When Well Enough Can't Be Left Alone; Backdate, EFI/ITB, AC, and more!

[chrisbalich]

Originally Posted by rwest

Julian,

Lowered cars suck in the real world if you don't set them up properly.
Best,
Rutager

FTFY

Lowering a car is hardly a death sentence for handling or comfort. You just have to commit to it. It is such a tiresome trope that lowering a car makes it so you can't live with it daily. Combined with the other sad trope of, "our roads are soooooo bad here," I'm ready to quit socials and the Bird altogether. All roads are wear items that aren't properly maintained. Lowering a car without the proper supporting modifications is like shooting the Red Rider .22 you got as a kid at a 1000yd target. It'll get there, but it'll be terrible. I find it endlessly amazing that so many Pelicans poo-poo on lowered cars because they won't spend the time & money to set up the car correctly.
/pontificatingaboutloweredcars

[Showdown]

I love lowered cars

I hate Chicago roads

I think, as Chris has pointed out that you can most certainly set up a car to be lowered and perform marvelously- maybe even better… but it takes more than simply reindexing torsion bars and calling it a day. It’s a whole different take on suspension; one that I think most people, myself included didn’t heed at the outset.

I think eventually when I have to redo my suspension I’ll do it in a way that lets me lower the car while still maintaining great drivability on all roads.

But for now, a little bit of extra height isn’t hurting anyone… Except Chris

[chrisbalich]

<3

[PeteKz]

I've chased that rabbit named "lowered suspension" too. It gets to be a deep and expensive hole real fast. At the front, a MacPherson strut type suspension doesn't lend itself easily to doing it right. It's easy to drop, but then you run into geometry and travel problems. At the rear, the balances of setting up a semi-trailing arm, plus torsion bar springing, also makes it easy to drop, but hard to drop correctly.

At this point in my experience, I won't drop the front below "Euro" ride height, unless it's with a raised-spindle strut. At the rear, I would avoid it, unless I'm willing to do some cutting and welding.

There is one other way to "drop" the car without many drawbacks--use shorter diameter tires. For example, a 205 50-series on a 15" wheel is close to 23" in diameter, an inch or more shorter than the standard tires 911's came with. So that drops the car 1/2" or so all around. Yes, the sidewalls are stiffer, but if that's all you do, you don't lose any suspension travel and lose very little compliance. Plus, you can swap back to regular wheels and tires very easily and quickly without messing with suspension adjustments. If you have a street car and do occasional track and auto-X days, this seems to me the best approach.

Yeah, if you have highly staggered or very wide wheels like on a turbo or something like that, this won't be so simple, but for cars up through the Carreras with the standard bodies and wheels, it's a good option. Don't be too quick to discount it. And 15" cookie-cutters are good wheels and very cheap 'cause almost no one wants them. Check it out.

[eightmann]

This build is amazing. Thanks for posting the progress.

[Showdown]

Well it’s been a minute so I figured it was time for an update.

This past year really kicked and continues to kick my butt. I’m into month 15 of the divorce with no end in sight and with every passing day it seems to get worse and worse with her appetite for taking everything that I have growing and growing.

But such is life…

One casualty of many this beast has inflicted was Porsche time. I’m in the process of a pretty major home renovation that will hopefully be for me and the kids one day and that’s been eating up a lot of free time and focus. Thus far since march when it finally got nice enough to drive I’ve driven the car a grand total of 5 times. This was supposed to be the summer of rallies and road trips but that didn’t happen.

All of the projects I wanted to do have been tabled for a bunch of reasons but mostly because I don’t have the time or energy.

I had hoped to fabricate a completely new and custom interior this winter and spring but it’s sitting in pieces in boxes….

The car’s 46 years old, I think it can wait one more year.

Oh well.

The good news is that during those 5 drives I dialed the car into what I have to believe is as good as I can possibly get it with my skill level, tools, and technology. The next step would be a dyno but I don’t see any point in wasting that money when I can put it towards a set of cams or other engine mods…

In anticipation of Checked It Out on the 26th I’ve been going over the car and seeing what small 1 hour projects I can bang out. This weekend I did a bit more leather work for the interior and while it adds no appreciable benefit to the performance of the car it makes me feel good when I see it and ain’t that enough.

In any event, hopefully very soon I’ll be able to return to spending more time with the car; the drive I did this past weekend was a dose of 4-wheeled Prozac just when it was needed.

If any of y’all are coming to Checked, be sure to fine me and my car and say hi!

[Joesmallwood]

OMGosh! I feel your pain. I went through this about 20 years ago. It was brutal! It was a lot of soul searching, but it was liberating and likely one of the most pivotal things that I've gone through. I am a better human being and in a better place because of it. Short story.....there is light at the end of the tunnel.

And, you're right, there is no hurry on the car front. It's not a race. It's a process and a very therapeutic hobby that can be embraced to help settle our nerves when/if we need it to and have the time to use it's medicinal values. Enjoy it, even if it's in small doses for a while.

And BTW, the leather work is killer. I have often wanted to add some leather to the metal surfaces of the emergency brake, seat adjuster rods, seat belt hoops, etc, but I have not found the time (lower priority for me) and/or mojo to take it on because I know it will be a multi-try process, for me. Nice work!!

[Showdown]

Captains, log, star date… Oh, who the heck knows.

So, it’s been a minute since I last checked in. I’ll spare everyone the gory details, but life has been pretty rough this past year, and it doesn’t seem to be letting up, but so it goes. We all know the saying “what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger” right, well I have my own: “what doesn’t kill me better run like hell”.

Yeah, it’s been like that.

My timing on the car, or driving the car, or even thinking about the car, all but disappeared, while I turned my attention to renovating my new house, and keeping my business afloat. But now, having moved into the new dwelling, and begun to settle in I find myself with a little bit more free time so naturally, my attention has returned to the 911.

Eons ago, when I started working on the interior of the car I knew that I wanted to do something with the door cards; I don’t particularly like the look of the G-body cards and I don’t find them particularly utilitarian. In addition, I have a compulsion to put my grubby paws on every surface of this damn car so naturally, the door cards would fall to this whim.

I debated a lot of different looks: R style, RS style, etc… but none of those matched with what I wanted out of my car and given the lengths to which I’ve gone to make this car my own, I obviously couldn’t’ just pick something off the shelf.

So I started to conceive of my own door cards. I went through dozens of sketches, designs and renderings. Ultimately, I came up with one that met my needs: clean and without interruption, minimal upon appearance so to not call attention to itself yet refined in materials and design so upon closer inspection reverence is due. Functional yet simplistic and of course with a few tricks up its sleeve.

I already had a lexicon of materials form the interior: caramel leather, gray fabric, polished aluminum and I knew what utility I wanted: a pull to close the door, a pull to open the door, a cup holder door pocket and an arm rest. A tall order, but I like challenges.



I spent a lot of time designing the whole thing in 3D to make sure that it would work, fit, and look good. In the end I settled on the following:









Lots of CAD and prototyping in my shop resulted in a combination arm rest/door pull/cup holder/storage pocket. I used Send Cut Send for the aluminum and MDF parts which were designed in CAD and I 3D printed the storage compartment using SLS overseas for a fraction of the cost stateside (I’m not happy about that but the delta was hundreds of dollars…). I also have a full shop at my work so putting all this together was fairly easy…

[Showdown]

I then needed to figure out how to make it all work on the existing car door. This meant some surgery: cutting and removing the door lock knob, removing the power window switches and rerouting them (more on that later), removing the door handle and associated hardware and of course drilling some holes into the door and installing rivnuts to receive the new door pull/arm rest. In addition, I drilled more holes around the perimeter of the door to receive those plastic snap things that are used on the top of the door card. I didn’t want any exposed hardware anywhere. The door card will be held on with 5 bolts from the arm rest to the metal door so I wasn’t worries about not having screws holding the door card in place.



I had to fabricate some little brackets for the door lock release mechanism and did so by twisting up some aluminum. These will interface with the leather pulls and the inner mechanism that opens the door. Easy peasy



With all of the structural work done (it wasn’t that much) I now had to begin assembling everything ad moving out of the raw materials/prototyping phase. This meant that I had to figure out how to attach all this stuff to the door cards. My shop became a bit of a mess while I tinkered away in the 10 mins her and 10 mins there I could steal away from work. Mind you I was still spending all my free time after work renovating the house…



One of the biggest hurdles was how to affix the aluminum trim to the door and the solution came from Bryan at Achtungkraft: 3mm studs threaded into the ¼” aluminum. Brilliant even if it was working on a miniature scale! But eventually I had everything laid out and was ready to move ahead. I had made leather straps months ago when I was contemplating RS style pulls and luckily, I was able to reuse them. Gray leather laminated to caramel leather and stitched with white waxed thread, the look and feel really nice if I do say so myself…





The door cards were covered with ¼” neoprene foam for its lightness, sounds deadening quality and softness. The leather and fabric were wrapped around the neoprene and using a combination of contact cement and staples, everything was affixed in place. Grommets and all sorts of little bits were used to make sure that everything aligned and was functional and I neglected to take photos of all of it because I was just too caught up in the doing.

While I was messing with leather, I wrapped the door sill after filling in the hole for the power mirror switch which I deleted so long ago I can’t even remember it.



For those who don’t know- a few of us here (Chris, Gabe and Tony) all midwestern dudes who can’t resist the wrenching bug, have a text group where we pester each other with questions, share ideas, conspire for world domination and generally waste time in the best of ways. This group has been pretty instrumental in keeping my mental health in the green this past year and a constant source of inspiration, motivation and at times, begrudging frustration… like when at the 11th hour Chris suggested that I hide the mechanism to open the flip out storage compartment by using magnets… Freaking magnets… Thanks, Chris. This of course would have been no big deal if it were suggested months ago when I was in the design phase but nooooo, he had to mention it just as I was prepared to assemble everything. Thanks, Chris.

So, I bought a 3D printer (partially for my work, partially for this damn hobby) and began designing some type of hidden magnet-driven latch system. After a LOT of design and prototyping (side note- go buy a 3D printer… NOW. In an hour of work I could design, print, test, and refine a design and do it all over until it was perfect… crazy) I came up with a mechanism that pivoted on a bolt and would use rare earth magnets to both hold the storage pocket closed, and propel it open.





And with that last piece complete (I stopped texting the guys for fear of another brilliant suggestion – ha!) it was off to assembly. Putting it all together took a few days but eventually it was done

[Showdown]

Some photos of the final result. Overall I’m really pleased with how they came together. Of course, I can see he errors I made and if I had to do it all over again, I could make them that much better but perfect is the enemy of the good and I’m good with good.

FWIW, the first drawing I did of a door card was in February 2023. It took a long time to bring these to fruition but mostly because my life is a dumpster fire and I could only steal minutes to work on this. That said, it still took a long time and a lot of brainpower. I have the utmost respect for folks like Bryan at AchtungKraft who coach build on a large scale with precision and acumen; this stuff is so hard.

To note, the door lock knob was deleted but the door lock pulls lengthened out of aluminum rod on my lathe so that they can be pulled up when locked. I hate that round door lock knob and deleting it was one of the joys of this year... yeah... little things mattered.

The door speaker is still there but it's covered by the gray fabric. I tested out the acoustic effects of the fabric and determined that a.) it didn't matter and b.) I couldn't care less. I use the stereo when I'm in traffic or just tooling around the city so any sound is fine.

The cup holder is on a hidden push spring mechanism. push in and it pops out enough to grab the tip and open it fully. Push it in and it lock in place. It relies on a tapered cup and the opening is 3.25" plenty for an insulated tumbler or a coffee cup. I don't drink coffee and when I'm out driving for fun I keep a large water bottle in the passenger seat or back... come to think of it, I don't really need a cup holder and will probably use this rarely... I guess I just really didn't like the Rennline one that's ubiquitous and wanted a challenge...

The rare earth magnet switch is strong- it's 16lbs of pull and filled with tools the pocket wouldn't pop open even with a lot of shaking... I tested nearly a dozen magnets to find the best one for this application and I'm confident in that choice.

What else...The arm rest is perfect for me... probably imperfect for every other human but I. don't. care.

The smell of the leather combined with the gas and oil is just damn perfect... so much better than vinyl.

Phew.











Opening the door is actually really easy with my right hand but I was holding the cameral and my left hand is a glorified paperweight…



Now to do it all again on the other side of the car!! Hopefully this time it'll be faster and easier... right...

Still to do on the list is relocate the power window switches to the center tunnel area just around the handbrake. I haven't yet settled on a location, design or implementation but I'll figure it out as I'm working...that's part of the fun.

In addition I have another massive project that I've been working on quietly... as soon as these door s are all done, I'll be able to focus on that... and that's a really fun one

[Joesmallwood]

That’s great work!! Beeeeaaauuutious!

[shamrok]

Killer work, I love it.

[nospiners]

And the strap on your watch matches the leather !! Awesome work all around ..

[LukasM]

Absolutely amazing work Julian, those are for sure the most functional and also coolest looking arm rests I have seen, Singer-ish look but with added features!

If you want some inspiration for useful 3d printer use for custom car projects have a look at Island Works on Youtube, he is building a totally customized 964 race car. Once you get into the more technical materials like ABS/ASA/PC/Nylon maybe with added CF/GF, you can create functional parts that work well in cars, unlike PLA and PET-G which are not heat resistant enough.

What printer did you get? For the above materials you will want an enclosed one, full metal hotend, and hardened nozzle for infused filaments, the rest stays more or less the same.

Cheers,
Lukas

[Showdown]

Thanks Lukas. I was tempted to copy the Singers but then decided that a.) that was too easy, and b.) they kinda suck. For a million dollar car, I'd expect every inch to be rethought and reimagined but I guess the B team handled the door cards over there. That may sound harsh but if I, with basic tools and resources can come up with this, then Singer with all that they have access to should be able to do something better than what they did.

I picked up a BambuLabs X1 Carbon with the AMS option and extra nozzles for heartier materisla so I can print in just about anything that comes on a spool. Right now I'm just using PLA and PLA+CF but I have a few other rolls (ASA and Nylon+CF) on order.

For work I'm also going to be playing around with unconventional materials like rubber, urethanes, CMYK color printing and some wonky organic materials. So much fun!

[chrisbalich]

Julian,
You've once again gone way above and beyond.

I am not sorry I suggested the magnets, even if I got there a bit late.

[PeteKz]

Julian, great cup holders! You may not use 'em much (but I'll bet that you do, since you now have them), but I can't count the number of times I've had to improvise to hold a cup in my 1973 car.

[shoooo32]

A roll of duct tape wedged between the seats was my go-to for years! Always fun following these projects and this one was an absolute home run.

[PeteKz]

Many years ago, I had a cup holder that was mounted on a doughnut-shaped bean bag. It worked great, set on either the passenger seat or the floor. Can't remember what happened to it...

[Jonny042]

A+!!!