DDK - Die Deutschen Klassiker

My 65 race car has been taking up way too much time and while its not running 100% it's going well enough to put it away for the winter and restart work on the 67S which has fallen well behind schedule. So starting over the next few weeks we hope to continue the recommissioning with a view that the car will be back on the road next spring.

So looking over paperwork and other bits and pieces trying to get refocused on the work in hand I came across some history on the car which I'd like to share with you.

Very cool - very cool car, too. Glad it's going to get the love it deserves!

Awesome!

The life these cars have had certainly adds to the charm. As Keith said, what a cool car and what a so very cool story.

Thanks for sharing

redrobin911 wrote:tackled the RHS torsion bar area and cut out the damaged section looking to repair and re-weld it back into place or make new if needed. Treated the bare metal work in this area then will close up and tackle the other side.

So repait started on the rear rignt inner wing with new section welded in, lower part (just seen at the bottom seam) needs a section fabricated and welded in. Rear of this need a very small bit of work to finish this side.

redrobin911 wrote:
The other area is on one side of the rear slam panel where it looks like there has been a botched repair to a previous collision. It looks very like the bumper over rider has caused the damage and pushed back the metal work in that area and also the tail light bucket. Plan after stripping back the paint will be to cut out the damage and make new. Once these areas have been addressed then the floor bottoms and rear inner panels will be painted.

Some progress on this area, note the rear right side light box is at present removed as it also needed some minor fabrication repairs, also new metal fabricated in this area of the rear quarter panels where it meets the slam panel and is now taking shape, still some metal shapeing to be done but the side panel of the light box needs welded in first before making it all fit. Rear panel has also had a fabricated repair as can be seen. Gaps are Ok but still a little to be done to get perfect.

Robin, have you reached any deicision in relation to repairing the holed engine case?

scalino65 wrote:Robin, have you reached any deicision in relation to repairing the holed engine case?

HI - Nick Fulljames is on the lookout for a good used case and is happy that if line bored to match the good half will be perfect. It's just that he hasn't turned up one as of yet. We will also try to repair the existing case half as can't make it any worse than is currently!! My man Johnny is confident that he can repair it so wei'll give it a bash then send it over to Nick and let him make the ultimate decision of which to use. Will post results here.

I expect you've seen this?.... http://www.early911sregistry.org/forums ... 01-02-case

While my man Johnny is merrily welding and shaping the metal work I had some time to finish the restoration of the gauges. Firstly the replacement bezels were not worth one F*%k, I knew the profile wasn't correct and I went to the trouble of making a case closer all to no avail as additionally the metal used for these was too heavy and nearly impossible to bend to the close the bezel over the case. So i just gave up with them and resorted to repairing the originals - I'm please I did this as the end result is what I was after - some patina - and using new bezels wouldn't have given me that.

Process - cases were cleaned in an ultrasonic cleaner, this doesn't bring them up like new, but does get rid of most of in dirt - to make beautiful they would need re-plated. IMO no point as, a, you can see them once fitted, b, the cost, c, didn't want that look for them. The inner of one of cases - needed panted, etch primer then rattle can white, the rest dont need painted. The existing chrome bezels were cleaned with WURTH industrial cleaner, fine scotchbrite and then polished with some 0000 polishing wire wool. This did leave some light scoring on some of the really rusty bezels but much better than they were. Some of the smaller dents were improved rather than removed - i don't have the skills of tools to do that. The black bezels under the chrome bezel were primed and sprayed with a Wurth satin black - wasn't sure exactly what the factory finish was but satin still looked to shiny to me so rubbed them up with some of the 0000 wire wool to matt them a little - this worked fine. Could have used a straight matt - but don't think that's correct. The inner bezels were mostly fine but some needed touching up - the wurth matt black is so close it may as well be perfect. If doing again I think i'd spray them all. Note the rear of these are painted white - flaky white paint that keeps coming off due to the age - so spray painting the back (where need) in white/off white before spraying the fronts in black.


Glass and the perspex where just cleaned in soapy water and polished with a microfibre cloth. Gauge fronts were OK so cleaned with warm water with a little kitchen detergent - only made a little difference - but cleaned them nonetheless. Some of the needles were dirty - just cleaned with q-tips and water - again didn't really help them much, Be careful these needles bend very easily and impossible to straighten. Some of the gauge fronts needed small areas painted so Q tips and Wurth matt black did the trick - hard to notice and much better than bare metal showing. Re assembly - all straightforwards but it's tricky getting the bezels back on - i used a old worn pair of pliers with rounded edges to straighten the edge if the bezel, a, to take out the marks from when they were removed and to also straighten and open up the bezel to allow it to be refitted to the casing. To close them up use a few round tools to gently push the edge over to close the case. Note these will never be as good or tight a fit as previously but you can get 80% - which IMO is good enough. If anyone wants more pics or details let me know.

They look great

Nice job Robin.

Robin gauges look great, what are your plans for the rest of your interior, race seats and light weight interior or will you be taking it back to original spec

Mark

MarkIII wrote:Robin gauges look great, what are your plans for the rest of your interior, race seats and light weight interior or will you be taking it back to original spec

Mark

HI Mark - the car has for the last 20+years been used in competition albeit sprinting, and hasn't been road registered either side of the pond in that time. I'm not the owner who's going to restore to orignal spec - that's for someone else to decide many years from now, so for the meantime we'll repair some small areas of damage, repaint as little of the car as we can get away with then it's going to get 100L fuel tank and strut brace up front, Garry at classicfix had made me a lightweight carpet set - sort of RS'is with the option to carpet the rear parcel shelf area or replace with a new one. We'll make a period rear only roll cage as I intent to just fit race harness. I've bough some BF torino seats off DDK and these will do until i can find (afford!) Sport recaro's or until some vintage race seats turn up. I'll retrim the interior, put in a new headlining and tidy it all up. I started in motorpsort many years ago and was quite successul in my 2.7RS rep and intend to drive/compete in hillclimbs again here in NI - some of the best hills in UK.

with other work being finished off I'm concentrating on trim and door frames so as less to do when car comes back from the paint shop. Recovered the door and window caps with vinyl recycled from my 74 carrera and incidentally the same vinyl used in 67. Very happy with the end results as they don't look too new and have a hint of patina.

Orignal vinyl looked wrong for year - or just not nice....




Recycled vinyl and trim look much better IMO.

I looked at this car in 2011 on a farm in deepest Devon, but the owner wanted more than I was prepared to pay, so I bought his pretty little red 1968 911 instead. For £18k I think.

I think both cars might be worth a bit more now.