Another IROC build - Aussie RHD 3.8

[AUS911SC]

Early Sport - Melbourne sider here (most liveable city) hehe -- Very nice pcar, your hard work is paying off - Question, qid you strip and reanodize the rims ?

[JV911SYDNEY]

Originally Posted by AUS911SC

Melbourne sider here (most liveable city) hehe

at least you guys have a sense of humour!


looks like a great project craig

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[EarlySport]

Originally Posted by AUS911SC

Early Sport - Melbourne sider here (most liveable city) hehe -- Very nice pcar, your hard work is paying off - Question, qid you strip and reanodize the rims ?

You do have a sense of humour! :-) That said I do like Melbourne, just not to live.. haha.

The rims were media blasted and then painted with White Knight aerosol 'Epoxy' paint. Pretty durable stuff and the satin finish is just right I think. On the 8" front rims I sandblasted all the paint off, but on the 10's I just used it to roughen the very hardy black paint the centre's were finished in. Below is a pic of one of the 8" after media blasting. Both these front and rear wheels had the anodizing stripped off at some point in their life.

POR also do a silver paint, and while I haven't seen the finish it supposedly is an aluminium colour and may have been an even better choice for durability as a wheel paint.

[AUS911SC]

Love the harbour, not the billion dollar price tags though...They'll look hot when there finished especially in that diameter. With regretful pain I spent ages on mine, I sand blasted the entire rims then stripped the anodize using a caustic solution (oven cleaner) that seem to work really well. I also got them machined which removed any chips scratches, that was actually cheap. Since I stayed with the clear outer rim look i got them all reanodized, (now that parts expensive) if i didnt anodize them though, the outer rim wouldn't have last 2 weeks.

[EarlySport]

Managed to get some work done over the weekend. One of my 'issues' with this car was the fact that the rear flares are the later G50 style, with the large removable torsion bar access panel. As I'm not running rockers for the IROC look I needed to modify these to better resemble the early access hole.

This required hole sawing the access hole in the correct spot, and then flattenning the shape and welding the edges back together.


Then the panel is further cut, spot welded then final welded into the car, then filled and coated with POR15.







I had the unfortunate experience of finding more rust too - this time in the front pillars where paint cracking was evident. Luckily the metal was still relatively sound. So it was grind the paint and filler off until clean metal is visible, treat with rust converter, and then coat with POR15. I think when the previous bodywork was done for accident repairs there has been little attention paid to moisture being trapped under filler or the rubber undercoat in the wheelwells, which leads to this rust building up over time. I am confident now though that I've found all of it and the POR should ensure it never comes back.








Currently I'm almost ready for primer, and also fitting up the fibreglass parts.

[tangerine911e]

Craig,

nice work!

Cheers,

Ash

[EarlySport]

I managed to get some work done over the weekend. As happens so many times with older cars, previous owners shoddy work creates headaches and sucks up time. Here's an example;

This is where a door rubber was glued in with Liquid Nails! It took about an hour each side to scrape this muck out and wire wheel the channel back to a desirable state. Aargh.


Here's a quick shot prior to laying down the Tie-Coat primer. A product designed to bond with the POR-15 rust paint, and other paint for that matter.


Then it was time to lay down the Tie-Coat over the exterior panels. I'll shoot the door frames and jams next time. Still haven't dropped the engine yet to do the engine bay. This will probably be next. I'll let this primer sit for a week before final filling and overcoating with a thin layer of hi-fill prior to the topcoat.







Still waiting on my fibreglass guards and custom fuel filler, so the fit up of these and bumpers is still to come.

[rennch]

Wow, you're making quick work of this project!

[EarlySport]

I had suspected part of the front suspension pan was rusty after doing some prodding and looking at how deformed it was from jacking..



I also wanted to fabricate an RSR style oil cooler duct for the front mount Setrab 72 row cooler, so there was to be quite a bit of work to do in this part of the car. First step was to cut out the centre of the rusty part of the pan to take a look..



The lower part was very rusty - luckily it really was only the lower part that was bad. Standing water I guess? Having this part cut out allowed liberal application of POR15 over the inside of the front suspension mounts, battery tray etc as a future rust preventative.



I then fabricated a replacement steel section, and added a re-inforcing beam into the centre of it so this can be used as a jack point in the future. The part was coated with POR15 again before being welded in place.



Then it was time to make the cuts into the pan and fabricate an RSR oil cooler duct.





The duct was fabbed from sheet steel with the sides of the duct extended to make the actual mounting points for the setrab cooler.







You may also notice there is now some Mexico Blue paint in evidence...

[EarlySport]

I also have now managed to shoot some colour onto the tub and panels. This is the first coat, shot pretty thick so it can be colour sanded back ready for a second coat.

With the colour on the car and flaws revealed I am pleased that my hours of panel work have produced an acceptable result - particularly that I managed to get the panels this way with minimal filler, considering there was so much on the car when I started!

I've already blocked back this colour coat and hopefully this weekend I'll get a second and final coats on the car. I'm going to thin the paint quite a bit and hope to get minimal orange peel and avoid final colour sanding and buffing. I've also still got to do the fron trunk and engine bay. I'll be moving the car before doing the engine bay as my folks are wanting their garage space back!

[rennch]

Man...unbelievable. You are flying through this in a month. Much respect...it looks amazing.

[EarlySport]

Trust me Emptyo, there are moments when my arms are sore from sanding for hours that I just want to walk away and go to the beach :-) I keep the end result top of mind though, and try to get plenty of sleep and ignore the social life that I haven't had since starting this thing! I am literally working 3 nights a week and entire weekends on average..

Now go get that RSR of yours happenning! :-)

[rennch]

Oh, it's coming along. I've finally got the place to work, and the help I need. Hoping to make short work of it, and drive it in March. We'll see...

[nyne11]

Great job Buddy....Hope your keeping your fluids up? Looks like thirsty work to me!
Cheers Mate.
Dave.

[EarlySport]

Hi All,

Just a couple of updates. I stripped the front trunk and sanded back ready for priming and painting. Part of my stripping ( hours.. ) involved trying to clean up the wiring loom. IMO the Porsche loom is a nightmare. How such a simple car can need so many wires I have no idea.. :-) Anyway, I cut, relocated, and soldered one of the looms to neaten things up, and I stripped out stuff like power mirror wires, stereo loom, etc. The PO had spliced in all kinds of crap that I also removed. A custom loom would be ideal I think, although not so good for the NO ( Next owner ? ). I'd also like to run the main loom through the inner guard - anyone done this?

Anyway, I've now shot the trunk in primer and Mexico Blue.








Another small issue was the amount of signficant surface rust around the fuel tank flange and in spot areas. I wire brushed all this back, used rust converter, and then have coated the area in POR15. Next step is to replicate the factory finish with some proof coat type rubberised spray pack, and then a coat of light grey Epoxy.



I;m still not satisifed with my paint either. Too much peel. I also had a couple of runs that I sanded back and tried buffing, but you can see their shadow. So I'm waiting for another dry and hot day to do a final top coat on the tub. I'm really looking forward to being done with paint so I can move onto the mechanical clean up and interior fitout.

[wideRSR]

I was budgeting a few years for my project... now thanks to you I'm feeling like a slacker and I haven't even started yet! I'll keep watching for inspiration.

[Mothy]

Nice job - and working fast!

I'll be watching closely as you are covering some of the bits I need to do with my 3.0RS lookalike.

Tim

[wachuko]

Wow. Thank you for sharing the project and progress.

[nine11speedster]

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[EarlySport]

Just a couple of updates. Work has been slow as I've had lots of family and social commitments and the weather has been bloody awful in Sydney. I finished off the fuel tank resto and have refitted it in place. I've cleaned up the wiring loom to where it is now something like it was from the factory - it was a real mess prior. Thankfully after doing this the car still runs too :-)



I also managed to pick up a fibreglass hood at the right price, so I've prepped it and routered out the hole for my 'rear side' through bonnet fuel filler. I posted another thread about this and got numerous opinions. In the end I think this will be a very convenient place for filling her up, and it leaves me with close to stock trunk space, and I think it'll look cool :-)



Here's the billet filler cap mocked up in place.


And a quick 'Jack O' self portrait to show the positioning of the filler hole ( I was holding the fender in place for the shot! )