Radical RetroMod 965 RSR
 

Four years ago this week, I bought my beautiful white 1991 911 Turbo (aka 965) with 61K miles and I couldn't have been any happier, as it truly had become a dream come true. Growing up in the Dominican Republic during the 1970-80's, my brother and I were track rats as our father was heavily involved in racing as the president of an automobile club and subsequently, as the long standing director of motorsports for the country. He had delved into Porsche ownership briefly with a white 1973 911 targa, which met its fate during the devastating Hurricane David in 1979 when a huge tree branch fell on the car's rear. For those that are wondering how that could have happened, no one had anticipated the extent of the horrible path of destruction for that hurricane and, garages do not really exist outside the US, only car ports, especially in 3rd world countries back in the 1970's... I still remember how the leather smelled in that Targa, how it easily beat out surrounding traffic, and the whirl of the engine in the back of my head. But even before this tragedy happened, my brother and I had already developed a connection with Porsches as the movie Le Mans had been played around the house many times over...

Also, we grew up watching perhaps the most well-known and dominant racer in the history of the DR, Luis Mendez, pilot his 1974 RSR (which went through many changes/developments over the years) to several championships both locally and throughout the Carribean and Central America. Among other things, Luis was the exclusive dealer for Alpine stereos in the country and he never drove anything in the street other than his pristine white 1979 911 turbo with gold BBS wheels and an Alpine stereo, of course. I guess this left quite an impression on me when I was barely starting elementary school. I saw that car weekly for several years on my way to just about anywhere.

So, when the time came that I could afford an upgrade to a nice car, there was no doubt in my mind that I only wanted a white 911 turbo. One of my closest friends, who happens to then own a 1 owner 8K mile red 1994 3.6 965, got me thinking that I really wanted a C2, vs. an older 911 or a 993, since it still looked remarkably similar to the "classic" 911. C2's are air cooled and were designed with an upgraded A/C system over the older cars (important in FL), ABS, air bags, etc. So, I after a couple of weeks, I found my car through cars.com being sold by the president of a PCA chapter out in Arkansas. It had a PPI performed less than 800 miles previous to its then mileage of 61K, so I bought it for what I thought was a fair price.

10 days later when it was being unloaded off the DAS trailer, I realized that the car had a major source of water leak since the entire carpet of the car was completely soaked with rain water. So, I had no other choice but literally drive it straight to the shop I had picked out to be its caretaker before purchasing it - Vertex in Miami. They enjoyed a good reputation overseas as a dependable Pcar parts supplier, were situated close to where I lived, and had received many a free advice on other cars I had considered prior to purchase.

Since the front windshield gasket had to be replaced, I opted to upgrade the glass to 993 spec. Since the rear glass gasket also had to be switched out, I opted to remove the C2 third brake light, and instead replace it with a 993 winged one with an integrated light. I purchased 965 S front splitters from Rennspeed as well as a euro plate off eBay which I simply like the looks of.

As to the interior, I of course opted to improve the stereo with what else, but an Alpine head unit, an 8 inch sub tucked underneath the passenger seat along with an amp underneath the driver's, coupled with an already upgraded set of speakers. Since the cabin was kind of plain looking, I decided to replace the worn shifter to a stainless ball unit off a 993 which reminded me of my father's bought from new 1997 C2S. I actually auto crossed that car along with him and my brother on several PCA events, so I was fond of that shifter even though its marked as a 6 speed and C2's only came with 5 speeds!

Because I now had some 'stainless' in the car's interior, I then installed an aluminum pedal kit, Rennline door locks, and turbo door sills. The car spent months at Vertex ensuring that it was roadworthy again and we took stock of the fact that the 965 came with a Billy Boat exhaust, spring bar boost, and factory big reds brakes (993 TT). But, it also came with fugly chrome turbo twist wheels and since I was shelling out all this money at the time, I opted for Keskin Speedline replicas like the 3.6 965, so it looked like this when the car's repairs and upgrades were completed:


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Thereafter, I realized that I really wanted to have BBS wheels on the car but, I had not become very fond of their more modern interpretation of the "classic" mesh wheel they helped popularize. So, I bought a set of Work Brombachers from a Rennlist member who had them on his 993TT. When they were subsequently installed on my car, the rears stuck out a good inch and therefore, I had to order smaller outer barrels which took 3 months to receive. The car's look was transformed into this:

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Shortly thereafter, the pulley that sticks out of the back at crankshaft sheered off one fateful day, so I had to get the entire engine rebuilt, which took a while. While we were "in there", we put the crank out of 3.6 C2 engine which bored out my engine from a 3.3 to a screaming 3.5... All was well there for a while with the car, with a cool sound system, regular maintenance, and the usual spoils of driving these types of cars until...

A year ago this past January, an ignorant driver hit the front end of my car which made it look like this:

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The car was subsequently repaired, but one cannot reasonably expect to have new paint match the original (then) 22 year old paint, so that I was actually looking at the front of the car and visibly noticing 2 different shades of white in each of the front quarter panels and across the hood! After 6 months of that, plus some rust spots beginning to rear their ugly head in the passenger side rear quarter panel and rear window, as well as in the driver's door sill, I stomached the prospect of going ahead with a full respray...

Of course, if you decide to paint a car top to bottom that's been around as long as mine has, you also need to change all the seals, to the tune of $2,000.00. Thus, began the long journey as of July 11, 2013, to what you see here of a picture taken 2 days ago...

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More details to follow on this transformation as time allows... I originally wanted to make the car's debut at the Porsche Corral for the 24 Hours of Daytona a couple of months ago, to then this weekend's 12 Hours of Sebring.

Man, that picture of the damage makes my eyes hurt.


Awesome build! I can't wait to see what it looks like back on the ground! Especially on those center lock wheels.

that's gonna be wild, like a more modern take on the 934, your rear flares look even wider...

ah, a RWB-style (?)...

Otta B,

That looks like its gonna be a phat ride when done. Sorry to see that an incident is what prompted this.

I'm gonna have to look some of you FLA guys up the next time I'm down that way. I was there in Jan for Cavallino. Always a good time.

Ooh that is going to look wild! are you going to reuse the same wheels with wider barrels?

Can't wait until the whole car is completed. Bunch of neat things all over the place that mixes old and new together.

needs lollipops

Otto- Original look was very sweet. I can understand your need to go w-i-d-e :)

Do the look well (as in you will have to have crazy hp and good rims) and you will see your dreams.
Me? skinny it up and do a 912 tribute lol.

When I bought the car, even then I knew I wanted it to stick out from the others, and certain older Ruf models as wells as RSR's were finished with a solid center reflector. I liked the idea, but since reverse lights are a must in my book, I borrowed this concept from a pic I took at Rennsport II from ironically, a 993 Ruf BTR...

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I later added a Porsche script which I purchased from a well known Pelican member, but little did I know it was going to actually be crooked when I attempted to install it straight.

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But, there was always something that appeared off in the back of the car, until it finally dawned on me - the rear deck lid and/or turbo tail were somehow warped/twisted, which gave a funky appearance in the back of the car... I must have somehow subconsciously decided not to take any pics of the rear of the car unless it was at an angle, but it was in my opinion a noticeable problem.

So, it was one more thing that came to light when I decided to repaint the car - might as well replace the deck lid all together and what other better alternative to another "plain" factory stock replacement, in my opinion? Well, a turbo duck tail, of course! So, I posted a thread on it and search the classifieds to find Gary Stratton out of Orlando, who was selling one.

The only caveat when I spoke to him was that he needed to have one available since the car was going to paint soon. He did and sent me these pics:

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Vertex sourced me a C2 decklid, which Gary needed as a base for the duck, monies were exchanged, and 10 days later I got my own custom turbo duck which came out incredibly well finished and prepared!

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I was really excited to transform my 965 with a duck since its not commonly seen. But then, I had the idea why stop there, why not also get hood mounted Cibie Pallas fogs? So, I checked with our host, then Dave at TRE, then ebay all over the world, literally, and found them but the sticker shock was high... It took a while to find out that no one else seemed to have them in stock, even in the UK, so I bit the bullet and a couple of weeks later, this arrived:

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Of course, if you are going to spend the kind of money it takes to source these lamps, paint them to match the car's color (and paint the trim black to complement the headlight trim), and install them, then might as well also find the appropriate but equally unobtanium Cibie yellow tin covers... That was a mission and a half, but I persevered and google translate became an often used source to search through the ends of the earth.

One day, I finally found some entity out in France that had a pair of brand new ones, in stock, and for sale! I bought them on the spot, and although I have never taken pictures of the actual ones I received as they went into a drawer to never see light for a long time, they look identical to these:

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Ironically, neither the duck nor the fog lamps have yet to be installed in the car as of today...

Enjoy and ,and make it the car you want! I personally prefer the way it started..

In the pic of the yellow Ruf BTR (?) above, I meant to say Rennsport III which was also held in Daytona as Rennsport II - I attended those two events and took many pics while there but obviously, that was many years and many drinks ago!

A big ole' "ya!" to the mega wide body but an even bigger "HELL NO" to the duck and Cibies. But like Gary said (sort of) above, it's your car to F-up any way you see fit. :p

At that point early in the project, my mind set was to simply "improve" on things that I felt needed some attention. For example, the 965 Turbo S winglets that had been installed years prior looked really sorry (the pics spare the truly embarrassingly look they had), so I thought I'd research them to see how I could replace them. Well, if you look hard enough, you'll find what you want and I did find a guy out in Germany who makes front lower lip for the C2 wide bodies, but in all honesty, it didn't remotely look good and he wanted more than $500.00 for them. So, back to Rennspeed and this time around, I bought the ones for a narrow body thinking that someone with some fiberglass skills could adapt them. Hence, what I felt then was going to be the extent of the repaint of the car and all exterior modifications.

This is an incredible project and will be for sure, a unique Porsche. What is your plan for the side skirts? Please do not make big boxed rockers!

Here is a front bumper that you need.
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G model car, but I love the enduro round driving light look for wide bodies.

Turboo934's car is greathttp://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1395194343.jpg

I have very large 1/18 scale model collection, and among the oldest models I have, is a white Porsche 965 made by Welly pictured below which I bought 4 years ago shortly after purchasing the real one...

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Although you cannot see it in the picture, the model comes with a set of sport hard back seats a-la-speedster where the rear portion of the front seats is white. Naturally after having this model for so long, it goes without saying that I always wanted to have white sport hard back seats on my car. When time came to upgrade the car by way of paint and whale tail, I decided to pull the trigger on seats...

The problem is that most of them are not only incredibly expensive, but also very seldom will you find a set made in beige leather which is the interior of my car. On the few that I saw for sale, none of them were less than $5-$6K and that did not take into consideration the fact that the leathers did not match mine! So, I decided to go the old fashioned way and simply have them made and after some more research, LA Dismantler came to the rescue once again (I had purchased from them the 3rd brake light spoiler off a 993 and the gear shift too) and found these for a modest price.

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There was no turning back at this point with the seats, so we matched the leather to be installed with the genuine OEM leather samples...



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This was the end result:

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The brakes on the car had seen better days, so we had them powder coated and placed new decals - looks like candy!http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1396884083.jpg

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Unfortunately, the suspension had seen better days and the shocks were essentially toast...

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After realizing that the repairs on the car were not going to be something quick nor on any kind of limited budget, I had no choice but to do an upgrade on the suspension by way of a new coil over kit - Bilstein PSS10's... They look nice, but I have not driven the car as of yet and it will be corner balanced and aligned once all the remaining work is completed.

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