DDK - Die Deutschen Klassiker

I think I mentioned I have a few other commitments keeping me from the car recently, but I'm going to redouble my efforts to move things forward bit by bit in the evenings. Current freezing cold conditions in the garage don't help.

Anyway... I made a start on the repair panels for the corroded area of the front wings, behind the wheel, with a bender and a shrinker stretcher very kindly lent by a ddk-er.










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Can we see?!

deano wrote: ↑Mon Jan 23, 2023 12:48 pm Can we see?!

Very little progress I'm afraid Dean, just an hour or so in the evening. Will add photos as I progress - all I have at the moment is the couple of bent bits of metal shown.

I've been avidly following the many threads on here whilst not having a huge amount of Porsche-related activity going on myself, due to an ongoing property project.

But I've been back on it again this week after a little hiatus... just some jobs I can tinker at in the evenings.

Being a desert car, the dashboard is particularly shrunk, cracked, and brittle. I'm not exactly sure yet where this is going but I've been grinding out the cracks into a v and taking off any material which stands proud. As with everything on this car, I'm saving what's original if I can, due to the originality of the car.





I reinforced the holes laterally, and from the back, with wire mesh.



And filled with a semi rigid epoxy plastic.



It seems pretty strong for now, and cuts back to a smooth tidy profile.



Once it's all the right shape, I don't know yet whether I'll spray over, cover with vinyl, or cover with leather.

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It looks like I'll be successful in saving the dash. I'm really doing my best in this photo to light up the remaining defects.


These are the products I used, both gave really good results.



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It certainly appears to be a great improvement - will be interesting to see what it looks like from the driver's seat once re-installed ...

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Does look like a very good fix

Recent video on M539 channel was interesting.

He took his seat covers to a company that makes the repair products for BMW & such like. They used a silicone product to take a mold of the leather grain then after it set, they heated up the silicone disc & pressed it into a repaired section to replicate the grain.

https://youtu.be/t7b4mopGWGU

Bruce M wrote:Recent video on M539 channel was interesting.

He took his seat covers to a company that makes the repair products for BMW & such like. They used a silicone product to take a mold of the leather grain then after it set, they heated up the silicone disc & pressed it into a repaired section to replicate the grain.

https://youtu.be/t7b4mopGWGU

Thanks, I'll take a look at that later. I was trying to work out what I could use to imprint the vinyl pattern back into it. But when I painted it, it turned out you don't miss the pattern on small sections. I was contemplating spraying it with oil so it doesn't stick and pressing something into the epoxy while it's soft.

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Found time for a bit of paint stripping this week. Can anyone advise whether the seat brackets were originally black or body colour?



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Believe they were always black on all models

I treated myself to a well-earned break from tidying the garage this afternoon. I completed stripping these seat brackets, sanding back to get a good key.



Sprayed them on the bush, as is customary.



And drying in the (relatively) tidy garage. Just a couple more areas to get through in the garage then I'm hoping to accelerate progress on the car.



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With the recent property-related hiatus behind me and the garage looking tidy (at least for the time being), I'm hopeful progress on this car can resume with some degree of pace.

Mostly I'm easing myself in with a few small jobs. I charged the battery overnight and she started after about a minute to get the carbs filled up and ran beautifully.



I wanted an insight into what paint stripping will be like, and what I'll be dealing with underneath. What I learnt was that the original orange paint had been taken off back to bare steel - presumably because it had crazed and blistered in the desert sun. The roof shows signs of where the metal was exposed to the sunlight in the cracks.



And in a few other areas, such as in the window reveals and around the frunk the original orange remains.



Some of the bare aluminium and galvanised parts came off and got stripped too.

The VIN plate came up really nice. I was expecting tricky little steel rivets like I had to do battle with elsewhere but it had aluminium, making it come away easily.



It looks like the carbon canister is either stainless or chrome under its stone-chip type coating.



And I started fabricating a replacement for one of the battery straps, one of the originals was a bit corroded.



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I feel a bit like I've spent a day cleaning up a massive sardine tin but it's come up nicely snd I'll give it a new cover of primer plus some tough stone chip type finish.



I cleaned paint off spots on the strap for spot welding.





Then to the front rubber seal flange. It was a slight quandary this one (but not much) as it was mostly intact...



...but with a couple of thin spots.



Wanting as I do, this car to be good for another 50 years once finished, there was some limited case to drill out the welds, remove it and replace but the substantial amount of work, and the loss of originality involved, easily won the day.

So for now I removed any surface darkening with 75% phosphoric acid, rinsing it off thoroughly, taking care not to leave any holes in the concrete floor!

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I bent up a little section of fresh steel for that front lip



Cut out the pitted corner and introduced the new into the panel.



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