Restoration of my 1970 Porsche 911S.
We had three known good mounts, and one known bad one. So Barry removed the bad one, and roughed it into place using my steering rack subframe.
Barry: This did mean the shell had to float in mid-air to gain access. Be assured it wasn't as dodgy as it looked, as the rear was still on the jig on one corner, and the whole shell was being supported by the crane in the centre.
Still, rather you than me!
Barry sent this little teaser photo, from an very initial / rough trial fit of the outer panels.
Even though I know it's an illusion, and that there's still a long way to go, I find this photo curiously exciting:
It is a very good shape, the 911.
Best to let Barry describe what's going on here:
Both inner chassis legs (longitudinal tank supports) need some sort of back-dating. Charmingly, whilst doing other work on one, a captive nut literally fell off. How we would have chuckled if that had happened just after the shell was built and painted. Suitably impressed, I seam welded every captive nut on both panels. The hole that was filled on the offside leg is an impact bumper feature, and not correct for an early car.
Pics of panels stripped ready for weld-thru primer and welding. Washer bottle mounting placed in the correct, but improbable-looking position, towing eye welded on, front end less front slam and nearside inner wing repair another trial fit. This followed a good half day just tweaking all the fits to be suitably neat and crisp. Also the new tank support needed a bit of fettling to be really good, although it's a very nice panel in fact.
Good progress on the front end, as shown here. Front Pan meeting the Inner Wings.
Barry:
There was a small ex-kink at the rear base of the inner wing, so this was removed, the area behind tidied up, and new metal let in. Later on, when the front is welded and the generator / big spot welder running, I'll run a series of single sided welds around here to match into the original factory welds. In fact, there are no signs of welds here, so I think the factory did in fact miss a whole run of welds back in period. Hand made cars, these odd things crop up all the time.
The new repair panel for the top rear is a very accurate pressing, but a tiny bit small. I templated up an extra section, transferred it to steel, and butt welded in onto the repair. The whole was then blasted internally and primed. The opened cavity was vacuumed out, and again primed. The area was then welded up.
Whilst waiting for paint to dry, I got going on just truing the top of the inner wing repair on the Pullmax, thus ensuring it would be an accurate match to my own repair panel, and just tidying the shape up a little at the same time.
I like this little sequence of the car getting part of its nose, and the front pan, back. Obviously completely illusory in terms of true progress, but I always feel better when it looks more like a car (and less like scrap metal).
Barry says: This is the one time I need the jig to be truly level, so I use my lovely old engineer's level to set the jig fore and aft. I always jack one corner of the jig when I'm doing anything structural that could build a twist into the shell, but it doesn't need to be level. I also took a moment to retry the strut tower brackets and the front screen aperture jig, just to make sure everything was still straight and true before risking locking in any problems.
For the front end though, I like to have the plumb-line available as an extra measure to counter building the front off to one side or the other.
I did a rough build of the front end with the new front pan bolted in, together with the recovered front slam panel and both front inner wing repairs.
With that done, the offside repair could be scribed in, double checked and tacked. This was followed by a small repair to the base of the offside front inner wing.
You'll have seen this one before. Barry says:
One of the photo sequences that I send on every job. The front pan is an impact bumper style one, so the top ends at the front are different. I blank these ends with new metal, and later n once the slam panel is finally positioned, scoop out the semi-circular cut-outs that should be in these areas.
Whilst here, the half-moon drain is beaten flat and welded up. Later on I'll use a jig to drill the correct pre-impact front pan drain holes.
As part of the preparation, Barry fitted the new Porsche battery boxes into the new Restoration Design inner wing repair sections.
Initial fit was absolute rubbish:
Hmmm, what could have happened there? Barry says:
Surely it wouldn't be the horrifically expensive, genuine part at fault? Yes, your lovely new battery box was miles out, so the welds were drilled out, the side moved, the drilled holes plug welded. Then the area linished smooth, and some authentic looking spot welds run down the seam. All sorted.
Thanks Porsche, for another quality repair panel...
Not that the Restoration Design panel was perfect either. Barry again:
The dividers show how you've got to be careful with new panels. The front inner wing repair parts are very impressive, and are a lovely pressing. I had thought that I would use a combination of wing top holes together with this large wiring loom hole to match old to new, to help me scribe in the replacement. Good job I checked, the wing-top holes seem to be perfect, but the large hole is in a pretty arbitrary position. Probably fine for fitting up later, but no good to me.
BTW I'm sorry to moan about the repair panels. It's one area of their business where I think Porsche are really taking the p^ss, and the pattern parts makers are following their business model.
Unlike most things I've bought along the way, including a few bonkers-priced NOS bits and a set of original-paint 7Rs, I do feel properly ripped off with the panels.
In total I've spent the price of an entire cheap new car (like a VW Up exclamation mark) on panels. I realise that fitting and fettling will always be required, but still I think that the level of rework and number of fundamental faults is poor, especially bearing in mind the pricing.
Right, that's enough moaning. Onwards!
In this case, preparation meant cutting out the previous repairs. (As shown in earlier pictures) they were pretty agricultural.
After that, the front end looked like this:
Barry had removed a large chunk of the offside rear inner wing base for three reasons:
This was now mirrored on the other side, albeit to a smaller section suffering less dent-damage.
Both cavities were primed, and both removed sections were blasted, repaired and primed. Then closed up, with the backdated slam panel now in place.
Back end was now looking quite nice. Time to move round to the front.
The rear slam panel currently available from Porsche needs some backdating to become correct for earlier cars.
This sequence of photos shows what needs to be done to the two corners to re-introduce the correct curve, and various bits and pieces to indentations and drain holes. My original LH end part is resurrected here. The other end is made from scratch.
Various further repairs to the rear end. Barry says:
The area that was sliced out of the offside rear was stripped and the bumper mounting removed. The pair were cleaned up and blasted. The bumper mount was straightened out, and the missing captive nut replaced. The inner wing section accident damage was beaten out, and the pair welded back together again. They await welding back into the shell.
Next, the buckling to the nearside chassis leg was tackled. It wasn't bad, and could be tackled with a dent rod. The hole was made in an area that would later be replaced, meaning I could work the rod hard without worrying about it causing it's own damage. Then the previously damaged area was removed, and the new metal welded in before the area was finalised shape-wise with dent rods via a new hole underneath. This will be welded up later.
Making a start on the rear end.
It's a bit chilly in the workshop today. Barry tells me there's not much point heating it - the extractor works quite well at immediately sucking out the warm air.
The rear end has suffered accident damage. The repairs at the time had seemingly got the car pretty straight (had not needed large corrections on the jig). But the bent areas had been pulled out fairly roughly by modern standards.
These areas don't look that bad in pictures until you either put a straight-edge across or get some lighting right down low across the surface:
There were some nasty pulling gashes in the (original) rear slam panel. So unfortunately, apart from an end bit used to backdate the new part, the panel was beyond saving and was duly consigned to the bin.
Removing the slam panel revealed further grottiness:
So the back end repairs will consist of backdating and fitting the new slam panel, plus various making good of the dodgy parts of the "chassis legs".
For example:
After a bit of discussion we decided to keep most of the parcel shelf, but the LH end was in need of replacement. A Restoration Design panel was used as the basis for the repairs, but needed work.
Best to let Barry do the talking here, I think:
This area is quite the nastiest to work on. It can be seen quite easily, and yet access is a bit of a pain. It's covered by the huge seat-belt mounting, and also has the engine lid hinge mounting (that has to be referenced perfectly), plus the wiring and parcel-shelf tabs / bracket. It also under-laps the rear bulkhead.
Literally two days work here, and as an example, you can see how many spot welds you have to drill out to 'harvest' the hinge mount, seat-belt plate and parcel-shelf bracket.
In the end I made up a section of bulkhead, as I needed to cut it back a bit anyway, but that would have left me letting a small bit in, right next to the welded-speaker hole. It would have meant old and new welds everywhere, so better to make a slightly larger bit, and have it tidier. These early parcel-shelves are the worst to deal with because of those horrible little ribs. They are so hard to fabricate neatly, and in line right across a long repair. The ones on the new parcel-shelf are nothing like the original, so I had to re-work the few that are used here.
Goodbye parcel-shelf area, and frankly good riddance! On other hand, it does make that whole area of the car look so much healthier.
The other side of the rear screen, similarly pitted. This side also needed the lower corner replaced.
Barry made up a lovely little repair piece. His comments:
An interesting fabrication, as it isn't a right angle in cross section, and the angle changes all the way round. Also, the base flange is curved in two (varying) directions as well. Actually didn't take very long to make, and quite a nice job in the end.
Barry's comments on this bit were slightly melancholy. Existential angst is an occupational hazard of these projects, it seems.
What a lot of work for a bit of pitting. When you start you wonder if it's worth it...
He cheered up, though
... by the end you're pleased you've done it. Lifted the whole area.
I can see what he means, on another part that won't be seen.
My spec to Barry was "concours". Occasionally I wonder whether that was such a wise idea. Glad I don't have to justify this to anyone!
A small repair to deal with the pitting we see in the first picture.
This little repair piece was hand-formed using a lump of round bar and then rounded off to blend in with the original.
As on the other side, this area had suffered from have two or more wings previously welded to it.
Cleared out so we can start again.
Moving on with the RH Torque Tube, Barry said:
As per the other side, I removed the rather pitted end of the otherwise good torque tube, and used the last of my spare tube to add on a new section. This was then back-marked from the jig bracket using a stepped tool which gives the correct tube protrusion.
After that, the new inner wing base could be roughly trimmed down, and the shape (flanges especially) could be tweaked and tidied as best as possible before the numerous trial fits could begin. On this side it went on for ages. A combination of so-so pressing, previous welding and accident damage meant it took simply ages to get everything to work.
BTW, before the repair was fitted, it got keyed up, black etch primed in the centre, and Wurth Bright Zinc primed around the weld sites, just the same as the other repairs.
The sill cavity got a final clean-out and paint, and the new heater tube was fitted, ready for the sill to be fitted:
