DDK - Die Deutschen Klassiker

Here's my 1976 C3.
I've owned the car 5 years and been sorting all the mechanicals, suspension and electrics on a rolling basis since then.
Now its time for the bodywork.

Here's a pic from December 2011 at the Nurburgring with a friend's 964.


I hope you don't mind an Impact Bumper car on DDK, but as Barry is doing the metalwork I thought I'd share here.

Looking forward to following the progress

Hi there - lots of recent interest in Carrera 3s on here recently so I'm sure no one will object !!

964 looks great too!

regards
Sean

Here's some of the problem areas


Paint de-laquering


Usual IB problems
Under headlights


B-posts

As the car is very original and unmessed with I want to keep as much of the original metal as possible.
The plan is to strip down to bare metal and respray in the original Copper Brown Metallic.

The stripdown...





According to Barry the driver's side front wing had never been removed before!


Here's the os b-post after gentle inspection


Old lead repair at the base of the rear screen


Before paint I'm going to anodise the front and rear bumper blades to see if I can prevent the white furry oxidising that IB bumpers always seem to suffer from

Here's the latest, lots of progress.
The welding is complete and now going off to paint

Some problem areas:
Previous roof repair, they had simply kept adding lead until the hole was filled. The was all removed, and the remaining metal trimmed back to good. A small repair section was made up. This wasn't flat, but made up with a double curve to match the roof.
Looks so innocent...


Removing the lead



Repair section made up


The finished repair before any leading!

A little bit of rust showing on the nearside front screen corner


Back to bare metal




Pitting on inner wing


Back to good metal and the magic starts!

Lovely work, nice welding, good penetration
No distortion evident on the roof panel - did you take precautions
If so what ?

Impressed of Surrey

Thanks.

As to distortion, the main thing to apply is patience. I run the MIG right up 3/4+ full power (so that you have a very brief, but well penetrating weld), tack all round taking a lot of time to make sure the new panel is dead in line with the existing. Then I linish down the tacks to just above surrounding level. Tack in-between, linish, and then fill in the (now 1/4in) gaps. I'll sometime be doing other work at the same time so at no point does the roof get more than warm. Finally a general linish and tidy up. This behind-sunroof area is a pain as you can't get underneath it to tap it up, so I was extra careful, but even so did use the stud welder to pull up a low area. It'll have a skim of lead just to make sure it's sealed up well, since we can't get underneath at all. Out of interest, there were four roof repairs, a smaller one opposite, and two where the the rear vent is sealed by gobs of dum dum (from the factory). These had held moisture against the rear of the roof in two well-defined areas. A bit easier to deal with these, as you could get the to underside.

There ended up being a lot of repairs on this car, the above being a tiny snap-shot. I'm sure either Carlo or I will post up some more as they do show the sort of repairs even a really solid car often needs now. Just to underline though, by most standards, this is a really, really good starting point, and much of the time taken is a result of working around a virtually fully built car, rather than the actual fabrication and welding process. I think this is the stiffest shell that has ever arrived here, just to give an idea.

More to follow no doubt!

Fantastic work and fantastic progress. Carlo, are you ever going to lift the veil on DDK of all the other work on the collection pieces?

regards,

Bert

As Barry said lots more progress pics to come...

Here's another roof repair
Before



The smoking gun...


Unleaded finished repair

A few problems at the base of the rear screen


I love this piece of fabrication, wish I could do that in card let alone steel!!


In place ready for weld


and hey presto...

Bertroex wrote:Fantastic work and fantastic progress. Carlo, are you ever going to lift the veil on DDK of all the other work on the collection pieces?

regards,

Bert

Thanks Bert appreciate it, looking forward to getting back on the road.
How are you doing?

I will get round to posting up all the projects one day I promise.
Barry was moaning at me as well!
My latest is planning a new man cave, plus sorting Honda Cadets for Charlie.
Apparently its not him its the equipment, where have I heard that before?

Here's the starting point for the nearside B-post


The car was raised on stands after first measuring the doorgaps whilst on the ground. When raised the front of the car was levelled left and right to de-stress the shell in that orientation. Next the rear of the engine was raised until the doorgaps were slightly smaller than when started. This is to slightly pre-stress the car to counter it's natural inclination to droop it's tail. We're only talking a fraction here, the important bit is the support right at the rear of the engine.

With that done, the decision was made to remove the entire outer sill, despite actually being one of the better ones Barry has seen. Trapped rust was visible inside of the sill where it joins the inner, and the whole of the rear of the panel had failed due to rust as well. As the front of the kidney bowl had failed, a section of the rear wing was removed, as was the lower part of the B-post, which had also failed.

With access now gained to the inner structure, the old jacking point was repaired with a new socket outer, and a new jacking point reinforcment. To keep the removed area of the rear wing to a minimum, the kidney bowl front half was replaced, leaving the (perfect) rear in place. Then the new genuine Porsche outer sill was back-dated and let in.




The B-post was repaired with a genuine Porsche panel, and the B-post latch area reconditioned with a new latch retainer.


Finally a new rear wing section was fabricated, and welded in, with the door-gap being reworked and fettled at the same time. Note, no lead yet used, although will be loaded at the join before the car leaves

Over to the offside...
The front inner wing was cleaned back to good metal.




The area at the base of the wing closer required a small repair.


The scuttle end was rebuilt using fabricated sections. The wing closer was removed and a couple of thin bits of inner wing at the top were replaced with new metal, having primed the inner areas first.