Back in beige

[jamie]

Am sitting in a hotel room in Frankfurt going through all the rubber bits I need to buy for the car.

If you're reading this and contemplating restoring your own car, don't overlook the cost of all the new seals you will need. There are a lot of them and the price adds up to another Big Number on the List of Big Numbers.

In fact, if you're reading this and contemplating restoring your own car, just don't. Sell it to some idiot on eBay, and use the money to buy a nice used Cayman. Or a diesel Golf.

[shoestring7]

MT of this parish can help you with the locks. Try a PM although he may be on holiday this week.
C.

[911hillclimber]

Leave the hot rod alone and by a fun modern?
Just done that.
911 will stay as it is unless I get really bored over the winter, cost to paint etc so expensive, even DIY.

My 'new' BMW z4 auto is so very nice...

If 911s were not worth so much, would the cost of parts and services be less?

[jamie]

No - parts were always expensive. Porsche has had to tool-up to remanufacture them, or store them for 50 years, so they charge accordingly. I remember when I owned my 72T, having to buy a new indicator stalk rubber and being shocked that it was 50 quid. Now that just seems about right in comparison to other stuff.

When I bought this car, the dashboard had quite a big crack in it. On disassembling the interior, I found the dash pad was completely split and the vinyl extremely brittle to the point where, if you press it with your finger, it shatters. I think at some point it has lived somewhere very, very hot.

I tried to re-glue the pad, but nothing would hold it. Then I briefly looked into making one from pourable closed-cell foam out of a fibreglass mould, working on the assumption that if I made one, I could make more and sell them on to recoup the cost.

I've kind of come to the conclusion that I should just pony-up for a nice new one. Lots of cash, but it's a key part of the car - very noticeable when not good.

As I've said in the past - this would be a lot easier to stomach with a 911!

[Robind]

Am sitting in a hotel room in Frankfurt going through all the rubber bits I need to buy for the car.

If you're reading this and contemplating restoring your own car, don't overlook the cost of all the new seals you will need. There are a lot of them and the price adds up to another Big Number on the List of Big Numbers.

In fact, if you're reading this and contemplating restoring your own car, just don't. Sell it to some idiot on eBay, and use the money to buy a nice used Cayman. Or a diesel Golf.

Keep the faith......we all have these days

[inaglasshouse]

I've kind of come to the conclusion that I should just pony-up for a nice new one. Lots of cash, but it's a key part of the car - very noticeable when not good.
As I've said in the past - this would be a lot easier to stomach with a 911!

... but even less easy to stomach with a RHD car (dash pads for those seem to fetch really outlandish sums)...

On the bright side, when it's done you'll have a car that:
- has been properly done by you, to your tastes, with your effort and memories attached
- should last another 50 years
- isn't depreciating
I reckon man maths can easily turn that into a sensible proposition. Could be worse!
Cheers, Richard.

[sladey]

Am sitting in a hotel room in Frankfurt going through all the rubber bits I need to buy for the car.

If you're reading this and contemplating restoring your own car, don't overlook the cost of all the new seals you will need. There are a lot of them and the price adds up to another Big Number on the List of Big Numbers.

In fact, if you're reading this and contemplating restoring your own car, just don't. Sell it to some idiot on eBay, and use the money to buy a nice used Cayman. Or a diesel Golf.

I had similar thoughts at 11:30 one night shortly after I sheared a bolt holding the steering rack guard in place. Why don't I buy a sodding Mondeo, why don't I buy a sodding golf.

The next morning at a meeting a woman came up to me and asked if the cool porsche outside was mine as her photographer friend thought it was amazing. Then on the way to work a "yoof" stopped and openly applauded how cool my rusty car was. f*** yer Mondeo, f*** yer golf.

[jamie]

I know, I know. It is worth it. I love these cars. Was walking around Goodwood Revival car park this weekend looking at the masses of old cars and the only things that made my heart really skip were 1930s things, and old 911s (and 912s). There's lots of other cool stuff, faster, sexier, rarer, more exotic stuff, but my heart is in these.

As this project has progressed, I've noticed something I'd never have expected would happen. I wanted the look of this car to be fast and loose - bare-bones matte silver paint, no carpet, headliner of a wallpapered world map and door cards made from hessian marajuana sacks.

Somewhere along the line, I changed course and seem to be building a very mild hot rod with a pronounced hat-tip to originality. I'm not sure where that change started - it wasn't the engine. It wasn't the welding. I think it may have been when the silver paint experiment failed. I realised that I wanted the car done, and as with any project it's much easier to build to plan (or the Porsche parts diagrams).

Sad, perhaps. I'd have liked this car to be a bit more interesting, but I figure that if I at least get it presentable, registered and on the road, I can do that stuff later on.

[jamie]

Here are some cars from Goodwood. I was working for a manufacturer and had a nice simple brief to cover the whole event and get as much brand stuff in there as possible. On Sunday morning I went to the pre-tax car park for a stroll on the pretense of shooting some of the on-brand stuff parked in there.

Over to the edge of the site I found this sweet sweet thing:



It turned-out to be a 911, but a 68 - the same year as my car. If the interior had been restored, it had been done beautifully, so I took lots of pictures through the windows as reference for how my car needs to go back together - things like the way the B-pillar vinyl meets the rear arch inner panel etc. Geeky stuff, but if you're going to do it, go geeky or go home. It really was lovely.

Further infield were some other 911s - a couple of them on German plates. Germans always keep their old cars nice. I think it must be the stringent TuV test. Or perhaps national pride.

There's a kind of fit and finish 'feel' with car manufacturers - Ferraris are finished a certain way, Lamborghinis another, English stuff is all finished kind of the same depending on era, and Porsche do things a bit like Mercedes, and stayed about the same until the 996. Some of it has a bit to do with sharing parts suppliers, I'm sure. Bit of an intangible concept that's too difficult for me to explain properly, but I expect most of you reading this will know exactly what I mean. This honest-looking car had a bit of that going on:



Then I headed back over to the main entrance, passing a dealer that had a first-year 912 listed at 90k. I've tried to write this next bit diplomatically, but I can't manage it, so I'm not going to bother... If you're going to advertise a 912 at ninety thousand quid (and then tell me, to my face, that it's one of the best in the country), it better be a really nice car. As my dad says, never bullshit a bullshitter. I won't explain what was wrong with it because it's not the place - the list would be massive, and if Mike or Nick Moss were to read through it, they might catch fire.



That said, he did have two 356s at more reasonable money. I've been looking, casually, at 356s - I'd really like one at some point. One was a C Cab, which is not my thing at all, and the other was an A coupe, which is. It was OK, nice colour, but I lost interest when I noticed overspray on the door catches. If I went to buy a new Merc or Audi for the same sort of cash, and it had paint on the door locks, I'd return it through the showroom window.

Here's some other things I shot on my phone:

[shoestring7]

I suspect Bo Hare's board-tracker is one of the most photographed objects on the planet at the moment!

>C

[AndrewSlater]

"Then I headed back over to the main entrance, passing a dealer that had a first-year 912 listed at 90k."

I had commented about that car previously when I first saw it on eBay, and I have now seen it in the flesh at the Revival on the Friday. I won't comment - but definitely not my cup of tea.

There was another '66 912 (in Bahama yellow ) parked in the pre-73 car park only a few meters behind this stand with a for sale sign in it. For my money it was by far the better car and a lot less money.

[jamie]

Spent the day fitting some more interior stuff. The carpet set that came with the car is mostly in and looks nice. I sort of went off it this morning and decided I wanted a lightweight-style carpet set, but I started glueing it in anyway at it turned-out good. Before fitting the carpet, I covered the entire rear area and the area behind the front floorboards (where the wheel arches are) in latex-backed sound-deadening felt, which I bough from Woolies: http://www.woolies-trim.co.uk/p-1384-so ... -felt.aspx

I I mentioned previously, there's been a lot of mission drift on this project. The original vision was an ever-popular stripped-out lightweight road racer spec. Now the spec is more Lux-y - the car is full of this felt stuff, plus acoustic mat and a thick black acoustic pad in the engine bay. Even the Dinitrol underseal I used has alleged acoustic suppressant characteristics. The change of direction happened when I bought my VW Caddy van - unlike my nice Transit, that it replaced, it had an open bulkhead and was wildly noisy on the motorway. I couldn't hear the radio over 40mph and was finishing journeys tired and on edge. So I sound-proofed it using stuff I bought from Classic Acoustics in Telford. Amazing difference - much happier vibe inside the cabin now. I drive faster, longer and arrive happier. I remembered that in my old 72T I couldn't hear the radio either, so it must have been equally as noisy. It was fun at the time, but I'm older now, and I have two less cylinders with which to make beautiful music.

In other news, I'm missing my passenger front floorboard - does anyone know where I can find a template to make a new one? Even a photograph with a couple of dimensions would help.

[jamie]

Some fotties below. My passenger-side rear interior panel is totally shagged - the plastic arch bit has gone brittle and is cracking. The driver-side one is OK. Replacements come in pairs, of course.





Mmm...

[nrc914]

It's looking great Jamie - must be nice starting to get it back together!

[911hillclimber]

This is the best bit!

As an aside:
What are the two round hole/features above the rear tunnel above the gear-shift hatch?

and

Why did Porsche have a vented cover there anyway?