DDK - Die Deutschen Klassiker

OK, here goes, a new thread covering the complete, but hopefully sympathetic, restoration of my 1973.5 911T. This is a numbers matching US car and as most of you will know, the .5 is there to denote that this is a late ’73 car and so has the CIS injection system. I am pretty familiar with CIS having had four SCs prior to this.

I love SCs and particularly liked a ’78 that I restored a few years ago – there's an old thread on that over on IB. But of course most classic 911 people need to have owned a long bonnet car at some point so I took the plunge. In 2014.

A fair bit of work was done on the car in 2015 but unfortunately a number of different life events has meant that it has been languishing in the corner of the bodywork guy’s workshop for few years. We have both agreed to be patient at different times…which is a good working approach for restoration projects I think! Luckily the stars have aligned and we are now getting back to it.

First thing to say is that, being in N.Ireland, no-one will have heard of any of the people doing work on this car! But as some of you know, N.Ireland has a love-affair with the 911, particularly for rallying. We are fortunate that there are still a few very talented bodywork and mechanical specialists tucked away, generally in rural locations. Both the bodywork guy and the engine and gearbox guy working on this car are active rallying, hill-climbing and sprint people. Thankfully not too far away either.

The rest of the spanner work, along with parts restoration, is DIY. I love working on 911s – everything about them is just so well made that it makes the work a pleasure rather than a chore. I hope this one goes together as easily as the ’78 I did. It’s fair to say that this is a much deeper project than the ’78 which was primarily a rolling restoration. I did at least buy with my eye’s wide open, although we have had to go in harder on the front end that I had hoped.

So anyway, here she is:



Originally shipped to Washington State, luckily that fine chap in Porsche Classic Germany was still giving out good info when I bought the car so I have good spec information. It was imported into the UK by a well-known North West (England) specialist who fettled it a bit, got it MOT’d and then sold it to the guy in London that I bought it off. It had been in fairly regular use, including multiple runs from London up to N.Wales where the owner had a place.

I picked the car up summer of 2014 and enjoyed it for a few months over here. Apart from a spongy front left shock, which I replaced early on, it ran pretty well. Certainly a different drive than the SC – it just feels lighter and more nimble. Also louder. But then there was very little metal between the cabin and the engine and zero sound deadening, so I guess it would be noisey! I did know about the paper doily rear parcel shelf when I bought the car, along with the holes in the floor and (most of) the other issues.

Anyway, this was bought as a project so at some point I had to take a brave pill and begin the strip down. Before I start with that, here are a few more shots of the starting point:




















So, there you go - a new story which I hope you will all enjoy and contribute to! One of my main reasons for 'going live' with this is that I am just getting stuck into parts restoration and I know I will have all sorts of questions in the coming few months on that alone, never mind the completion of the shell and the rebuild. So bear with my daft questions please and go easy on this previously IB guy!

More to follow!

Al

Lots of obvious issues there to be dealt with but also plenty under cover.

Here are a few shots of a very tired interior:









The cushion on the drivers seat was very carefully matched to the tan velour seat inserts (well, OK, I nicked it from the house). That was needed because there was very little padding left in the seat plus I have a bust disk in my back - one of the factors that has delayed this restoration.

So no carpet to speak of, knackered seats and a well cracked dashboard:



And some aftermarket door pockets (which actually fitted quite well) and the obligatory door speakers…



So here is my first question. The carpet on the back of the rear seat backs looks to be the only surviving original. I will look to match with that. But the vent/access to the rear gearchange knuckle is covered in what looks like salt and pepper - am I right that this was crackle finish black in '73 like the seat hinges?

To balance the tired seats and dash, the vinyl in the rear is all in pretty good condition and looks not to have been messed with.

More to come asap. Back to the daily grind tomorrow so most likely updates will come at the weekends or possible the odd random evening when work hasn't drained me of all mental faculties...

Cheers,

Al

Nice looking project start. Having driven a 73.5 the CIS motor is a nice one . What’s the original colour ? Sepia ?

On my car, the gear linkage cover inside has the vinyl covering with a piped edge .. mine is the solid type rather than the vented. To be honest I’ve never paid much attention to wether mine is original or not but it seems so

Looking forward to your workings over the next months and some DIY too.
Hope the usual problem areas are not too large when un-picked!

hot66 wrote:Nice looking project start. Having driven a 73.5 the CIS motor is a nice one . What’s the original colour ? Sepia ?

On my car, the gear linkage cover inside has the vinyl covering with a piped edge .. mine is the solid type rather than the vented. To be honest I’ve never paid much attention to wether mine is original or not but it seems so

Thanks James - yes, Sepia and it will be going back to that:



Probably a bit of a marmite colour but I like it and this will be a back to original project, albeit I will be dropping the rubber US bumperettes. It will have a stock front bumper, not the S one as above. For some reason it does have the S sill finishers though.

Graham - knew you would like the DIY component of this!

Cheers,

Al

check the original spec as a lot of the 1973.5 T ive seen all had the S trim pack

My (Viv before me) old 73.5 was originally Sepia but sprayed silver as some point

Looking forward to this thread

hot66 wrote:check the original spec as a lot of the 1973.5 T ive seen all had the S trim pack

OK, I’ll have a look. Would that have included an S bumper? I have already purchased a stock one and period correct fog lamps on the basis that it has a switch for front fogs on the dash.

But if we conclude that it is likely to have had an S front bumper then I’ll go that route.

Cheers,

Al

Hi Al
Looks like a nice project and what could be nicer than a 'Sepia' 2.4T (I have a soft spot for LHD T's)?
Love the seat trim and good call on the 'standard' bumper!
Looking forward to your future posts.

All the best
Ian F.

PS. Don't take this the wrong way but... "Welcome to the Brown Brotherhood"!

Thanks Ian,

I’ve realised that today I’ve come to work in a sweater that matches my tan desert boots… the brown thing must be catching!

Al

OK, some more photos of the starting point. This is the better news.























Someone had really gone to town with the grey underseal but generally at this stage it was looking as much like a clean-up of these areas than anything more drastic. But I knew other challenges were soon to appear.

More to follow on the less good news...

Al

Good on you, Al, will look forward to a bit of local name spotting as things progress

Looks like a great project

Think we may know what's about to appear from under the grey coating, but looks a fairly sound start point compared to some.

OK, so moving on to what’s needed on this restoration, the advert for the car provided the following advice from the UK specialist who brought the car in from the US (I think he bought it at auction).

Complete strip of vehicle, remove engine/gearbox and mechanical parts
Media blast to bare metal
attend areas of rust, currently known to rear parcel shelf, rear seat bases and right side floorpan
replace front wings
repaint to original colour so no trace of red
renew all rubber seals and trims
recondition/renew window trims and chrome brightwork
strip and seal fuel tank internally, paint external
refurbish FUCHS wheels
new tyres x 4
retrim seats to original pepita central cloth, and renew cushions
replace carpets
new dashtop cover
repair sunroof
install air conditioning
Replace radio and speakers with original spec

Nothing too scary there eh? So I get stuck into the stripping down…starting with the interior to get a better look at the rear seat areas, parcel shelf and floor pan.



OK, looks grimy but at least someone has done a bit of work there before. If this wasn't a Porsche resto you might even think of cleaning this all up and recoating but that's not our game.



I’m quickly concluding there is not much save-able here…



And the parcel shelf confirms it – the whole area from the front of the seat bases to the back of the parcel shelf will have to be replaced.







So, no surprises there really – I had seen much of that when I went to collect the car, albeit not exposed and obvious to quite this degree! I do wonder how this car ever got an MOT but I guess all of this was covered up and the tester didn’t look up and under the parcel shelf when they were doing their general inspection.

Interesting rust ‘profile’ though – I’m thinking maybe this car sat somewhere outside with no rear screen or possibly a very leaky rear screen and so rusted from the parcel shelf downwards?

Stripping then moved onto the floors. I was also pretty relieved that there was nothing more here than suggested in the original advert and that I’d seen from lifting the carpets. The rear floors are actually pretty good and the rust in the seat bases does not extend down the kick plate between seats and floor.



I must admit when I started removing the sound deadening on the rear floor I was wondering if I was going in too hard – all that original factory finish being scraped off. But there was the odd spot of rust so I concluded it was best to expose the whole floor.




Unfortunately, it was a different story on the front floors so again this whole area will have to come out. I will at least be OK with a half-floor panel here rather than the whole thing.





Some very dodgy repairs around the pedal box – the accelerator pedal was connected to a plate that was barely welded to the floor.





By the way, what are these little opening for? Drainage if the car gets flooded? I’ve always wondered!





So that's the picture for the cabin - a fair chunk of new metal needed but available from different suppliers as pretty large panels covering parcel shelf, rear seat bases and front floor.

Those repairs have been done already so photos to follow. More to come on the general strip-down first.

Cheers,

Al

At this stage I hadn’t removed any wings or bumpers but the initial inspection from below was that the rear arches, kidney bowls and b-pillar areas were in great shape, still with original coatings and sepia brown paint. Sorry to say that I can’t find photos of these areas but I will take some new shots the next time I am up at the car.

The condition of the rear arches is one of the things I find challenging on projects like this – what to leave and what to remove. I guess most of the heavyweight restorations on here that end up with the talented Mr Carter or somewhere like Chestertons have been fully stripped to bare metal shells but in this case I’m currently planning to leave some original coatings where I can. The engine bay is also not in bad condition, for example, but of course the underside of the parcel shelf and rear seats will be replaced so I still have to make a final decision on what to leave and what to strip.

Anyway, on to the front which is where this car starts to get more challenging. I could already see from below that there had been some dodgy repairs to the lower edges of the front tub but it wasn’t until I got the bumper and wings off that the true extent of this horrendous bodging became clear!











I’ll just leave this there for today and let the enormity of that welding sink in…it’s only 10.15 am and I need a stiff drink.

A