DDK - Die Deutschen Klassiker

Ferry Man wrote:So, my first job was to start buying some panels for the rebuild.

There are a couple of schools of thought when it comes to eradicating rust.
One way is to carefully cut out the offending sections, shape and contour replacement patches, weld in the repair and grind down the welds.
That needs to be done well to make sure the rust doesn’t return and obviously considerable care must be taken to ensure the fit and finish matches the old.
Barry is a fine exponent of this method and I’m a big fan of his work.
In the hands of such an artisan the repairs can be as good as new.

The other method is to remove corroded panels and replace with brand new.
This provides a guarantee of complete rust elimination and means that panel fit should be perfect.
Using the first method is cheaper on parts (and helps retain more original steel) but invariably demands more labour.
Whilst buying and replacing full panels can be pricey, hopefully some of that cost can be offset by less hours billed.

I settled on largely replacing panels.
That was driven by the realisation that the shell was pretty rotten.
Understandable on a 40 year old UK car but nevertheless, bad, even for a RHD car used on our salted roads.

Guided by Nick Moss I also decided to only use genuine Porsche panels.
That would ensure the quality and fit of the components was as good as original.
And hopefully would demand less work in fitting.
Plus it seems appropriate to replace any discarded parts of your old Porsche with new bits of Porsche.
I didn't want to end up driving around in a Dansk.

I was presented with a shopping list for panels that ran to a full A4 sheet.
I've spent a lot on metal pressings.
Here's some of the bigger ones....

Inner front wing:

Another inner front.
And an inner rear.

I struggled to get all the stuff I needed as not everything was available.
This inner wing had to be a later cabriolet inner (we'd have to modify that later).

Another inner rear. Another problem.
This too was out of stock at Porsche and no one in the UK had one.
I ended up getting this from Rose Passion.

Really tremendous Paul
The car and the thread, you never do things by halves do you?

Don't you just love it when things are done, well............right!

More parts of the jigsaw...

A pair of front wings:

And a pair of rear quarters:

Only the floor and roof left to go, Paul!

Great work, keep it coming.

You realise that if this was a Cobra or a D-Type Jag, the bits you cut out would be built up into another car! Mmm, there's a plan...

decapman wrote:Really tremendous Paul
The car and the thread, you never do things by halves do you?

Quite right, and indeed everything seems to be both sides, not just one side.......just the roof and floor to go then.

Northy wrote:Only the floor left to go, Paul!

Highfield wrote:[...just the floor to go then.

I guess many of you have purchased floor repair sections.
Well, I bought a floor. Full stop.

Will there be anything left of the original shell apart from the vin plates?

Nige - glad you asked that as we don't want to get in to the debate of how much of the original needs to be there for the car to be 'original'

This will be a great car at the end, and is a keeper for Paul so we don't need to worry about that

Looking forward to seeing how all these factory pieces fit together as one.