Wot, not another '79 Targa resto thread

[PeterK]

So a quick hour in the garage today, a bit more smoothing of the OSR inner wing patch above the oil filler, an a splash of primer to keep it happy until I get it stripped and dipped.


After lunch I set to on the NSR inner wing patch, where the top mounting for the electrical panel sits. Although I had previously made a tightly fitting patch panel, on closer inspection the metal below the patch was a bit thin in places, so I started again.
The patch generally fitted quite well, but did allow me to play with tight butting (oh-err missus), small gaps and jut over 1mm gaps. Overall I think that I had the best results with the gap about the width of the welding wire. Too small a gap and there was a tendency for the weld to sit on the metal, needing higher power, or risk being too thin when I ground the weld back. Too large a gap resulted in a few blow holes, whereas the narrow gap (0.6mm-ish) allowed small beads of weld with good penetration and no blow through.


After a final grind, fixing of a selection of pin holes, etc, it was also given a splash of primer.


Just a small patch, but with the post weld ‘fixing’ it took about 3 hours ! Slowly, slowly is definitely the right way, and getting the narrow gaps saves a lot of post weld 'fixing'. Having done my experimentation, I just need to improve my patch making to ensure more consistent (narrow) gaps now

[911hillclimber]

Preparation is everything so takes up time like mad.
All progress!
I guess you will find a few more places to visit after the dipping.
Enjoying your project, hats off to anyone who approaches this task as a diy'r.

[PeterK]

Hardly worth an update, but it's New Year’s Day and time for a tidy-up in the garage. I also needed to photograph a few things for eBay (anyone need a hydraulic bike lift or a 70A alternator ?), although I did break out the welder and finally sorted the rear parcel shelf.

I felt lazy, so rather than cut out a patch for what are probably bolt holes from a child's seat or similar, I clamped a chunk of copper underneath each of the 4 holes and simply puddle welded them up.


Came out OK after a light sand down. Underneath needed very little post-welding attention due to the copper bar. It avoided and risk of burn through and gave a relatively flat surface finish right out of the welder.

A quick splash of primer for now and we're done for the day

[PeterK]

Bit busy of late, but did manage a couple of sojourns in the garage.

Ahead of the work on kidneys, sills sand B-posts, I decided to attend to the N/S door. As purchased, I reckon that the NSF wing was replaced, and without too much effort to make it fit properly. This resulted in rather a large gap ahead of the door, and to address this, the door hinges were adjusted to put the door in the middle of the hole.

So I started with this (over 7mm gap at the rear of the door)


The door hinges had clearly been moved from original (I understand that cars were painted with hinges in place, and parts of the unpainted A-pillar were clearly visible. I made a few shims


and got to here

The gaps run from just about 5mm at the top of the door, down to a steady almost 4mm, with the same gap from the bottom of the door to the sill. A couple of patches welded to the sill and the previous repair to the base of the B-pillar make the gaps smaller in a few places, but as they’re all going to be replaced, no worries there and constant gaps will result.

As part of checking the front bumper bracket positioning before welding, Alex and I refitted the wings and bumper (looked great to have the front end back on, albeit not for long). The gap from door to top of the wing is a little more than I would like. I did reduce it by straightening the panels that run vertically on both the outer wing and the inner wing. Still more room for improvement, but that can be sorted when I repair the wings.

So, onto the bumper brackets. Having mounted the wings and bumper, it was satisfying to note that the alignment marks I made when removing the old rusty ones were exactly where I needed to weld the new ones.
A zap or two with the welder, followed by a bit of grinding and we had (I did remember to weld up the two locating holes before I primed them )



and a splash of primer ..



While I had the welder in the right area, there was a hole in the bulkhead where a switch (presumably for an ignition isolator or alarm) had been fitted – it isn’t going back on, so zap, zap, grind, grind, spray, spray and we have ….



During a period of rest and relaxation, I have been removing more of the wiring, control rods & cables from the tunnel. When I took out the gearshift I noticed a message hanging down.


Excitement was short lived, though as there was nothing at all on the rolled up paper, which was attached by twine / cotton to one of the rod retaining clips at the base of the shift linkage – a useful mod that I will retain


Definitely running out of excuses and will be onto the sills, etc soon. I plan to keep the suspension on for a little while longer, so I can procastrinate a little and remove the OS door innards and the rest of the wiring, but other than that, I'm all out of excuses.

A quick clean up of the garage and I then will take the car off the moveable dollies and mount it on axle stands at the rear and caravan stands at the front, all as per Mr Carter's fine guidance.

Scary times ahead methinks - it's a good job that I'm too stupid to know that I can't do it

[PeterK]

So, it turns out that I can find plenty more things to delay the inevitable . Anyway I have now made a start, although I did manage to waste a load of time. I sold my Rangie and bought a BMW X1 4WD to carry me about until the SC is (finally) completed. Nice little car, so may end up keeping it for horrible days. And I cleaned up the garage again in anticipation of the inevitable and ordered a huge pile of bits from RosePassion, Matthew @ Type911, Design911 and (because Matt no longer supplies them) a couple of stat/thread from PP - not got everything I will need to complete the resto yet (never know what joys lie ahead when I open the engine), but certainly most - well I hope so anyway.


When I was dismantling the car, I disconnected the oil lines from the engine and tank, then found only 1 fixing along the sill and another on the inner front wing. Other than that, the complete lines fell off the car . As mentioned previously, the oil cooler trombone has been brazed to the sill lines, so to allow me to try to use pressure and heat to 'blow out' the various dents in the sill lines, I had to disconnect all lines from the thermostat. With lots of heat and patience, things were going well until removing the second long line. Unfortunately, the threads on the stat broke off, losing about half of the threads , hence the order for thread/stat savers. I have also ordered an M30 die (from China, so massive lead time). I want to run the die down the aluminium threads to clean them up. Rather than paying £50-100 for a die from the UK, I've gone cheap at £17 from China. It may not be very good quality, but should do well enough for just cleaning 4 aluminium threads (I hope).

I then stripped everything out of the drivers door. No pictures, as it is just the same as the NS door, but the other side !

Anyway, running out of other things to delay the sills, I finally maned up. I have also tried to capture some of this on my GoPro, and if a) I can work out how to make the videos half decent, and b) can work out where to put them (YouTube ?), then I'll link here .

So first order of play was to follow Barry's advice on jacking up the car, and off the wheeled dollies and onto axle stands at the rear. I used the jack in the middle of the front to adjust the height of the front, then gradually wound up my caravan stands to just touching each side and removed the trolley jack. Sounds simple writing that but I faffed around a lot. I have an oak garage, with a mahoosive support just by the rear wheel arch and wanted the car as close to that as I could so that I have plenty of room to access the other side later, without needing to move the car. Anyway, using a trolley jack from the side of the car of course makes the car move sideways when you jack it up, so a bit of fiddling and faffing to avoid the wheel arch hitting the support ensued.
I'm sure you can envision a car jacked up, but for those that don't have a 'mind's eye' (like me - I cannot close my eyes and see anything) ….



Next came door gaps. Remember that when I got the car, my gaps were horrendous - I still think that the NSF wing was poorly replaced and the door was simply moved to be in the middle of the hole. Anyway, a few shims got me to here (notice how far the door has been moved relative to before I added the shims !).



I don't think that those gaps are too shabby now Where they are somewhat tight is just where MOT bodge welding has added additional plates / thickness.

The next decision was where to cut the NSR wing. I need to access the kidneys and the lower edge of the wing is bodged but also the Targa stiffening plate has completely rotted away and where the Targa hoop cover bolts on has also seem Mr Tin-worm.


So my proposed cut line is here …


Any contrary advice ??




Finally, onto the sill. Forgot to take a still photo, but I cut out the main part of the sill, just leaving an inch or so around the outside. I then drilled out the spot welds on the top edge of the doorstep lip. The remaining bit of the sill here refused to come out, and I found spot welds on the vertical lip, on the inside - didn't expect these, but drilled most of them out. Having pulled off the residual top part of the sill away, I found that only the rearmost 4 or so spot welds holding the inner sill to the door step were right through to the outer sill. I hadn't needed to drill the rest out !

The sill to floor join was just a series of 'normal' welds, and a quick kiss with the cutting disc thinned them enough to rip off the bottom of the sill away, leaving just a little grinding to finish thigs off.

The inner sill looks in great condition on the whole (aside from where I managed to put a chisel though it). I'll wire brush and treat where the outer sill joined, but so far it looks strong. The top edge looks like this



Only surface rust by the jacking point, apart from the top edge which will get some love



And the lower edge
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Even the lower jacking point looks really solid, although a fair amount of grot and snot to remove from the previous outer sill and lower rear wing repairs.


The kidney bowl is mainly absent, but here's hoping that I find the metal behind is a good as the inner sills once I get the outer wing out of the way.

[PeterK]

More cutting and grinding, together with some wire brushing showed the full extent of the inner sill condition. Not quite as good as I thought, but not bad enough to warrant replacement, just better to patch. I can see the cardboard heater pipe behind the inner sill in one rust hole. As I am still contemplating how I strip the shell - blast or heat treat & dip - I may just cut an access hole on the inside sill, so that I can remove the cardboard tube before welding, rather than risking a fire (and then having to cut a hole anyway to replace an unnecessary purchase).

I've been playing with the GoPro again, and forgot to take a still phot o of the cleaned up inner sill - sorry.

In the absence of a great outpouring of 'don't do that there', I cut into the NS rear wing. The lower part has seen much MOT-bodging in the past.


With some quality 'just weld a plate over the rust'



Well, once I was in there, and as probably expected, the news behind the kidney bowl was not good. The kidney bowl was mainly missing, as found during my pre-purchase inspection.


… but once the wing was removed, I had good access to remove the residual bits of rust.



I think that it's fair to say that, other than the bit protruding above the outer wing, the Targa hoop stiffening piece wasn't present.


But after some chiselling and cutting and grinding, we got to here

So it was off to Fat Fuchs' SC resto over on IB site, to check out what should be there.

I then checked that the new strengthening plate will fit OK.

If it doesn't fit after the few repairs to the inner wing, then I know where to look !


The replacement B-post is a standard to suit all 911's (of this age), so I had to cut off the door channel that's only needed on the coupe. It was checked fitted (or should that be check held in place)


Then a quick test 'hold in place' for the sill and kidney bowl.

[

The door shuts still, although the bottom gap is slightly less at the rear than before, so I may need to tickle the sill to give a tad more clearance over the jacking point.

Next steps will be to patch out the rusty bits and then clamp everything together and check that it all fits and the door still closes.

[PeterK]

A little bit limited with time recently - some personal matters consuming huge amounts of time, plus almost a day to fit a towbar to my recent 2013 BMW X1, some fun and games making a trailer out of a deceased insulated trailer, and a bit of general life getting in the way. However, I did manage a few hours on the SC this weekend, although what I've got to show for it isn't very impressive.

I cut out the rust in the vicinity of where the targa bar strengthening piece is going to go


Primed it


and using the magnets on the end of telescoping handles (a selfie stick for magnets ???), also the patches


and then today, welded them in


If you look more closely I have also created a new bit of channel that takes the lower part of the door seal. I used an offcut from the B-post (that I had cut off as it is only needed on a coupe) and it is left over-long until I work out how high it needs to be, and how much lower the upper section needs to be.

I also had to repair the inside of where the targa screen horizontal seal will sit, in the corner next to the targa bar. In cutting the remnant of the old targa strengthening plate away (almost the only bit that still existed), I cut through from below.
I also found a little more rust while using my hot spanner, so the picture above also includes a patch where the previous photo didn't have a hole.


In my continuing rush of blood to the head moment, I'm still using the GoPro to record some of my antics. Unfortunately that now means that I need to make time to sort it out and try and if I can make a silk purse form some sows' ears, then host it somewhere.

[chud]

Youtube is like you said, probably your best bet as long as you don't put music with it you should stay out of trouble. Making the video is easy if you have iMovie of a similar PC based platform.

[PeterK]

When playing back my clips, I notice that the radio playing in the background is audible - I assume that I will have to remove this audio to avoid needing a performer's licence ????

[chud]

I'm not sure - how audible are we talking? If its obscured by grinding etc then I'd be surprised if it got picked up.

[PeterK]

Well we're inching forward - still lots going on that are preventing me from getting into the garage, but I did grab 4 hours yesterday.

There is crusty rust where the kidney bowl needs to go, although localised to where the kidney attached.



So starting tat the bottom, I cut, then cut bit more until I was at good, clean metal, made a patch, welded it in and ground it back a bit. I'm not too fussed here, as it wil be hidden by the kidney bowl, although having primed it, I may go back and linish a bit more.


I did the same to the rusty bit just below the door opening, although did remember to grab a photo before priming


I then sliced into the more vertical section (you can see where I started in the photo above) and cleaned up the flange. I decided to keep the actual flange return, as it looked sound and was in the right place.


Then some more of the measure, cut, trim and weld. To gain better access, I bent out the flange, giving better access to weld, and then bent it back, tickled it with the hammer and dolly and primed. That got me to here


I spent a little more effort making this look presentable, as it shows beside the kidney bowl. The error in my logic here is of course that once the B-post and wing are back on, it won't be seen anyway !.



To finish this area off, I turned the welder back on to finish addressing the gap in the flange that carries the door seal, up around the top of the door.


I'm sure you know how this goes now - cardboard measuring, transfer to metal slightly over-size, trim and fettle, hold with magnet, tack and fully weld, grind and prime.


Struggle to get anything in to grind & finish deep in the channel, so I normally use my cutting disc end on, and gently grind back the welds with that. Totally not safe, with the risk of the blade shattering, but in the absence of anything proper, it will have to do

Just need to work out how I should be finishing under the targa strengthening plate, just below the top flange in the photo, then that can be finally buttoned up.


Must make time to sort my GoPro videos - I've got so much now and should really have edited them each day rather than leaving a mini mountain of work

[sladey]

Good stuff!

[PeterK]

Thanks Mark

[PeterK]

Wow, a full month since I last posted, so apologies for the lack of updates, mainly caused by there not being any, but I do feel the need to remind you that I'm still here. Yet again life has been getting in the way, predominantly working to protect the local green fields against unwarranted and undesired development, finalising Neighbourhood Plan documents, IHT forms (there's only a single form, but then you find that has tens of sub-forms and some of those sub-forms have sub-forms themselves !) - I haven't enough hours in the day , so goodness knows how I managed when I had to go to work as well. Anyway, enough moaning about lack of time in the garage …..

I grabbed some time this weekend, and set to on the NS inner sill again. Generally the inner sill looked in great condition, except for a couple of small holes where there had been spot welds, plus a couple of holes I made with over enthusiastic attention with the cold chisel when removing the outer sill . There was a small hole to the left of the previous patch, so with some cut, grind, weld, more grind and prime, now looks like this


I'm not brilliant at welding and even less good at welding upside down. The same attention (although photo without the primer) to the hole towards the front of the inner sill


There was a very small rust hole just to the side of the middle outer sill bracket. I tried puddle welding it, but the bracket was getting in the way, so out came the spot weld drill and cold chisel. Unfortunately the cold chisel got too excited


…. so a proper patch needed here. My welding took a turn for the worse, and then I found this


Time for yet another trip to the gas merchant methinks.

I need to patch this hole, finish the patch at the rear of the inner sill that I started but didn't finish last time, and some attention to the area behind the leading edge of the outer sill. Then I can start welding on my new panels on this side .

[911hillclimber]

It looks like you have nicked some of my pictures taken when I did my shell in '89!
Your thread brings back a lot of memories...not all good.
But the good bit is around the corner for you, new parts on, brilliant!

Work harder, we want the up-dates more frequently.