another 73T Targa restoration thread

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A few pics to provide a little more detail about the repairs to the right side heel board area, and adjacent floor section and sides. The corrosion, was extremely minor. You can see the areas removed to get back to solid uncorroded metal.

The heel panels had had previous 'MOT' repairs Interestingly, these were done by an Indy when I first got the car, and were not very pretty. In those days, I knew nothing, so wouldn't even have looked at them. Now I know every square centimetre of the metal work. Luckily, the welded on plates were just beneath the figure-8 shaped embossing, and access is limited by the rear tube, so I cut everything out below the figure-8 but leaving a little bit on the sides to aid relocation of my heel panel repair sections. The metal around the grounding bolt was toast, so cut that out too but that was carefully brazed onto the new panel in the original location before fitting the panel (hope that makes sense).

The right inner side member had two small holes as shown in the pic, but was otherwise completely solid. Those holes were opened up back to completely solid metal and then new metal was TIG'ed in.

The right outer side member and centre tunnel had pin-holes adjacent to the heel panels, so those were cut out back to completely solid metal and then replaced (see earlier part of thread for end results).

[deano]

Some more repairs, step by step... this time a section of the floor that was too pitted for my liking. I chose to dispense with the U-shaped slot in the original panel, mostly because it did not feature in the replacement floor section that I used (cheap fr. Design911)....

This was tricky due to the section including the raised profiles, but meticulous attention to detail with pliars at the joints prior to welding, and hammer and dolly before and after tacking one side, enabled quite a seamless fit. The section was held with a couple of strong magnets. You can imagine how many times I dropped it under the car and had to 'go fetch'

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continued....

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Repair to right floor corner. A bit more tricky this one. Formed with a hammer and dolly to get the shape as close as possible. Took a long time and a few iterations of repair panel to get a good shape. TIG'ed this one in from under the side of the car.

Also shows the tools used, card templates and sheet metal prototype. The precise shape was 'homed in' by fitment testing and trimming back using my trusty and brilliant mini grinder with 2-inch flap discs (Ebay sellers all in China - but really great products!!).

The optimum shape of the repair was done with a little bit of hammer and dolly post-welding.

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Heel panel repairs (some images shown on first page of thread)...

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More heel panel / left footwell repair images...

Used TIG welder to braze the original grounding bolt, including its brass surround, onto the surface of the new panel, exactly as per the original.

Used Silicon Bronze C9 Tig Welding Filler Rods 1.6mm from Ebay seller: tiggawelding for this.

Tacked the bolt head onto the other side for extra strength.

[deano]

For give me guys, for I have sinned - its been ages since my last report - I've been too busy working and occasionally working on the car....

I finished the heel panels way back in early December, and painted them with my preferred beige Hammerite, just continuing with what was available when I started 20 years ago That concludes all of the interior metalwork. I will probably rub down the beige and go over it with an epoxy paint before the interior goes back in....

The front, and doors were fettled into a good position by Barry as per an earlier report.

Since then, I made a start on replacing the sills and kidneys, and rear quarter and B-post repairs on both sides. Actually, both sills were new, and the left B-post was new, from the previous owner. Anyway, we could see that the left side A-post base had rust holes, and the sill was not in the perfect place, and the Targa hoop reinforcement and kidney panel on the same side needed work. There were a few holes under the Targa glass too and a few old patches and bruises, so decided to plump for a whole new rear quarter with included B-post.

So then.... front half of left rear quarter and whole B-post except the latch section cut off....left sill cut off... left kidney off.... left jack reinforcement off... jack tube off .... 90% of the inner/centre sill off (just the 10% behind the jack reinforcement/inner wing section to remove - how?!).

All these parts now on order from Porsche, except the correct inner sill which is NLA but apparently will be available soon... so plumped for a Dansk 1.5mm thick inner sill (heavy bugger!) which is absolutely identical to the original ones except that the jack tube hole is slightly wider (presumably made that way to allow the jack tube to be fitted 'after' the inner sill goes on, rather than before).

Over the cold winter months, I also managed to test fit/check, and restore where needed, lights, all of my interior parts.. carpets, rear seats, seat belts, parcel shelf, rear panels/caps, door caps, door bins (all re-covered with correct early or 72/73 vinyl from GarryFX) and test fit half of the new OEM Targa rear glass seal (gave up after a few days...).

That just about brings me up to date... now for the visuals...

[deano]

Rear lights, repaired with formed aluminium sections, secured with metal epoxy....

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Painted the front and rear lights with chrome paint. Test samples showed that a black base was absolutely necessary to achieve a good chrome effect... 2 light coats necessary over black or 8+ over grey primer !!

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Had to rebuild the roof, which I had disassembled for recovering many moons ago... from scratch, including repairing both latches with new Stoddard latch pins...

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Latch repair - used an 8mm socket and hammer to slide the lever into position over the new pin....

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Date correct set of Fuchs acquired from someone very well known in the Porsche business and restored/polished by Prestige Alloys? all a long time ago.... perhaps before anodising service was available, I don't know.

Actually, the restoration was paid for by a wheel cleaner chemical manufacturer, after I complained that their product had ruined the surface coating of the wheels they agreed to pay for them to be fixed (about £100 per wheel I think) - it was cool in those days to polish them like this, and I had no idea that they were anodised at the time, or what that even meant - they were just wheels to me

Painted the engine bay a long time ago too using a can of paint made from the paint code Met Blu 334. You can see the contrast with the lighter coloured original paint under the parcel shelf - which also gives you an idea of how solid this car is/was... (the marks are glue residue from the sound deadening...

Here is quite a cool picture of its maiden journey through NE Spain when I purchased it, somewhere around 1999... some thug tried to swipe the Porsche badge during the night while parked outside of this hotel. Luckily, one pin held on for dear life but, unluckily, the free pin scribed a lovely big circle in the paint!

[deano]

Coming back to the present time.. ish...

Some interior recovering.... and even some sewing on the industrial walking foot machine.... at long last...

[deano]

The fluting on the rear panels was the most time-consuming part... at least for the first one...

For all of these panels, I was very careful to replicate exactly the cuts and fit of the originals, and kept one panel of every pair complete for reference before deconstructing and recovering the second ones...

[deano]

Completed, before seatbelt cutout...