Time to dig in...softie conversion

[rennch]

Anything?

[redridge]

bump....

update? this project is mind boggling!

[speedo]

Been busy with stuff...not Porsche related. Son picked up a type IV 1725 Sunbeam Alpine and we got that roadworthy. Good to have projects with the kids...keeps us connected. Work is not that important.


Cool knock offs

And different webers than I an used to...he is rebuilding the original Strombergs.


Now where was I....Oh yeah drivers rocker and lockpost...yuck.


Some bad steel needed to go...

Hanging the door to check gaps before commiting

This needs to get fixed too...

[speedo]

Front end cleaned up

Cut and fit and cut and fit


I sealed the inner rocker, and primed the inside of the outer rocker with weld-thru.
Rocker final fit and tacked in place...gaps are good for now.

Now the lockpost. Minor repairs were made . Cavities primed and ready to go. I don't know why I dread the lockposts. So much fitting and trimming. The replacement lockposts are good, but nowhere near plug and play. You have to continually refit using the doors...only to remove them for final fitting.


Cleaned and trimmed and almost ready to go

Clamped, massaged and clecoed in place

[speedo]

The jigsaw puzzle at the sill. Tight tolerances down here.



Tacked in place....

Need to make sure that the "now loose "quarter panel is correctly lined up with the outside of the rocker before final weld-up. If you are not careful in aligning and jigging...the panel will torque towards the longitudinal, and it is not possible to "pull it back out" without un-welding it. This looks nice and straight.

Final spot welding on the inside of the B pillar

Don't forget the rear lid "pull" when installing the lockpost. I welded it up from the backside. Originally they were braised in place.


Done...I need to spend some time with the flapper wheel dressing the welds on both sides. Probably a good eight hours of flapper wheels.
Last bit of welding (yeah right) will be the soft window rear bow "hold-down" brackets (3), which will happen after a bit more fitting of the bows.
Then I get to clean, degrease and POR15 a number of areas. I am going to guess I am 30 days out from my (new) painter...'nother one bites the dust.
I am needing some...
70-71 targa chrome door window frames
(4) 15x6 fuchs
rear decklid and grill
chrome sugar scoops
Hopefully I can keep some steam up before life catches up with me again

Speedo

[speedo]

I am tired of dressing welds. Both lockposts are done...and I have dressed all the spot welds. I have also cleaned up all of the spot welds on the outer rockers where they meet the inner rockers on the bottom, and on the top where they snug up to the inner rockers on the door sill. I have POR-15'd the back side of the drivers lockpost and inside the top of the driver rear quarter. Passenger lockpost backside and rear quarter are tomorrow. Front trunk and suspension pan have been waiting to get sealed up.




I needed to get something simple behind me today.
The softie bows have been complete for a while, but I have only fabbed the outer bow stays. The center stay is different from the other two. I need to make it and finish the welding. Paper works for the prototype.

Find heavy gauge steel...


First pass

[speedo]

Looks like a rabbit....no it doesn't

Now just a lot of trim and fit and trim and fit. They look good all lined up

Weld through primer, tacked in place...polish the welds and prime

Ok...little job done.
Front bumper is next on todays list. This beast actually looked pretty good before being sandblasted. After being blasted...reminds me more of cheesecloth. Here is the bumper "from a distance"

The next few pics identify the some of 13 different areas needing real work. I had planned on welding in foglight deletes.

[speedo]

From the inside...creative use of fiberglass and bondo to hold the bumper supprt brace in place

Both sides ...at least it was well balanced

The bumper mounts were in the way. To correctly assess the perforations, much less address the problem, the star bolts need to be removed. These babies had never been removed, and were probably rusted solid. I told myself that if I couldn't remove the bolts...the bumper wasn't worth fixing. Damn...the right side came loose...hmmm originally conda green? Where did this thing come from, the car was gemini blue

One bolt came free on the left side, but the tool destroyed the inside of the bolt. Yahoo! I don't have to suffer through fixing this thing!

Visegrips on the head were no use...they kept slipping off. I wonder if I could weld a standard 15mm head bolt to the frozen bolt to get more leverage.

Damn...it worked. Yeay...more conda green

Ok...now I have to fix this thing. In some places it will be like trying to weld rice paper. I'll attack it later this week after I finsh up with the backside of the passenger lockpost and rear inner quarter.
In the meantime if someone wants to PM me with a decent deal on a front LWB bumper that doesn't need so much work...I will gratefully consider. I have a couple nice pairs of SWB rear bumpers to trade...or outright purchase works too.
Two weeks to paint...and I still haven't decided whether to keep it original gemini blue...or what the hell color to go with.

Speedo

[Matt Monson]

Lars,
Will you adopt me? I could use some father son time doing rust work on my 914...

[MJHanna]

Keep it blue

[KNS]

Blue

[Thamagic1]

Subscribed

[preston_brown]

Bumper is definitely rough. In times past, people might have called it "not savable." I had similar problems with the bumper bracket areas on my 356. Lots of fun fabrication.

[speedo]

My local paint store ran the Gemini Blue Metallic code and it came up as a VW color code L96E. Any paint experts care to weigh in here? If I do go blue...I would probably go black interior (because I have it), but my seats (BMW sport recaros) are being done in tan. I do however have another pair of the recaros that I can get redone in black...but it has taken a year to get this far with the tan recovers, and I don't want to start the clock ticking again. I could stick with the tan, but then I will have to redo the entire interior in tan...and I think black would be better anyway. Anybody have pics of Gemini Blue with tan or black?

Speedo

[speedo]

Couple small items I wanted to take care of before I commit the floors to POR 15. I would rather be prepared to do several areas at once, and only trash one brush and container. A couple areas around the inside edge of the floor looked like an extra welded bead wouldn't hurt...these look to be replacement floors at some point. Decent repair...but I added a few beads "while I was in there". The stud for the drivers side floor board...wasn't. Just a rusted nub protruding slightly above the floor.

Should be about 3/4 inch like the passenger side.

Who needs floorboards anyways? Me...keeps bad stuff out of the pedal cluster. If the chassis was on a rotisserie...this would be no big deal as these rust/break frequently. But it is not on a rotisserie so I have to improvise. This is basically a bolt welded from the pan bottom

No room to get under the car from here to grind the head of the old bolt off, much less weld a new one in place. But if I grind the stud flat to the floor, drill the shaft out...

and tap the hole

Now I can thread a new bolt up through the floor with enough purchase from the thinkess of the old bolt head (still welded to the floor bottom) and the floor to hold the threads in place. A dab of JB weld around the base of the bolt before I screw it in place..will make sure it doesn't go anywhere.

That was easy...and I didn't have to "weld up".

[speedo]

...almost as much as creative "can-opener" tape deck/CD player installs.
Inevitably some well intentioned "dude" paid by the install, not by the hour...can't quite get the deal done using simple hand tools. So he pulls out the hacksaw, and in my case more like the sawzall. The dash provides some rigidity, so this needs to be fixed


This is pretty pathetic...the individual just ripped out the lower edge of the dash.

Ok...the simple fix would be to just weld a brace across the two sides and call it a day. The knee pads would probably cover the quick fix. Nope...needs to be done right. I don't smoke so this would give me a chance to delete the ash tray and go to a one piece knee guard. It all starts here...

It is a little more complex than it looks. I need to roll the top edge, but also detent a lip under neath the top edge



Trial fit to start trimming

[speedo]

Including the indent for the ash tray.


Cleaned up...trash anyway

Now a trial fit. I may stick a player in here some day, so I want the opening to be exact

Trimmed to size and the back is primed

Tacked in place...looks good

Flapper wheel on the beads

And done...came out nice, and gave a little bit of structural rigidity back to the dash


Now where was I...oh yeah the POR 15

[speedo]

Finishing up floors is always a milestone. You have crawled over every square inch. Repaired what is needed, and reiforced what is weak. Grinder, flapperwheel and wire brush...used all the power tools. Vacuumed, degreased, etched and now you are going to seal it up for another 25 years...just becarefull not to get POR 15 down in the threads for the seat rail holes


I was looking forward to using my new Wurth shutz gun on the inner fenders. I'll do the fronts first to get a feel for the product. Like any other application...prep is 9/10ths of the job. I had already removed any surface rust and prepped and POR 15'd the bare metal.

I removed the struts for better access...and in the process found that while they were not correct for a 70-71, they were in fact 3 bolt Konis under all that dirt.

Hmmm, I had considered swapping out what is technically a SWB front suspension...for a later SC front end for the larger brakes. As this is not a track car and likely will never see the track, I am inclined to keep the Konis and the smaller brakes...but I will opt for new rotors and rebuilding the calipers. Hopefully all the road grime over the years will have protected the finish on the struts and I won't need to sandblast and powder coat them.
Now I need to attack the old under coating. I'll need to get through 40 years of road grime. First I used a heavy wire brush by hand to loosen the dirt and asphalt that got thrown on it. That was rather nasty. Next I scrubbed with heavy towels and laquer thinner to get down to where the gemini blue starts to show through the old shutz. This took a long time, and the front is the most exposed. Getting this well prepped in the rear fenders is going to be a mother. It looks in the next picture that I have actually applied new undercoating already...not the case. That is what the inner fender looks like with all the years of crap removed

Now finally I can seal and mask off the areas where I don't want this stuff to go. My system wants the pressure at roughly 65 PSI...and I shoot a test strip...looks ok so I go after it. Gun works great...took about 10 minutes to do the inner fenders and the front bulkhead. Cleans up quickly with water. Great investment. The results...



I'll take it
I am going to clean up the a-arms while I am in here...

Tomorrow the rear inner fenders (yuck) and the lower rockers get shutz'd. I'll find out how good/bad the exterior of the konis really is. Parts list...caliper rebuild kits, rotors, brake lines, and spring plate bushings for the adjustable spring plates to go on the rear. I will need to run a box of parts through the CAD shop shortly, so if anyone in Denver wants to piggyback on the order, let me know.

Speedo

[speedo]

Front SWB suspension went bye-bye. Found a buyer needing the Konis for a 67 S restoration. So I destroyed the steel early crosmember removing the Aarms...boxed up the Konis, Aarms and calipers and off they went. Learned a lot about the differences in the calipers and rotors for the SWB cars. If you have questions, PM me. I wanted to run vented rotors with M calipers up front, so I source a complete suspension locally off of an 83 SC. Struts are Boge (with Koni inserts) which will get stripped and repainted. New vented rotors and rebuilt calipers, and freshened up SC Aarms. The rotors and brake lines are in later this week. I will CAD plate the dust covers and replace the non-adjustable spring plates with CAD plated adjustables with fresh bushings. Stock t-bars (sandblasted and painted) and fresh rear shocks round out the suspension improvements. I already rebuilt the axles and hubs...so those are good to go. Sourced a front T bumper and rears...with lots of extra bondo weight to remove.
Rear inner fenders are stripped...de-mudded, de-grimed and ready for shutz. Few small projects and pics updates to post.
The CAD plating is this week. First things go to the sandblaster to be stripped. Last call if you need to get in on this lot...
Pics shortly...

Speedo

[FLYONWALL9]

The amount of work your doing is staggering! I wish I had even 1/5 of your skill......

FANTASTIC THREAD, thanks for sharing