A sort of Barn(es) find

[jtparr]

Never tire of these resto threads..fantastic effort Matthew....
Looking forward to much more

Jonathan

[Bruce M]

Just to say...

Very much enjoying this tale

[Parkview911]

Thanks Gents.
Glad you're enjoying this.
Quite cool to look back at what you have done rather than contemplate what lies ahead.
My hope is that when I get up to present day and the real puzzles start appearing (electrics, MFI, suspension....) you lot will be around to offer some wisdom.

[Parkview911]

The next instalment should be the RHD door lock post reconstruction.
Doing this retrospectively, and accurately, means one has to be on top of one's filing with regards photography.
Four different phones, two cameras, the produce of which is spread across two macs, one non-functioning hard drive and four cloud-based storage accounts.
It's a mess.
Some of the sites record the date of the upload and not the date of creation (reminds me of an experience at Home Affairs) .
#firstworldporscherestorationforumproblems

i apologise in advance if the visuals do not match the copy.
Although those unlucky enough to work in advertising will know this to be an amateur mistake

When I removed the lower quarter I kept the seam onto the lower door lock post intact.
I think this is also a perfect example of how not to cut the lower fender to access the kidney.
Hopefully Lord Commander Carter can shed light on this....although proper, righteous men like him don't fanny about with cutting off the lower portion; they masterfully unpick the entire rear quarter.

The line I cut pretty much runs parallel to the bottom of the sill. But when you reeled it, the bead and the distortion that comes from welding (inevitably with my skills) works in 3 dimensions to affect the curve of the fender. On later cars you have the shape of the hips to cover for a little distortion, but with the slab sides of a narrow body car there is very little room for error. Gas welding would allow you to use very little material, and thus less heat, with the added benefit of being able to 'hammer' the weld flat. Pity I'm a muppet with a MIG.





In hindsight I should have unpicked the seam at the edge of the lower door lock post and patched the lot.
School fees.



Silly. Bigger patches are so much easier to work with.
But this is the kind of job where taking the time to make accurate cardboard patches really pays off.



















I left a lot of steel on this piece for welding, to help with the heat.
Next time I wouldn't try to be so clever so early on in my illustrious welding career.





The step



The two together.



To help with keeping the right lines I traced the line of one of the doors (original with original hinges).
So while the door lock post was decidedly untrustworthy, the door was still true.
This helped me to shape the pieces of the lower door lock patch.



Cut down to size.



Tacked in.





The whole circus



And a gratuitous shot of a door gap.



I would love to suggest that the overbite between the edge of the door and the line of the sill was an intentional R detail. Alas, just lack of attention to detail. Rectified later.

[Parkview911]

Here is the result.
Not bad, but far too much effort for said result.
Notice the burn through on the corner.....
Would have been much simpler to run straight cuts with a bigger patch. Hindsight.
A shrinker/stretcher would make making this patch out of fewer pieces possible. But more on that later.





Still, this path was made with nothing special in the way of tools.
A grinder, a solid piece of scrap with an edge, a vice, a hammer and a drill.

Metal is a simple thing: you can cut it, bend it, shrink it or stretch it.
In my limited experience, cock-ups are usually a result of operator error and not material error.

Here's the quarter patch reattached.

[911hillclimber]

I hired a spot welder to do mine, but welding from the inside/out with the potent MIG will allow a smooth face for the door seal to nest, so I would think the method has some advantages.

I did all my body welding by gas and spot welding as that was all I had.

[jamie]

Involved! Fascinating thread!

[Parkview911]

I hired a spot welder to do mine, but welding from the inside/out with the potent MIG will allow a smooth face for the door seal to nest, so I would think the method has some advantages.

I did all my body welding by gas and spot welding as that was all I had.

I see Mr Carter uses a hand-held spot welder for some of his magic.
Nice piece of kit but a bit expensive for the amateur, unskilled hobby man like me.
No-one here seems to rent them at a level that would make sense for me.

Gas welding is something I really want to learn how to do.
But will most likely move from MIG to TIG, and from thence to gas.
But in the meantime I am doing a metal working course next week with a local chap who does a lot of custom work for collectors.
3 days with just hand tools.
Really looking forward to it. And it should come in handy....now that I am pretty much done with all my steelwork!
An investment in the next resto perhaps.

[Parkview911]

Involved! Fascinating thread!

Cheers Jamie.
I'll do my best to keep the entertainment coming!

[Parkview911]

Next a bit of fun with filler.
I'm slightly more familiar with this stuff having worked on boats for a few years.
The smell of the stuff when it gets hit with 80 grit brings back pleasant memories.

The first couple of batches didn't make it to the steel on account of being over zealous with the activator.
Speaking of memories, I worked with a ragtag squad of South London lads in the Bahamas. The kind of lads who grew in South London before the arty / advertising crowd moved in. As hard as they were they were proper artisans and taught me a lot at the tender age of 18: more about life and some of the clever shortcuts rather than the dark arts of two-pack varnish. One of their favourite tricks was to distract you when you were mixing your filler. The distraction would last just long enough for the accomplice to add an extra blob of hardener to your mix. Shouting obscenities at muscled Americans as they walked past the boat and then ducking below the bulwark, leaving the naive Saffer standing there to face an angry American was another.
I digress.





Not the smartest strategy to start with filler when the body isn't done.



Thirsty work.

[willbrown]

Cracking post - glad you've brought it over to DDK ;o)

[Parkview911]

Some more rot and bad repair on the RHD 1/4 window.





There is a slight curve on the bend so it needed some Sebastien'ing (Fettel'ing)



The old and the new.



Nice fit.









Not quite Carter quality but strong.
As you have probably guessed by now there was big learning curve with these patches: heat, steel moving, patch fit and penetration of the welds. Working with a little mIG with only 4 settings, 2 of which didn't seem to work, was a challenge. While a bad worker blames his tools, a smart worker blames the project manager...in my case they both sat in the same office.

When I teach my eldest to weld (being a sportsman he is going to need a source of income) I will get him to start with 5mm plate. There are so many simple principles to master that trying to understand these principles whilst working with 1mm steel is a bit of a stretch. You spend so much time trying to avoid burn through and making sure the patch stays aligned that the principles of what is actually going on (or not going on in the case of my inner sill fail) are lost.

I am a complete amateur but these simple rules have been a huge help:

- good, strong earth clamp attached to shiny clean steel, ideally with the help of a stripped and platted jumper cable 'rope' to increase the surface area of the earth clamp.
- lots of light so you can see what you are doing, a real revelation that being able to see what you doing is a good idea!
- clean wire clipped nicely before each spot-weld, also helps avoid doing too many spots without letting the steel cool
- a good solid piece of copper behind the weld, a simple way to limit burn-through.

[mean_in_green]

Excellent thread. It's surprising: that welder doesn't look up to it?

[Parkview911]

And now for the door.
The bilges were rotten.

I came up with what I thought was a cunning plan.



It seemed to work well enough at the time but in hindsight (that word again) this repair was not my finest work.
In being clever I made life quite difficult for myself. Essentially this is a tutorial (mainly for myself) in how not to repair a door.
But no harm done. I will most likely remove the door skins and replace them with with FBG or Kevlar, or if I come into some money; aluminium.

The patient. Hold still, this won't hurt a bit....





The rest of the door remarkably intact.
In the same way that mothers install the importance of brushing teeth in their children, so mother Porsches no doubt warn their young about the dangers of not regularly checking your drain holes...or something.



The plan and the patient, in one shot.



I can't quite recall why I decided to lap weld this patch. Perhaps for fear of warping rather nice door skin? Whatever the reason, I managed to warp it anyway. Idiot. As I have said far too often in my life: it seemed like a good idea at the time Officer. Judging by the lack of focus in the photographs I may well have been drunk (which often explains the 'good idea at the time' defence)







Here you can see my strategy. Cool, calm butt-welding would have worked better me thinks.







Some good principles in here....if you look carefully.
"A strong shot in the wrong direction"

Pinching the lower seam closed





Nice door gap:



All buttoned up.



Gratuitous close-up of my welds.



High / low spots. Too much heat Barnes!



Time to repair the overbite



Tricky bugger





The patches





And break out the filler



Even more filler



And sand the bugger





Selfie...looks like a tribute to advertising in the 80s.











The filler was far from being done (and still is) but the results were encouraging.
And with a quick coat of primer to get it back into one colour it looked even better.
A bit of a confidence booster really









This was around the time that I decided that despite some initial terror, this whole restoration thing was a lot simpler than I thought it would be. Little did I know that the real test lay ahead: the rear window corners, the floor pan and the b@#stard smuggler's box.

[Parkview911]

Excellent thread. It's surprising: that welder doesn't look up to it?

I too was amazed. The little welder that could. In truth, with 0.8 to 1mm steel you don't need much to get a good weld. I reckon if this machine was in perfect condition it would be fine. Especially with 0.6 wire. 50 Amps should be absolutely fine, maybe 80 for plug welds on the inner sills. Maybe.

The issue with this machine is the quality of the wire feed and the trigger. The bigger / more robust machines have better, more consistent wire feed and the parts are easier to find. Clarke is generally not bad.