My Little Project - 72

[luvndasun]

Hello,
This is my first Porsche and I bought it about 3 years ago. It’s a 72T. My intentions were to buy a car that I could tinker with when I wanted to, but was otherwise in pretty good shape. Well, you know how that goes, I didn’t really know enough about P-Cars and I was in a hurry when I bought it. You car hear PT Barnum saying….there's a sucker born every minute. The car that I bought to tinker with turned into a two year ground up rebuild. I call the car Gilligan because when the jobs were not going my way, I had to control my frustration because the garage door would typically be open and neighbors would be walking by outside. To release some of my frustration, in a muted tone, I would growl…Gilligan!!!.... just like the Skipper would when he was mad at his little buddy…haha. Watch a rerun of Gilligans Island if you don’t know what I am talking about.

Initially looking at the car, the paint looked nice and it ran pretty well. I got the car home and began to tinker with it and read more about Porsches, that’s when my education went into high gear. After I took all of the crap out of the trunk and cleaned up the car, I had an inspection done…yes after I bought it…ugggh. I was happy to hear that mechanically the car was in pretty good shape, then the bad news….the suspension pan was rotted out. I had that replaced and also had the battery relocated to the smugglers box. I got the car back and thought that I was back to just tinkering. Next, I decided to put a roll bar in. After I took the seats out and pulled the carpet back I found rust on the parcel shelf. That’s when I decided to take the car down to bare bones and go through everything. As I was taking on projects, the “while I’m I there” syndrome took over. One side benefit to the whole project is that I had always wanted to learn how to weld. Now I own a MIG welder and taught myself to weld along the way.

Not really knowing what I wanted in the finished car cost me a lot of time and money. I now notice when I see a Pro doing a car that one of the many things that makes it look so easy for them is because they know what they are going to build before they start. I started out wanting to build an occasional driver that could be used for an AX/DE car. I wanted the car to be red and also to have a bare bones interior that was painted and didn’t have a carpet. You will see that I changed my mind along the way. You’ll have to look at the pictures to see how it ended up. Now that its done, I still plan do some DE’s but I’ll need to sort the car out first.

I owe a big thanks to the board. I couldn’t have gotten through the project with out it. You guys got me through many tough jobs that were new to me, not to mention the inspiration that I got when I saw some of the cars being built and driven. Along the way I haven’t been good at posting about my project. I mostly asked questions and read other peoples postings. The good thing about that is you can now look at two years of work in five minutes.

Now I finally have a car that I can tinker with. I am looking forward to getting out on some of the runs and meeting fellow enthusiasts. I'll be the guy in the back of the pack until I learn how to drive the car.

At the start of the project I didn’t have a decent camera so the pictures start out with bad quality and then become nicer after I got the new camera. I also didn’t post many pictures from the beginning because the quality was so bad that they are not worth posting.

Here are some specs:
72 T Non Sunrrof Coupe
Royal Purple Lilac (Single Stage Urethane) Bare metal repaint
2.2 Ltr / Weber Carbs, MSD Ignition
915 Trans, Factory Short Shift
2188 lbs with a half tank of gas
16x7 Fuchs, 205-40-16 Front
16x8 Fuchs, 225-40-16 Rear (Probably will go wider on the back to fill up wheel wells)
S-Alloy Calipers Front
M-Calipers rear
SS Brake lines
Cross Drilled Rotors
Aluminum Front Cross Member
Aluminum Trailing Arms
Front and Rear Monoballs
Bump Steer Spacers
Bilstein Coil over RSR front struts and inserts
Bilstein Coil Over RSR inverted shocks
Interior was striped to bare metal, POR-15, POR Primer, Top Coated
RS Carpet Kit
Nurgurgring Seats
DAS Sport Roll Bar
5 Point Harness's
Gas Tank was striped, POR 15, then undercoated. Inside of tank received POR Tank treatment/seal.

Here is the car how I bought it. It’s a 72 that was made to look like a later model SC. After getting familiar with the differences between the Pre and Post 1974 911’s, I decided that I wanted to return the car to its original body style…ie, Long Hood. Buying a long hood with all of the correct body parts would have saved me a lot of time and effort…oh well…that’s how it goes I guess.




Look at where my tinkering was leading me. No windows, bare metal interior. Striping the interior was one of the hardest, nastiest, dirtiest jobs that I did.

[luvndasun]

Rest of pics will have to follow tomorrow. For some reason I cant upload pictures.

[W Scott Shores]

I salute you for returning the car to its original classic look!

[Jays72T]

Sounds great, can't wait to see the "after" shots.

[MattAlpha]

You're an inspiration to me. I just wish I had the time and the wife's support as it seems you do.

I'm finding similiar problems with my P-car.
My wife calls it Cristine because every time I try to fix something small I find three or four other things that are either about to break, weren't installed correctly or are simply missing. POs or their mechanics took many shortcuts and so forth.

To anyone buying an updated looking 911, be sure that you are very fimiliar with 911s before you buy it. Then take a long amount of time inspecting it, or you may be spending an exponentially longer amount of time correcting these problems.

The only upside to this is if you care about your P-car, you will get to know it very well while you work though the problems you find with it. And you'll help our host stay in business by purchasing all sorts of stuff from his catelog. Which should help this forum to stay around.

[Doug&Julie]

Originally posted by W Scott Shores
I salute you for returning the car to its original classic look!

+1!

[Zeke]

Originally posted by luvndasun
Buying a long hood with all of the correct body parts would have saved me a lot of time and effort…oh well…that’s how it goes I guess.

I guess I'll wait for the pics, but I'm wondering what you did fit the car with.

[Walko]

The while your in there sympton gets all of us.

Michael

[Gearbox]

Wow, with those rear flairs, this would be a great RS project. And being a 72 "T" it's the perfect donor. Soon as I'm finished with my S, that's what I'll be looking for. Good luck.


http://www.thelolaregistry.com/Projects/911S/porsche_911s.htm

[luvndasun]

Here's a shot of the interior


My monitor went out the other day. Sorry about the delay. I hope that I can get the rest of the pictures up faster.

[luvndasun]

Some body parts being guarded by one of my really good friends…haha


Here are the fenders that went back on the car. It took forever to get them into decent shape. They were taken to bare metal, massaged and this is them after primer was applied.

Here is the interior after it has been coated with POR 15 and then covered with Tie Coat Primer. The fiberglass dash is installed for fit check. Later you will see that I decided to use the original lower dash pieces.

[luvndasun]

Here is my front suspension. I was sure that I was about a month away from installing my front suspension so I just had to buy the parts right away….They sat in the garage for two years before I was ready to install them…haha. That was another of my big lessons, don’t buy the parts until you need them. I bought some parts early in the project that I didn’t end up using because the project changed direction.



Here’s the aluminum front cross member with bump steer spacers installed.

[luvndasun]

Here is my rear shock tower reinforcement. I used molding clay to get the shape of the shock towers, and then I laid the clay on steel plates and traced and cut out the shapes. Welding the plates in was fun!



Car stripped to bare metal. I painted the inner fenders with POR 15.

[luvndasun]

Shot from behind. Engine is back in the car and body is stripped.




Doing some fit check on the passenger side and have started to smooth things out with Bondo. Don’t worry, before I applied bondo or primer I scuffed the surface, applied metal conditioner and metal prep to make sure that I didn’t cover up any oxidation. Working at night, sometimes it takes a little while between tasks such as stripping and priming.

[luvndasun]

A front shot after I placed and didn’t fasten the parts, just wanted to see how it looked.




Passenger side

[Gearbox]

Wow, and I thought I was anal compulsive . Looks like you sanded that interior floors by hand with a 3M scotchbrite pad. Since it was a non exposed area wouldn't sand blasting been easier? And even sand blasting, I would have thought long and hard before I would strip the floors down to bare metal. You the man!

[luvndasun]

After doing a bunch of prep and putting on an etching primer

Woohoo, parts are starting to become the same color…even if it is just primer. How do you like my high tech booth?

It almost looks like a car again. With a uniform color, you start to notice those classic 911 body lines.

[cali74]

very, very....very nice! :-)

I love looking at the pictures, thanks for uploading them. Everyone should do this kind of work on their car...not only is it good therapy, but it makes you appreciate every little detail that goes into these things.

[luvndasun]

Here is the interior after being painted red. At this point I bet that you think that you know what color the car will be painted.



Just another interior shot. You can see the holes for the roll bar.


Almost looks like a car. At this point I was really testing the patience of my neighbors. They thought that I was insane so they didn’t complain too much…haha

[luvndasun]

After getting the car to this point, I decided to turn it over to a real pro for the final stages of prep and paint.




When I got the car to this point I thought that finishing it would not be too difficult…….geesh, was I ever wrong.