Wot, not another '79 Targa resto thread

[Gary71]

I guess you are doing the rebuild yourself?
What machining are doing? I can recommend Rob Walker in Oxford for head and case work.

[911hillclimber]

I tried the tarpaulin floor covering once and found it very hard to get the dry paint dust off it for the next painting step.
Tarp was cheap plastic which may not of helped...

Engines are easy compared to bodies!

[PeterK]

Thanks for the tip Gary.
I'll do as much as I can at home. Rebore and replate is being outsourced, but until I measure up I don’t know what else I’ll be needing. For example, at 80k miles I’m assuming the valve guides will need replacing but will the valves themselves be serviceable.
Peter

[Gary71]

I had the guides replaced, seats recut and heads refaced. I also fitted new valves as they all measured a little small. Expensive, but felt I was compromising too much if I didn’t do them.

[PeterK]

Here we are, a bright New Year, and the happy day has arrived – the car is back (or what’s left of it). Actually, although it did have a couple of surprises for me, overall, thankfully it is now sound.

Anyway, while the car was away we made preparations for its return. I present to you, my clean garage …history suggests that it won't stay like this for long



Had to move what I could out, clean and vacuum the floor (I did use my old garage vac, not the house one – there are limits to what SWMBO will find amusing), move the rest over to one side and paint the floor. Two coats of course. Then I had to move everything to the other side and paint the second half. SWMBO was not amused to find out that while she was showering on Xmas morning, I snuck into the garage to give the second side its second coat. Well we were going to be away for a couple of days and time was pressing. Then everything was removed from the shelves, cleaned and put back.
The slightly darker paint on the floor is where I’ve had to touch it up already – top tip – when dragging a bike lift around, first make sure that the stabilising screws are fully wound up .

Unfortunately, while I was welding next-door’s gate actuating bracket back together, SWMBO poked her head in to my man-cave, and well, some explaining about the new looking, shiny things followed. Partially in my defence, some of the big things – engine stand, press and bike lift (behind the engine stand) belong to a mate, and I’m ‘looking after them’ for him, as he is space poor and I need to use them. She did notice the filter on the wall.




So moving along, what did we find today.
Well – damage from the processing and transport appears to be limited to a bent rear end of the OS sill / lower rear wing.

This should easily bend back, maybe with a little persuasion.

Unexpected damage – there was some p1$$ poor panel beating to the OSR wing at some point. I had no idea this was here, and that’s the beauty of getting the paint stripped back to bare metal.


Question – how am I meant to deal with these.

This is a very blurred photo of the rear seat squab – on each side there is a round indentation, with a horse shoe shaped gap / hole / whatever.

The exact same ‘holes’ are present on all of the indentations in the floor.


Do I weld them up, just seam seal, or is something now missing, following the heat treatment ?







Now onto the previously unknow issuettes

NSR corner – there is some unwanted ventilation here, right in the corner. A patch to follow.


NSR wing top – a solitary hole


And the view from underneath



Just above where the fuel pump and accumulator sit, there is some thin-ness


And again, from under the wing



The NS door has a couple of pin holes, just above the bottom edge


I’m not sure whether the mirror was originally in a different place, whether it is a later door, or someone just had fun, but clearly a different mirror has been close to, or planned for, here before. The 'current' holes don't look completely factory. Should I move the mirror back ??


Again, this was well hidden under the paint before stripping.




OS sill – right at the front, immediately behind the wing closing panel


Outer edge of floor, right next to the OS sill flange



I cheekily got most (missed a piece) of my engine tin stripped at the same time. Reckon this piece may need some TLC.


And finally, my garage bitch Alexcxcxcx and I got some plastic sheeting up to keep the overspray off the walls and my ‘stuff’. I’m using bulldog clips, left over from doing the headlining on my old Lotus, to hold the rolled up plastic out of the way until needed.


A big shout out to Alexcxcxcxcx (long story) , for his help today. We got the car back into the garage, put up the sheeting and he was due to help me cut the outside of my hedge. It needs someone to stand watch and slow the traffic, as I’m cutting just around a bend and the silly bu$$ers don’t slow, despite it being a 30mph limit. That was the plan, although I only managed about 6ft before Jonny of this parish called. By the time I had got out again, Alexcxcxcx had finished the hedge .

Away for a few days now, but plans are to attend to the few areas needing welding, clean the shell and epoxy prime over the next 2 weeks.

[911hillclimber]

So, not at all bad!
Those odd cut outs in the floor holes are simply knocked flat and body sealer to finish off prior to paint etc.
I think they are jigging holes used by the factory.

[PeterK]

Thanks Graham


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[Gary71]

Could have been a lot worse. Result.

The holes in the floor are drain holes as the shell were fully dipped with them open them bashed flat and seam sealed.

[PeterK]

Bashing & sealing to follow


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[Darren65]

Excellent Peter.....exciting times to follow!

[Jonny Hart]

Looks like your LH door is from a LHD. Mirror is further back on a passenger door.

[PeterK]

SWMBO’s out, so a sneaky visit to the garage this afternoon. Had intended to do a lot this week, but life and a bit of work conspired to get in the way and this is the first time I’ve actually touched the poor SC since it returned from stripping.

So, first for my attention was the NS door, and I noticed additional damage, either from during processing or transport, to the top part of the rear edge.



So, following a bit of straighty, straighty, firstly with pliers and then hammer and fdolly, we got to here


Then a bit of weldy, weldy and we had this


While the hot machine was running, I plugged the 2 pin holes and ground them back


The lower edge of the door looks like it has been too close to something. Unfortunately this is double thickness, without access to behind, so will need some filling.


Then on to the ‘spare’ mirror holes. As Jonny remarked, this looks like originally a LHD driver’s door, where the mirror would have been further forward. The holes had been filled previously – well when I say filled, a disc had been tack welded into each of the three holes, so to reduce the risk of water getting in and under the paint, I fully welded them. The metal was already distorted, so after grinding they are not completely flush and certainly not invisible



The OS door was in reasonable condition. There were a few bent seam edges, most likely transport damage, but these soon succumbed to the hammer and dolly.



Onto the engine lid. Here I needed to weld up a few pin holes in my previous plug welding of the various ‘no longer needed’ holes. A bit of grindy, grindy and that’s another panel ready.



I then played with the OSR wing. You’ll recall from my previous post, that a considerable dent had been very poorly bashed and consumed a lot of filler. The finished job was very good, as I hadn’t detected any damage. Anyway, it took quite a lot of bangy, bangy, but for a first time dent bashing exercise, I’m very pleased. Still needs some more fettling, but even now just a thin skim of filler would suffice, rather than the kilo that would have been needed before.



I then plugged the 2 pin holes on the outside of the NSR wing and a couple on the inside of the OSR inner wing. However my torch went flat, so grinding and linishing can wait for another day.

[PeterK]

So, only a couple of visits to the garage recently (including today), but been a tad busy, sailing, doing work (bad habit, must try harder to avoid it) and trying to finish the en-sute decoration (god only knows how long it would take me to build a stone garage !).

Got the hot machine out and attended to the small hole in the OS outer floor are, visible from the gaping hole in the sill (cut out so that the heater silencer didn’t get destroyed during stripping).
Firstly, a view from below


And one through the sill before tidying up


Also patched the small hole at the front end of the OS sill – I only replaced the rear third on this side of the car, as most of the sill was in good condition.


Having finished (so I thought) all of the welding on the main shell, I set about tidying the garage, moved all of the loose panels, doors, etc, out of the garage, and then mounted the car back onto the cradle using the suspension mounts, rather than wooden blocks. I did make some spacers to set the cradle brackets slightly away from the body, to get more paint coverage under them, but it seemed to take an inordinate amount of time to get from this


…. to this



I decided that the air extraction filter would work better if I removed the polythene sheeting from in front of it (see in background of photo above). The filter is removeable, but I’ve no idea yet of how effective it will be as a filter, not how quickly it will get blocked with paint. Time will tell. Also not decided whether I have enough light. I replaced 4 of the fluoro tubes with 6' LED battens to give more light, more safely, but the new environmentally friendly poly-sheeting is not as see-through as the older stuff. May have to cut out patches and stick in some clear sheeting.


Did I mention that I had finished the welding – well I was premature.

I spied another sneaky little rust hole, just above the earthing point above the OS torsion tube.


Forgot to take a photo of the patched area, but I’m sure that you can imagine it.


As a brief interlude, I had been given a big compressor, but when I ran it, it wouldn’t build any pressure. The tank holds pressure better than my existing compressor, and I might just use the tank of the recent addition as an additional air reservoir. Assuming that the issue might just be the reed valves, I took the head off and cleaned them up. Spinning the compressor over by hand, it now seemed to be generating some suck up the inlet, which it didn’t before. I put it all back together, hit the power switch, and promptly blew the master switch in the house. I checked things out, reset the master fuse and tried again. Successfully blew the main house fuse a second time, so maybe the motor is bigger than my circuits can cope with. It may be a dodgy connection, but as no fuses blew when the compressor was not under load (leaking reed valve), my gut feel is a motor size issue. Any clever sparky types have any better ideas ?


I intended to finish the day here


But decided to re-arrange the garage slightly. The car now sits across the garage, albeit on a slight diagonal, to give better access all around for painting. That required moving the table and a whole pile of junk around, but we’re finally ready to clean prior to epoxy priming.

[Jonny Hart]

Is the compressor tripping an MCB? If so, then you may have to swap the MCB for a type C or D. These are designed to cope with the start up current of inductive loads like motors. I had to do this on ground source heat pump in my house which also has a powerful compressor motor.

[PeterK]

Thanks Jonny
Yes, it is / the main one. I’ll look into options for changing.
Peter


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