Another IROC build - Aussie RHD 3.8
 

Hey guys,

As I'm taking some pics of my current build I thought I'd share them with the Pelican community.

A few months ago I purchased a rough 1982 911SC that had some appealing features - an all steel turbo look conversion, plastic intake 3.6L motor, Sonjay 16x10" custom Fuchs on the rear, and AP 4 piston front calipers over carrera rotors, and a nice shifting 915.

The negatives - bubbles in the paint, rough interior, it didn't idle, and it seemed like every common failure with 911's was failed on this car ( sunroof didn't work, steering bushing worn out, wheel bearings noisy, etc, etc ). Evidently the PO didn't believe in fixing ANYTHING when it failed! So at the end of the day the price was right, and I was looking for a project..

Getting it home and I started assessing the bodywork. First problem was the paint cracks and bubbles in a number of places, but particularly where the flares were welded on. Can anyone say lap welded flares? Then I decided to strip the paint using stripper. This didn't work worth a damn, so after playing with a DA and vibrating sanders I had to break out a 9" orbital. Soon it became apparent that there was literally 1/4" of filler all over the rear panels of the car and front guards. I'm sure I lopped many pounds of weight off the car in filler!

Getting inside the rear guards I ground off the overlap of the lap welding, and only had to weld in a small patch on the left rear guard to remove a significant rust hole. While I have begun repairs on the front guards, I've decided to go fibreglass for both weight savings and to save work!

I also found evidence of a poorly repaired right rear fender accident damage, and also the left rear taillight area. The tailight area required a new metal template to be welded in to ensure the correct profile of the repaired area. The rear lid latch panel was also beat up, and required some welding and straightening. As my metal forming skills are somewhat limited, I still need to use filler for final shaping, but in this case I've managed to keep the depth to 1mm or so, and have only used about 250gms of it total.

I've decided to use POR15 as a sealer, and have coated the entire rear guards and inside weld seams with it. Next to come is POR's Tie-coat primer, final filling, and top coat. Fortunately the roof, bonnet, and doors are pretty good, so i won't be taking these right back to metal. Area's like the rain drip rails I've taken back to metal as the paint was just too thick and prone to cracking I'm sure.

I'll keep the pictures coming, as I'm hoping to progress pretty rapidly over the next few weeks.

Oh, the spec will be;

74 IROC RSR body
Mexico Blue ( thanks Matteo! )
3.8L motor, DC62 cams, Motorsport design throttle bodies.
Front oil cooler.
Fibreglass bumpers, IROC wing, front fenders, and sunroof panel
Centre fill gas tank
Plexi side and rear windows
Lightweight interior
Recaro Pole Positions
keeping some sound deadening in the rear as this is a street/track car.
22/28 Torsions, Bilstein Sports, Adjustable sways
Kumho V700 225/50 and 265/45 on Fuchs 16x8 and 16x10's.

Oh yeah, and the steering on the wrong side.. :-)

Project Start - looks better in the pictures!
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1199856130.jpg

Trying the paint stripper method. No chance against this much paint!
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1199856155.jpg

This is the beginning of sanding the paint off after unsuccessfully trying to strip and scrape.
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1199856192.jpg

Here you can see the thickness of filler and paint, and the worst rust spot.
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1199856253.jpg

After breaking out the serious sander it's down to bare metal, and the previous poor repairs are visible.
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1199856279.jpg


http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1199856445.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1199856486.jpg

Front guards will be replaced with fibreglass for a near 50lb total weight saving
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1199856619.jpg

Here's one of the Sonjay custom 16x10" rear wheels, made from a 16x7 and a 16x8" fuchs welded together ( I believe ).. I've lightly sandblasted, filled the kerb grinds with JB weld, and then epoxy prime and epoxy paint.
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1199856713.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1199856733.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1199856750.jpg

After much panel beating and metal massaging, final raw preparation step is filler
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1199856820.jpg




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http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1199856874.jpg

Nice finish on the wheels for a DIY RSR-looking finish. Is that just silver and black paint?

Then I went for the POR15 as a sealer and future rust prevention, having has good success with it in the past. This will be then coated with Tie-Coat as a primer, and final filling ready for the Mexico Blue 2K topcoat.

The inside lip of the lap welded flare was ground off, and then the area coated with POR15
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1199857021.jpg

Then the entire metal area coated with POR15
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1199857209.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1199857227.jpg

More to come in the future... Hopefully progress will be rapid, but working a full time job and also having limited space to work makes it tough, but I'm excited to get the car painted and back on the road and then begin work on the mechanical mods..

Yes, it's an epoxy paint in an aerosol that seems to be pretty hardy. I used their own epoxy primer, and then aluminium for the silver and satin black. Masking is a PIA, but using good tape helps. The paint brand here is White Knight, and is marked Epoxy rather than the traditional acrylic spray paints.

Cool, thanks. I'll be refinishing my wheels at some point when I get my car repainted and I may use that method.
Your project looks like fun!:D

Man...that POR 15 sure looks glossy on there! Are there any downsides to using POR 15 vs. an epoxy or primer sealer?

Looks good,
Great to see aniother Sydney Sider actually getting there hands dirty rather than paying someone else to do the work
Cant wait to see the finished project

Michael

Nice choice , that Mexico Blue !! :D

Cheers,
Dennis.:)http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1199864067.jpg

Great work.

All power to you mate.

Neat stuff. That POR-15 stuff is like miracle stuff. For those who haven't worked with it before, it's more like an epoxy than a paint.

-Wayne

Looking great Craig :)

Nice work, you on Christmas holidays or what!!!

Awesome....

take with a grain of salt though... I am somewhat biased to Mexico Blue IROC cars ;)

looks like it is going to be a great project...

Very nice work on the wheels. Looks to be a great project.

Helmethead

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Where in Oz can you buy this Por-15 ?

Saintz,

I know you can buy POR at Vintage VW supplies. They were located at Harp St Lakemba NSW. I am not sure if they are still there.

Michael

(I've previously bought POR-15 products online from PPC, quite a useful website:

http://www.ppc.au.com/)

Craig, what terrific work!

Is restoration a profession, or just a hobby for you?

When can I drop my car off to you :p ?

Hey Peter,

Restoration is definitely just a hobby. I'm sure I spend way too many hours to ever actually make money from it :-)

For me though, the only way I can afford my cars is to do the major work myself. Fortunately there is plenty of information right here on the forum, which I think we Porsche DIY'ers are very fortunate to have. I've also spent plenty of time 'practicing' over the years on old Datsuns and the like ( much less valuable or significant than our beloved 911's ! ).

I'm going to be trying a couple of interesting things with this car too, like relocating the shifter up and back, and fitting my own 915 gearbox cooling system. But first it's the bodywork!

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 ?

at least you guys have a sense of humour!


looks like a great project craig

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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.


http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1200014217.jpg

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.

Progress
 

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.
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1200260989.jpg

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

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1200261102.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1200261123.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1200261144.jpg

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.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1200261383.jpg
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Currently I'm almost ready for primer, and also fitting up the fibreglass parts.

Craig,

nice work!

Cheers,

Ash

Primed and ready for final prep
 

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;
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1200878472.jpg
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.
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1200878543.jpg

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.
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1200878603.jpg

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.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1200878704.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1200878720.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1200878741.jpg

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

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

Rust, and RSR front Oil cooler mod
 

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

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1201732173.jpg

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..

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1201732283.jpg

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.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1201732379.jpg

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.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1201732463.jpg

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

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1201732522.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1201732546.jpg

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

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1201732637.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1201732668.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1201732686.jpg

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

Paint..
 

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!

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1201733195.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1201733223.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1201733172.jpg

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

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! :-)

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...

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

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.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1202082435.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1202082522.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1202082543.jpg


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.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1202082660.jpg

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.

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.

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

Wow. Thank you for sharing the project and progress.

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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 :-)

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1202854799.jpg

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 :-)

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1202854962.jpg

Here's the billet filler cap mocked up in place.
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1202854999.jpg

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! )
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1202855078.jpg