The Manhattan Project

[Dougieboy1]

to be honest, i would have been more surprised to learn a spider hadnt walked all over the fresh paint.....

if its any consolation, i have a small patch of micro-blistering on the near side front wing and i have dented the ali 'frunk' lid, specifically where it is double skinned by the badge so impossible to fix by simply rubbing the dent out!

I also mildly scratched the lid by raising the car on the lift, leaving the lid open and forgetting about the chain hanging down from the hoist i have attached to the rafters.... .you need eyes everywhere.....

[911hillclimber]

'Christened' my fresh paint Wednesday this week putting the wings on, the M6 screws by the windscreen are very tight to access.
Done now, and today feel ok, the car will soon be scared some more.

[AndrewSlater]

Having 'Christened' the previous paintwork I've got the stress of not knowing when I might christen the new paintwork but I am sure it will happen sooner rather than later.

Whilst the car was away I had stripped down my 'pristine' pair of front seats to find out their true condition.
I soon came to the conclusion that they seemed to have been 'stored' in a pond or similar given the rust on the base frames and the amount of clay that was residing inside.
Maybe not quite as 'pristine' as I thought.

Having stripped them down the bases have been cleaned up and repainted.

The foam insert on the drivers seat is also slightly damaged.



I spoke with Dave at Southbound about my options to retrim but it seems that I can't get the midnight blue material required to do the seat centres, so I would need to either plump for a '74 interior that won't match the Signal Orange or opt for a slightly non '74 option. Dave also showed me how you could order the foam bases from Porsche but whenever you order a right seat they supply a left foam and you are left to modify it yourself ( or was it the other way around ). At £135+ per foam you would expect them to supply the correct one. So its the potentially north of £500 just to change the foam on the front seats.

I also found out that the 'rare' and expensive '74/75 seat ( the later SC ones have different base foam, seat knob etc ), were reintroduced in '76 for the 924 ( albeit with the later recliner knob ).

With that in mind a bought a 924 left seat for £20 to strip down and steal the foam.
1974 911 seat £150, 924 seat £20 - that makes the knobs worth £130 each!!
If I had known this in advance I would have gone down the route of 924 cores - having stripped one down they are identical.

So I still need to make my mind up on the interior but currently thinking I will go black leather.
Whilst at Southbound I bought a new headlining with the correct Diamond patterning on the grounds that if I had refitted my new but pattern challenged one I would always regret it.

[inaglasshouse]

Yep that spider was par for the course. Admiring your perseverance here.
I have not yet christened my paint. But sooner or later my luck has to run out... I guess I did have to rebuild my newly-rebuilt engine on the '69, that's got to count in the Karma equations.

Good call on the headlining, in my opinion. So obvious once you know it's there.

[AndrewSlater]

One of the next jobs was to refit the rear bumper. This was something I had started before previously but the bumper assembly had to be stripped down again for repaint.

This time I had all the freshly painted parts ( minus the valance which was accidentally scratched on return ).

After several nights of assembly - problems and disassembly I have finally got the rear bumper on with the side returns.
Fitting it single handed is possible but it doesn't make it easy.
I'd like to meet the designer who decided to put all of the side fittings in such difficult to access places. The ones that fall by the oil tank are particularly challenging to fit.

It is quite surprising how much weight there is in the rear bumper assembly on an impact bumper car.
I had swapped the impact bars for European spec ones to save some weight but there's still a lot of weight distributed in the worst of positions.



One of my bumper riders sits perfectly square when first fitted, but when fully tightened starts to pull to one side.
So I need to play around with this, fit the license plate lights, and the new rubber strips.
Finally I will need to fit the rear valance and then the back is done (other than plates).

[AndrewSlater]

I've been slowly putting the car back together back to the state I was in back in October 2017 ( Crikey was the setback really that long ).

Anyway a lot of the work albeit second time around has been documented earlier in the thread.

Firstly a new headlining was sourced from Southbound with the correct hex pattern and fitted - TICK



I've then retrimmed the 'A' and 'B' pillars with new material again - TICK
Refitted the glass all round - TICK
I retrimmed the old parcel shelf I had bought myself and although it took quite a time to do it looks pretty good. - TICK

I bit the bullet and ordered the remaining bits I needed for the new black interior, a new carpet, seat and interior panel set from Lakewell.

At the time I placed the order I was pretty confident that this would be the last large expense on the project.

So all in all quite a lot of progress.

Sadly at this point my quality control manager ( AKA student son ) returned from University and queried the front windscreen fit. Apparently he didn't like seeing daylight through the seal at the corners ( or more importantly the passenger side where he might end up sitting - thought it might be drafty ).

So the front windscreen was fitted with an extra pair of hands and passed the draft test so all was good.

Well all was good until the next day when I spotted it had cracked!

Front windscreen fitted - UNTICK.


This project continues to be jinxed

[911hillclimber]

Ref : Front Screen
I was told by the pro who did mine last month that replacement glass is a bit on the small size to make them easier to fit.
The screens can drop in the shell aperture and loosen the fit in the top corners. This happened to my last screen fitted in '89 but there was no gap for air but water seeped down and started the lower corners to rust.

Car's not jinxed, they are all a PITA if you ask me!

[AndrewSlater]

I attended the swapmeet at Greatworth park at the weekend and had a small stall to sell on some of the spare parts I have acquired over the last five years working on the Manhattan project.
I also found some of the last parts required to finish off the project - needless to say I bought more parts than I sold.

The good news was that I got to meet more DDK'ers so can put faces to a lot more names that have helped me out over the years.
A number of DDK'ers asked how the project was going so I thought I was overdue an update.

The exterior of the car is pretty much complete now( apart from the irritation of the cracked windscreen ).
Therefore my attentions have moved onto the interior where I have been slowly working on getting a full black interior sorted to replace the tan one that clashed with the signal orange.

I had decided to try to retrim the spare parcel shelf I had recently bought in vinyl as I had nothing much to lose.
I disassembled the original to understand how it all needed to go back together.
Although it took my many hours to do correctly I was pretty happy with the end results.


As for the rest of the items I needed, I ended up ordering a black carpet set, door cards in vinyl, rear quarter panels in vinyl, and a front and rear seat restoration kit in leather. After a lot of research I ended up buying it all from Lakewell - which wasn't cheap..

A few weeks ago the following box arrived.


I was a bit disappointed in the first instance.

Despite the speel that 'We match Stüttgart factory specifications step by step' etc etc, the carpet isn't really that equivalent to my original one in a number of details.

Firstly the side pieces are supplied as two separate pieces, whereas my original ones were a single piece.
It would have been nice to have had the original tunnel buttons fitted and also the handbrake cutout on the central section - well cutout and edged like the original would have been nice. What's with the heel rubber - the original didn't have one.

I need to find a solution for the handbrake edging as it will look a bit naff once cut. I don't have access to an industrial sewing machine so possibly some rubber edging and glue might work.

I then inspected the rear quarter panels and was again a little disappointed.
Now the first line of the description is 'Complete ready-to-install rear quarter panels for Porsche 911 from 1974–1993.' - well actually they aren't - what you actually get is a half made top panel and some vinyl to refit to your own bottom halves. So again a bit disappointed as that meant I had to buy a secondhand pair of quarter panels to try to make my 'new' set - more cost.

I also struggled to staple through the plastic panels with a hand stapler so had to buy an electric one - more cost.
I can recommend the Stanley tool for the job. After many hours cursing my 'ready to install' panels I had these.



I thought that things had to get easier sooner or later - but that's before I had looked at the seat covers!

[AndrewSlater]

I started to put the leather covers onto the rear seat backs, but no matter what I tried they didn't seem to fit properly and looked pretty awful.
After four hours or so I decided I would be better off taking them to my local trimmers to see what he could do.

He thought the covers looked simple and was surprised that I hadn't managed them, but I was happy to admit defeat and leave them with him.

A week later he had gotten around to finishing them off, however he did admit they had been a bit of struggle and taken him a full day to complete.
In particular the side cheeks needed alteration before he could make them fit. Glad to know I wasn't being completely useless!

Oh well more cost but I then had these.



So my next job is to fit the bottom covers onto a pair of bases that I bought from the recent swapmeet.

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[Bootsy]

Great updates

[AndrewSlater]

I've finally got the rear interior in!

I think the combination of parcel shelf, rear quarter trims, rear seats and carpet looks pretty cool!
Definitely an improvement on the tan interior that was clashing with the signal orange to my eyes.




The next step is to complete carpeting the front of the interior ( looking forward to the map pocket carpets ) and then move onto the door cards.

[jeremyg]

That does look great!

[Dougieboy1]

very nice indeed! Agree the black and the orange goes very well indeed a real Bumblebee.....

[defianty]

Looking tidy, nice work.

[AndrewSlater]

I've now fitted the remainder of the interior carpet. The front map pocket pieces weren't as difficult as I had feared.
As for the middle piece with the missing handbrake and gearlever cutouts, I took the plunge and cut them out using my old carpet as a reference. Garry (visualfx) had made a kind offer to edge the cutouts but I made the decision to try fitting a rubber edging strip around the handbrake cutout. It seems to have worked out quite well.



I am already learning that black carpets are a pain to keep clean!

My trunk carpet is also now fully fitted. I bought the Dansk ones and in the first instance they didn't really match my originals.
For example the pop fixings are set around 10mm further away from the carpet edge than the originals which means the excess fouls with the bonnet. Other difference were the VIN plate hole being too small as was the fuse plate aperture.
Luckily in all cases there was surplus material so I was able to replicate the original carpet sizing.



Next step door cards and front seats.