Down the rabbit hole of rust repair I go

[deathpunk dan]

My car has had the front pan, fenders, floors, and rear quarters replaced but the inner rockers are bad and or were done improperly. Among a few other things.

Fortuitously, I was introduced to someone who does this stuff as a fun hobby. And he happens to live about 5 miles from where I work. (!)

He has done several 356s and early 911s, including a very nice 67 912 I am familiar with. I am working with him on it when and where possible, mostly disassembly and cleaning thus far (removing undercoating etc). It's early in the game but the progress is exciting.



After this, I still have a ton of mechanical stuff to do, but am definitely hoping to be mostly done by spring.

[sailchef]

You need to document this from start to finish and put it in the Paint and Bodywork Forum. I know we have a few others in there , but one can never have too many pictures for reference.

[Matt Monson]

I'm just glad to hear you are keeping it.

[JerP]

Good luck. Please keep this thread updated on your progress.

[Flieger]

[dshepp806]

Originally Posted by flieger

:d

(hehehe) cool!

[deathpunk dan]

Making progress since my initial post. The passenger side should be done in a week or two and then we will spin the car around and get moving on the driver's side, which doesn't appear to be nearly as bad. It boggles my mind that they did everything *but* the inner rockers during the 1990-91 restoration. And while some of the bodywork is to factory standards, the outer rockers were not done correctly. We are fixing that and then some.



Cutting away to get a better look at the bad stuff.


...which there was plenty of.


seeing how the jack tube and plate will go together



That black stuff is rust converter. All metal was taken down to bare metal and anything bad was cut out. Fabricated pieces where necessary and or bought from Stoddard.



Test fit/mockup of new inner rocker before welding it in.


And a week or so later the outer rocker is back on. The stuff you see on there will ultimately be just a skim coat of body filler before painting. This guy is good enough that he did all the bodywork on a 356B before it went off for an 18k paint job.


Jack tube looks like it's ready to handle another 40 yrs of jacking (I kid, I kid...never jack it up there, don't worry)


so, the rust extended back to just in front of the torsion tube. Fortunately, it went no farther. We were able to fabricate/use metal from another 911 to fix.


A shot of just underneath the outer rocker.

Once the paintwork is done, I will apply rubberized undercoating to match what's already on the car. Was thinking of stripping all undercoating and going with spray truck bed liner stuff, actually, but decided on the path of least resistance for once.

Well, that's all thus far. Will continue to take questionable pics with my iPhone and post when appropriate. I obviously left out a left of details in the process, such as many hours lying on a garage floor with a wire wheel, scraper, heat gun etc.

For the driver's side I promise to be more detailed and step-by-step.

[mcaterino]

Good progress Dan. I'm sure it was a tough decision, but you must already feel better about how strong the car is going to be. You'll be out of the woods soon.

You going for a total repaint, or just going to try and match the lower panels?

Mike

[deathpunk dan]

A full repaint (and in my dreams, to ossi blue) would be ideal, but it's not realistic at this time. Much of the affected area will be hidden by the threshold piece, the S rocker trim etc, so fingers crossed the partial paintwork comes out halfway decent.

[sailchef]

Nice work. Your making good time. I thought I would be working on the same project this winter, but got a little sidetracked. There can never be too many pictures. Thanks for posting.

[deathpunk dan]

More progress:



test fitting trim back in place (loose/unsecured hence the gaps) after paint.



more test fitting.

Last night I used water-based adhesive residue remover and a scraper to try and remove the remaining old door seal bits and residue. We will finish up this side in the next week and spin the car around to begin the other side with a vengeance!

[Porsche-O-Phile]

*sigh* I'm not looking forward to this. Fortunately my car is pretty clean but there are a couple of spots of concern that I need to tackle soon. You know how that works - once I get in there it might be a bigger ordeal than what it looks like. In fact I'm counting on it.

Good work - and nice to know there's another P-car person out this way!

[techweenie]

I hope you know how lucky you are to have a great welder/metal fabricator nearby. It's the difference between a difficult, spendy but worthwhile project and -- as you say -- a trip down the rabbit hole.

For those without that resource, a project like this is worth a few welding classes and buying some equipment.