Project 25

[Ignatzcatz]

After a considerable amount of measuring and adjusting, we have the front mounts for the early s/w/b 911 trailing arms fabricated and in situ just waiting for final trimming prior to welding onto the torsion bar tube. Made out of 5mill plate with 10mil top and bottom brace plates, the 915 transmission crossmember, that I got from France, will bolt up to the bottom plate. This does make everything a bit tight so we'll clearance the torsion bar tube to give the front trans housing a bit more breathing space plus weld in an access plate under where the trans coupling is situated in order to enable the removal of the trans without disturbing the engine because there will be very little movement available for the motor when it's in the car. I bought some 930 rims for the car, really only wanting the 7's for the rear, however, it looks like I shall have to stick with the existing 6's as I don't want any alteration of the stock wheel arches or bodywork but I won't know for sure until we get all the hubs, bearings and brakes bolted back on to the arms. Some other little diamonds I got was a set of ram pipes to go on the Zeniths so I won't have to chop up the insides of my engine cover, a good thing indeed.
Off to the Lit Meet next week and will be taking a peek in at PMO carbs in Santa Monica, I might be tempted!!

[hot66]

Love it ... in a mad kind of way

[Boydyrs]

Love it keep updates coming.

[Ignatzcatz]

There has been a slight hiatus with my little outlaw project due to me cluttering off to the Lit Meet overseas plus assembling all the stuff for the swap meet and waiting for a promised piece of 911 to go into the car. I'm alluding to a section of 911 which my old mate Dave very kindly provided which is the rear crossmember that contains the triangular pieces for the rear motor mounts. We were going to fabricate the motor mount pieces but having the factory part makes life a lot easier. All that was required was to drill out the spot welds to release the mount sections. I had bought all the missing parts for the rear driveshaft and hub assemblies and putting them just loosely together on the car gave a good indication of where things would all be. The result was almost perfect with the rear wheel exactly in the centre of the wheel arch with sufficient clearance for a 7" wheel to be slotted in without any fouling, I would be limited to a 205 section tyre, a 225 might be just too big. And this isn't confirmed yet, the larger wheel might look a bit 'carlos fandango' and I'll stick with the 6's. So with the rear motor mounts in place, Steve will be able to complete the bending of the rearmost chassis tubing, he located the exact type, size of tubing as per the existing roll cage material, and with that welded in it should be a fairly straight forward matter of bolting every thing back on, sorting the plumbing and hooking up the electrics. We are aiming to have it running by the August KG meet at Goodwood. There may well be a considerable amount of detail work still to be completed but the KG meet is the definite target.

[neilbardsley]

I will continue to watch your progress with admiration and horror

Good luck

[Ignatzcatz]

Horror? when it was a bare shell I seriously considered chopping the roof. I chopped a beetle roof a few years back, took a fair bit of filler though.

[Ignatzcatz]

We're back on the case after having fun getting my SSE to get all it's gears, making new body mounts and starting on a new set of headers for my Cobra plus re-building my Winter push bike now with cantilever brakes, it's all go with my hot rod 356. My main man Mr. Kerti has been busy bending up the steel tubing to support the engine. You will see from the piccys that we ran the tubing to the rear tied into the rear spars of the existing roll cage so it's a continuous run. The rear motor mounts got chopped out of the 911 crossmember and spotted into the rear corners of the car and joined with further tubing. There is also additional tubing running from the rollcage tube by the B pillars through to the front suspension to obviate any torsional twisting. This whole deal is making for a very firm and rigid base for the extra power from the 2.4 engine, in fact it is easy to see that extra power can be accommodated should more power come my way. I'm already thinking 3.2, 3.6, turbos wahey steady tiger. The next little headache may well be the oil tank or rather where to locate the tank and filter housing. It looks like that there will be insufficient space available in the usual 911 siting in the inner offside wing so this means re-location to the front of the car and run a bunch of braided hoses with a motorsport type oil cooler and thermostat spliced in somewhere. This may mean the battery will need a new home but I believe those very compact Optima type are totally sealed and this could possibly sit behind the seats. Lots of details still to be sorted but we are high up on the fun factor.

[Ignatzcatz]

Sorry for the sh$?ty photos, still can't get my head around posting them full size, here are a couple more . . .

[Ignatzcatz]

Whilst I'm convalescing with my broken shoulder following a pot hole induced tumble off my bike, I thought I would post up a couple of oldies when I was sorting out my old beastie generally known as restoration that is before I started to get nasty and put on my outlaw overcoat. The bottom of the tank was Rotten, I gave it to my shotblaster and it came back looking like a cullender. I didn't fancy giving 600 or so buckeroos to Mr. Stoddard so this was the result, and it doesn't leek! It was a whole days worth of arc eye tigging but it did the job.

[Ignatzcatz]

And this was my little jig I snotted up to enable me to get underside to weld and paint as necessary. Actually the metal came from my local library that was chucking out some old shelf units. I wasn't exactly dumpster diving, I just happened to be in the right place at the right time to score all these steel bars. Total cost about £12 for some casters from Screwfix, nice.

[Ignatzcatz]

I have a problem with the bodywork. When I installed the 4 pot motor I noticed at the time that the rubber gasket which seals the engine tin-ware to the engine compartment metalwork didn't fit very well. In fact it didn't fit at all. There were some ripples on the rearmost metal in the engine compartment which indicated something may just be amiss although the exterior bodywork was perfect. In order to get the rubber gasket to fit in a more correct way I got my friendly porta-power out and commenced to jack out the rear offside wing area. The result of this was two fold. Firstly it did push the body out sufficiently to get the rubber gasket looking about right for a correct installation but secondly it did leave a rather large pile of filler on the garage floor. It had been pugged up to a good quarter inch and I had never noticed. Anyway engine in body reshaped, filled, primed painted, then we put the 915 gearbox and 2.4 engine in the car and when we fitted 7 x 16 rims with 205 rubber on the rear this old damage to the body reared it's ugly head once again. Although I had repaired the old damage best I could, with the big rims on the car the whack it had received way back became visually more apparent to the extent that a filler piece of metal is going to have to be inserted into the offside rear wing to compensate for the old damage. So from a line from the bottom of the rear window all the way down to the lowest part of the wing will be cut and a very thin pie shaped piece of steel will be tigged into the bodywork. Lots of hammer welding and lots more blocksanding and then the wheels will sit right in the arches, hopefully.
Some mechanicals and the motor and trans is now securely bolted in and the rear wheel camber and caster has been checked and adjusted to perfection. The driveshafts worked out to be a tiny 5mm too long and we are working out if we can reduce the length by a couple of mil each end but we probably will get some new ones made up from en24 steel and sell my old ones. The rubber bushes are in the bin to be replaced with Elephant bronze bushings with the ability to be greased and they slide like greased pigs down a helter skelter. We are currently in discussion about the oil tank, cooler and their location. I have a nice stock tank with oil filter attachment that I would prefer in the offside rear wing but space limitations may dictate a custom tank put into the front boot area plus a big cooler fed via aluminium lines. It's all down to what space there is available. Cooling the engine may be a problem considering the closeness of the fan to the bodywork of the car but what we are going to do is tantamount what the factory did then see what the result is then add or subtract as required. Last little bit and my Koni coil overs need new much softer springs - 150 lbs ordered and we are going to hang them on rose joints cos you'll be able to see 'em under the car - nice!

[roy mawbey]

There is much more to this job than meets the eye! Really impressed with your effort. You have had to make very big decisions all along and many would have folded up a long time ago. You have persevered so well to get to this stage and its amazing really you have reached this stage !!

That jig you made to tip up the car I can't quite work out though. I presume the two ends on the floor are just that two ends are pressing on the garage floor? The two wheels are for what? Extra strong fitments I guess on the ends taking the weight to stop it collapsing?

Really hope it goes well for the next jobs it must be very satisfying every time you get past each hurdle!!

Nice pics too!!!

Roy

[Ignatzcatz]

Thank you Roy, actually it hasn't been too bad, a lot of time has been spent just deliberating and working out problems before they occurred and there has been no time when I have had one of those 'OMG how the hell are we going to sort this out' type of moments.
Also the endeavour to use Porsche parts wherever possible has assisted the job in fact the way that some parts have just clicked into place has made me wonder if Messrs Porsche had considered this conversion themselves back in the day. Maybe not.
Now sorry to confuse you with my old restoration dolly. Under regular circumstances it did have four casters and was great for spinning around on the hardboard floor of my garage, I only removed the two in order to not have the apparatus plus car go skidding around the garage when I was applying some muscle to a particular job. Also what you cannot see is the top four posts where I welded on half round pieces of exhaust tubing which effectively cupped onto the torsion bar tubes. These pieces I originally secured to the torsion bar tubes with general exhaust clamps but this wasn't really needed as the weight of the car kept everything steady. There is not a vast amount of work to be completed now, mainly detail stuff and although I'll miss the big Goodwood meet in August, with a bit of luck I may just be rolling by the end of Summer.

[roy mawbey]

Thanks for advising that, it seems to work really well. I remember tipping up mine and standing in my then garage pit being able to weld in a sensible way. The under body work you have carried out apart from the modifications has turned out really well. The floor and torsion bar areas look as new. Great basis to have there.

Over the years I have often wondered if Erwin Komenda had ideas like you have regarding updates on the 356. He died in the mid sixties but not a word really just how much design he managed on the 911.
I would liked to have much more information about his engineering life. Maybe its out there I have never seen the book its in??

I do from time to time thank him for his classic design, still so happy with it after 50 years looking at mine.

Look forward to your next installment !!

Roy

[Ignatzcatz]

Yes I love all the Porsche historical stuff, even when he was designing kit for Herr Adolf. I think KS has got a good handle on this archive material.