Restoring Jewel’s 911e (Another ’69 e Restoration)

[TC911e]

After much delay and fumbling around I've finally gotten around to going public with the story of the restoration story of the ’69 911e I’m working my way through. I've been doing a lot of searching, reading, learning through you other Pelicans posts and have occasionally actually worked on the car. The pace has been glacial, especially in comparison to the rate some of you guys with actual skills work, but I've maybe finally developed enough of a rhythm to actually be able to occasionally show some progress (though I doubt I ever get up to the rate of some of you guys). Let’s see if I can get the story caught up to today.

The car is a one-owner ’69 911e that sat parked for at least 10 years. I learned of the car on a bike ride when one of the guys asked “do you all know anyone looking for a 911 project?” and my buddy’s response was “he is”, and I was stuck. All in all it didn't look too bad and was apparently complete and mostly original, but had a less than stellar re-paint job, several visible paint bubbles from rust (at the base of the A-pillar and under the gasket, at the front fender joins, down the front fender mounting flange, and some around the floor at the jack socket), plus a somewhat wrinkled deck lid and rear valance where the PO backed into something. I also knew enough to recognize I’d only found the tip of the iceberg. After a couple of trips to look at it and a failed attempt to back out of it, I was shamed into dragging the car home. That was 5 years ago.

[TC911e]

The car, Light Ivory with leather seats, was originally imported by Jewel Templeton, the wife of Harvey Templeton who made a name for himself in the ‘60s and ‘70s designing, building and racing his own home-built SCCA Formula Vee and Formula Ford cars. They lived in the next town over and I met him a time or two at the race track when we were racing Showroom Stock in the 80’s, and made one visit over to his shop to checkout his cars, fab shop and dyno setup. I don’t remember seeing the Porsche then, but that was 30 years ago and I’m sure it was around there somewhere. The shot below is Harvey on the grid at Road Atlanta with his Formula Ford (if I remember the story right he changed his car number every year to match his age)



The first order of business was dropping the engine, cleaning up and replacing gaskets and the oil return tubes, freeing up the MFI pump, emptying and flushing the 10 year old gas out of the tank. After a brief battle with a stuck valve I was able to get it to run on 6 cylinders enough to drive it down the street and back, and discover one frozen shock and a dead ball joint.





Since then it’s been disassembly and rust repair.

[weseeeee]

Congrats on getting it running. Keep the pics coming.

[wachuko]

Subscribed!

[TC911e]

At this point it might be appropriate to shift over to the Paint & Bodywork forum, but I’ll continue here until I get it caught up and then jump to the other forum for specifics.

The right front corner was the first spot where I found an unusual level of creativity in rust and damage repair (there were several more to come later). An 1/8” plate with ¼” of filler covered what ended up being several places where the rust had eaten all the way through. Certainly not as bad as others I've seen here, but a bit of a mess none the less.









This appeared to be a good place to start since I had (have) no welding skills and the repairs here would be well hidden from any cosmetic scrutiny. A repetitive series of cut patches, weld patches, grind welds, repair welds, cut patches, weld patches eventually lead to a mostly intact front panel.









Somewhere in here was a move to a new house. Boxing up everything and moving from one garage to another is one of my excuses for taking so long.

Before the move I managed to get the gas tank stripped and recoated with grey Wurth Stoneguard schutz.

[timmy2]

Your welding skills look to be more than adequate.
Keep up the good work.
The gas tank looks great.

[TC911e]

The inner fender, the cowl/hood seal rail, and the corner of where the cowl meets the inner fender were also a mess. All the pieces on the inner fender and the cowl corner I built from scratch.










The cowl/hood seal rail was a reproduction part, but took a bit more fitting and matching and bending and tweaking than I’d counted on. Eventually I got it all lined up and attached, though getting at some of the spots for the welds was a bit of a challenge.








I’m now on to the drivers side rocker repair which turned into inner rocker, B-pillar, kidney bowl, inner fender, and on and on.

[TC911e]

Thanks for the comment Dennis. I can certainly tell an improvement in my welding over time, but I still have moments where I'm bopping along fine and then the next spot I'm blowing holes in the joint. Fortunately I'll have lots of practice in the hidden spots before I have to start hitting the visible stuff. Unfortunately, there's going to be lots of both- hidden and visible- still to come.

If I'd known I was going to have to go this deep into this thing I don't know that I would have jumped off the cliff.

[95avblm3]

Great story and nice looking welds! I'm working on a similar project, although not as much rust as yours: Turning a "Boxster" in to a longhood!

Keep up the good work!

[mcaterino]

Ah, this makes me nostalgic.. The inner fenders were where I cut my welding teeth too. Good place to start. Looks like you've got the right attitude, and aren't in any great hurry. That's a recipe for a successful project. Enjoy the process.

It looks like you're taking a preserve-as-much-as-possible approach to patching, which is good up to a point. But you mention blow-through, which I think generally indicates that you haven't cut away enough weak metal. I did a lot of that early on too, being reluctant to cut out too much, but if you can get back to really clean metal the welding's so much nicer. The fabrication gets trickier, of course, too, but I found that part kind of fun. Much more fun that chasing butt weld seams into pieces that should have been removed.

Mike

[timmy2]

Originally Posted by TC911e

Thanks for the comment Dennis. I can certainly tell an improvement in my welding over time, but I still have moments where I'm bopping along fine and then the next spot I'm blowing holes in the joint. Fortunately I'll have lots of practice in the hidden spots before I have to start hitting the visible stuff. Unfortunately, there's going to be lots of both- hidden and visible- still to come.

If I'd known I was going to have to go this deep into this thing I don't know that I would have jumped off the cliff.

Any pictures of how the front cowl turned out?
One tool I like for grinding welds in tight places is a rotory die grinder fitted with 4" cut off wheels and a guard. once you get used to it you will get those welds totally flush.
I usually only get blow out with thin metal as mentioned above or if I rush. The spot welding spaced properly apart to avoid overheating and then filling between is time consuming and tedious.
Post up some more pics, we all enjoy seeing this stuff!

[TC911e]

Any pictures of how the front cowl turned out?
One tool I like for grinding welds in tight places is a rotory die grinder fitted with 4" cut off wheels and a guard. once you get used to it you will get those welds totally flush.

I thought I had some pictures of the cowl rail after I'd ground it out and primed it, but either I don't or my photo filing system failed me. I'll get some shots this afternoon and post them. I can't imagine that a project like this would be possible for anyone but the pros a few years ago without digital cameras, the internet, and a forum like Pelican.

I tried just just about everything I have cleaning up the welds around the cowl rail, including one of those 3/8" wide air belt sanders, but I think you're right- the cut off wheel on the die grinder worked the best. The little belt sander thing did help smooth it out though.

It looks like you're taking a preserve-as-much-as-possible approach to patching, which is good up to a point. But you mention blow-through, which I think generally indicates that you haven't cut away enough weak metal. I did a lot of that early on too, being reluctant to cut out too much, but if you can get back to really clean metal the welding's so much nicer. The fabrication gets trickier, of course, too, but I found that part kind of fun. Much more fun that chasing butt weld seams into pieces that should have been removed.

I did start out with small pieces, but I'm getting more adventurous. I'll get the photos up of the inner rocker/kidney bowl/rear frame rail repair at some point soon. The fabrication there was a bit more of a challenge, but it was kind of fun too. I think a part of my blow-through problems was I got too cocky with turning the heat up, but it work fine practicing on the bench. Even when I was welding in the patches it seemed like it would work in most of the spots, but a couple of inches over, in what I thought was solid, I would blow through. I'm getting better at filling holes though.

[TC911e]

Here's a couple of shots of the cowl after grinding and priming. I haven't gone back and tried to apply any filler or smooth it out further.










For now I'm trying to take care of all the rust repairs, and then I'll go back and smooth and fill as necessary. I may try to get the welds ground down a bit more before filling, but I started getting nervous about taking too much off of the surrounding surfaces (which got me into trouble on the front valence repair). At this point that fill/smooth step still looks a ways off.

[TC911e]

The passenger side A-pillar also had a pretty bad case of rust under the windshield seal and had rusted all the way through.



My cut at repairing the A-pillar holes is on this page:

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/paint-bodywork-discussion-forum/733955-pillar-cowl-rust.html

[TC911e]

After a few exploratory holes, drilling out dozens of spot welds, and a bit of overzealous use of a scraper/chisel to bust loose the welds I got down to the inner rocker panel





only to find a pop-riveted sheet of galvanized sheetmetal under 1/8” plus of bondo covering a gaping hole below the lock plate.







After much hesitation and reading of other posts I cut off the bottom of the rear quarter to get access to the kidney bowl and the other rotten bits.









Leaving me, after cleanup, with this hole to fill

[TC911e]

Much cutting, bending and shaping yielded this piece to fill the hole

[Porboynz]

Tim

Good man, a real do it yourself effort. Love it. Is that jack mount OK? Seems a shame to get that far without replacing the jack tube and support. Its a great feeling when you can safely use the factory jack points again.

Does this look familiar


How about this one



Those photos were taken in 2005. Like you I took a while, but its very rewarding once you get it back on the road. Keep it up, do a little every week and before you know it you'll be on the road again.

[95avblm3]

Quite some surprises under that bondo! I am watching your rust repair with awe. Keep up the good work!

[TC911e]

Good man, a real do it yourself effort. Love it. Is that jack mount OK? Seems a shame to get that far without replacing the jack tube and support. Its a great feeling when you can safely use the factory jack points again.

Does this look familiar

Yep that looks familiar. I think mine must have had a running stream rolling back and forth through the inner rocker.



I gave some thought to replacing the jack tube, but it seemed to be ok itself and the point where it welds to the floor was still solid. It had some surface rust, but that was about it.

I'm probably going to need some advice in fitting up the outer rocker, the lock post and the lower fender I cut off. Things don't seem to be fitting up the way I'd expected, but I'll get some pictures and better questions posted later. I did pose a "how the heck is this supposed to work?" question (Early Rocker Drainage- How was this supposed to work? )about the fitment of the outer rocker, kidney bowl, and the jack support since the remanufactured parts don't really look like the original part. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Quite some surprises under that bondo! I am watching your rust repair with awe. Keep up the good work!

Thanks, but unfortunately I keep finding them. By now I should know not to be surprised. The latest one I just found yesterday on the bottom edge of the driver's door. I'd stripped the door down in preparation to remount it as a guide to reinstalling the outer rocker and lock plate when I found this:



Flipping it over and doing a little "paint" removal revealed this:



And a little more grinding and I see this:



That stuff is an 1/8"+ thick at that point!

I'll also be looking for advice on repairing that spot on the inside of the lower front edge of the door. There's replacement panels available for the bottom of the door and the lower door skin, but it didn't look like they ran all the way to the corner.

Anyone else had to do a repair in that spot? I'll probably post a question over the the Bodywork forum as well when I get to it.

[Porboynz]

Oh my, just shows what bondo and paint can hide. Fitting up the inner rocker was OK but I needed to extend the front heater tube about 3 inches to clear the indentations in the new "universal" inner rocker replacement from Porsche. I simply welded a section of flared exhaust tube to it and shortened the flexible muffler connector. The outer rocker is a whole different game, that can drive you insane. I also replaced the kidney bowl and the door latch post. Getting the seam correct when reattaching the guard leading edge to the latch post panel requires great care as does the door fit. Having said that the latch is very adjustable and has plastic packers to optimise the fit, so not so bad. I had the doors hung to check fit as I replaced the latch post and the outer sill. I have lots of photos if you get stuck anywhere and want a second opinion. The doors are a real problem as you have found, you have to get back to good metal, weld in your patches and seal it up tight so it can not rust again. You do not want much bondo in this area, just enough to give a good smooth paint finish, no major layering up to make the gaps fit which is what I had on my 911 from earlier repairs.