken.. all I can do is offer free cups of tea and simpathy to help you get this car finaly finished.. I will say what a restoration and I am sure it's going to be a stunner when's done.... keep at it..

Chin up. Just wait for the first time you drive it out of your garage

Thanks for the words of support guys im sure all the effort and stress will be worth it when I finnaly get to drive the finnished article.

Gary71 wrote: Chin up. Just wait for the first time you drive it out of your garage

Just getting it back in my garage for the finnal build up would be nice at the minute, I think half of my problem is the fact that I have all this money spent on the work and for the last year the car hasnt even been there for me to enjoy instead it been stuck in someone else's workshop, im having withdrawl symptoms

Steve

I think all projects have significant 'down' periods, particularly when you are doing a major proportion of the work yourself.

You get the double whammy of always seeming to be forking out for stuff, plus having to put the time and effort in to get somewhere, often only to find that you've actually taken a step backwards, not forwards.

On the other hand, once you've got there, there's nothing quite like knowing you've done it, and no-one knows the car better than you. There'll always be that initial week or two after it hits the road when you think 'I don't like it'. I always find that then you potter through the jobs that gradually improve things more and more, and you begin to really enjoy it.

Hopefully we'll see the shell much improved soon, and you can get someone to get some yummy Viper on there for you .

Man - talk about pain and patience.

By this point Id have legals on the Ecoaters and they would be paying me not to mention their handy work on the forums - and guarantee no more 911 work for them. - Plus new quarters and repair and the jig work at their £££.

red964 wrote:Man - talk about pain and patience.

By this point Id have legals on the Ecoaters and they would be paying me not to mention their handy work on the forums - and guarantee no more 911 work for them. - Plus new quarters and repair and the jig work at their £££.

I did think about this and I did get the cost of the 1/4 repair refunded from them but to take it further would mean proving that my case isnt a one off and that the e-coaters know about the problems with 911's and chose not to tell me. Also at the time I was assured by the guy doing the body work that it wouldnt be too difficult to fix

If everything goes to plan in the next few days the shell should be on a jig and by the weekend hopefully I can see some nice straight door gaps again.

Steve

Porsche loaded up and ready for taking to be jigged,





Steve

Right now comes the time for the happier posts, just got back from a day(or so) trip with the porsche to Barry's AKA Barry of this forum and although curently feeling very tierd as I set of to Barry's at 2am thursday morning and only just got back in the house (7pm friday) after dropping the van back off at the hire place im now feeling very happy about the project again.

The last two days have been quite a effort to get the van hired and get the car down to barrys (240 miles away) and get back to have the van returned for 5pm friday, oh yes and have the shell fully straightend and all door gaps set to almost perfect. To start with it seemed like alot of messing around to take the car down to Barry and much easier to find someone local, but it came down to me needing to take it to someone I knew from there reputation knew what they were doing and I could count on to get the job done as I couldnt take anymore set backs at this point. Barry certainly lived up to that reputation, to say im pleased with Barrys skills is an understaitment, in just one day of working on my car hes completly changed its outlook, what once was a botch "it will do" project now has the potentional to be the car I hoped it could be. I just hope the paint guy now gets his ass into gear and gives it a good enough quality finnish to do Barrys hard work justice.

The pictures speak for them selfs!

Wednesday Night











As you can see there is obvious taper in both the A and B posts the window frames virtually touch at the top of the A post with a large gap at the bottom and oppasite on the B post with the door very close at the bottom tapering up.

When I first got to Barrys he wasnt very keen to get started and was much more keen to show me his recently mastered magic hovering car trick.



It didnt take long for him to spring into action and get the car mounted on the jig.



The first good bit on news came with the initial mounting, first Barry started with the torsion bar mounting fixtures then went to work on the front suspension fixtures all of which ligned up perfectly so from the torsion bar tube forward the shell was perfectly straight.





Next bit of good news was that when Barry tried the trans mount fixtures although they wernt the correct ones for the G50 that I had fitted the hight was the same and that checked out perfectly, so my torsion tube replacement wasnt a total disaster.



Now onto the juicy bit, when Barry came to fit the rear engine mount fixtures they appeared to fit perfectly indicating that the back end was perfectly straight which raised some major confusion about what was going on with the gaps if the backend was right. After a little bit of studying of the spec sheet it came clear that the fixtures should be ligning up with a completly different set of holes on the fixture about 15mm further down and it was just by compleate coincidence it aligned perfectly with the first set of holes hence meaning the back end was 15mm too low. So Barry set to work with his highly technical pressing setup, now im not sure Barry will be happy with me posting pics of this as it is on loan from cellet as a trial as its there latest prototype pressing setup but ill show the pic anyway just keep it quiet.



Honestly its far more technical than it appears and is definatly not two trolly jacks and two big blocks of wood.

Basically over the next couple of hours the shell was jacked time after time from the rear extremities to raise it to where we thought it needed to be. This was a slow trial and error process as you never know just how far you will need to take it for it to be permanantly moved, the 911 shell has alot of eleasticity and on our first trial jack-up just to raise it to where the door gaps looked like they needed to be the shell sprung fully back to its original position after it was released. On the finnal attempt it took a considerable amount of extra movement beyond where it wanted to be to make it stay where we wanted. Barry may chime in with the actual amount as he measured it I was much more concerned with how bad the shell looked at that point.





These pics really highlight how far extra the shell needs to be moved to get it to permanantly change.

And the finnished result as of friday AM



Perfectly aligned with the A post



Nice even door gaps





And the shell looking as it should nice and straight gaps.

In all fairness to Barry the jigging was just half the battle the panels still needed a considerable amount of beating to fine tune them to perfection. One thing we did find is that in actual fact although the shell wanted to move 15mm to get the right back end hight in actual fact we only moved it about 10mm any further closed up the gaps too much. This could be due to 30 years of changes in the shell but also could be because the shell was jacked at the A post to rectify the problem so what may have happened is the roof and B post moved but due to flexing of other panels it didnt pull the rear legs up with it. This is easy to imagine happening when you bear in mind Barry estimates it took about 8 tonnes of force on the finnal attempt to lift the back end. The two 2 1/2 tonne jacks were used originally to give an even lift and they would not move any further so thats 5 tonnes. Then a 2 tonne screw jack was added and then he had to turn to the 10 tonne porta-power for the last few mm. Quite alot of force so its highly likely somewhere between the top of the A post and the rear arms there as been a few mm's of give.

So all in all very pleased and massive thanks to Barry
Steve

Just amazing.
What a sequence of photos.
Top work Barry. Well done.
Good to see your war time 'make and mend' ingenuity served you well again.

I think poor old Steve was a bit worried when

a) He saw the diminutive size of the workshop, and
b) He witnessed my inital confusion as to quite which holes to use on the rear brackets (they really did line up absolutely perfectly, just on the wrong holes) and
c) He saw that I really, really was going to use a pair of elderly trolley jacks for the initial lift, not to mention:
d) The quality of the Carter Cuisine provided at lunchtime.

The reason we used two jacks was that the shell, although distorted, was very even indeed. I was keen to lift the back evenly, so as not to lose this advantage. In the end though, the two jacks (both 2 1/2 ton ones) were right on their limits, hence needing the backup of the screwjack on one side, and the porta-power on the other.

We also had a sill-clamp setup plus two door-aperture jacks available had we needed it. If we'd really got desperate, there was a 10 ton dozer on standby as well, but I'm glad we didn't need that.

In the end, the rear of the car was moved through nearly 30 (thirty) mm, to acheive a permanent change of around 8-10 mm. As Steve said, the gaps have come out really nicely, and given the whole shell a much nicer, 'quality' feel about it.

Thanks to Steve for being such a good workshop guest: he certainly kept his nerve as I cranked everything up, and at one point had the doors actually overlapping the B-posts. It really was nice to work on such a solid, original car: the lack of any sort of damage, whether accident or corrosion, is just amazing.

Now very much looking foward to seeing some photo's of the paint going on .

Barry can cook?

Only joking- Im amazed at what force the shell can take. Incidentally, this being a non-sunroof coupe, would a targa shell be able to sustain a similar force of (8 tonnes)? Would this coupe shell be able to sustain a similar force to be straigtened if it had corrosion but not at the chassis jig mounting points, i.e. corrosion in the inner wings and b posts?

If this post is confirming two things: bloody strong these 911's, bloody stronger that mr carter.

Best regards,

Bert

I would think that a Targa would be similar, all other things being equal: after all, the shell when new was designed to take the same stresses (and accident resistance) as the coupe. The Targa has loads of doubled up panels to compensate for the lack of roof (extra parts to the front and rear inner wings, plus an additional inner sill for example).

As for a corroded shell, it would just depend on where it had gone, but then again, you wouldn't be doing this sort of work on a shell like that without repairing the corrosion as you went anyway.

BTW, the more force a shell takes to shift the better in some ways: it just proves that it's good and strong. To put it another way, had we just needed a couple of tons, it probably would have hinted that there was internal corrosion or poor quality repairs. As it was, the fact that the shell took many tons to shift, and had a constant, even 'spring' to it, all confirms that it is indeed in very, very good shape, and a really good basis for a hot 911.