Paint and rust repair

[Tcrate]

I am looking for feedback from those of you who have done your own rust repair and paint. I am trying to decide what I should do with my car. I have areas around the torque tube that need rust repair. Then various spots on the car. I have gotten a number of estimates for doing this work assuming I do the teardown and assembly. Average cost is $20,000 but no one is willing to really give me a final number due to the rust repair. I have gotten a number of time and material numbers with no guarantees on the rust repair. Paint is generally around $10,000. So I knew this going into this but I am looking at options.

1. Keeping my eyes open for a body in good shape.
2. Considering doing the rust repair myself. Having the car sand blasted by someone and then having someone else do the paint.

My skill level with body work is limited. I have a welder and can weld. I can grind. I am limited on the amount of forming I can do. I generally understand the process but I am by no means an expert.
So for those of you who have done this yourselves my questions are:

Would you do it again if you had to do it over or in other words is it worth paying the money?
Did the job turn out the way you wanted?
lessons Learned?

Thanks for any input.

1976 911S, 2.7L

here is some of the rust areas I am looking at.

[timmy2]

Rust is like an Iceberg. You can only see the top of it with a lot more underneath.
If you can weld and grind you can replace metal. Forming will come with practice.
I'd just replace the doors and fenders with ones from my part of the country.
The structural support areas may present some real work for you. I've seen worse and done repairs myself that were worse on other cars.
Spend some time in the body and paint section, lots of good info in there.

[drcoastline]

I am a DIY kind of person. I would advise pretty much as timmy2. All of those areas are going to be much bigger than what you see now and there will be new ones under that paint. Many of those areas also have patch panels so you really won't need a lot of shaping skills. I would send the structural areas off to a professional for repair. It's one thing to have your repair on a door fail, it's another to have a grafted in suspension mount fail.

[bpu699]

Anything can be saved...

If you do the work your self, you may break even when you sell the car...

I just went through a 3 year "refresher" on my 930. I must have fixed hundreds of things/gaskets/cleaning/radio/wiring/etc. I haven't even gotten to the cosmetic bodywork (touch ups) yet.

If I knew then, what I know now, I would never ever have done it. It took 10 times longer than I thought, and I had to build a new house/garage to accomodate the repairs (Well... we wanted a new house also )....

Your car needs some structural work. You have some options....

1) Fix nothing, watch it go up in value...
2) Do some minor cosmetic repairs, drive, and enjoy
3) Fix everything right, and be financially totally upside down and not drive the car for the next 3 years...

I chose option #3. In hindsight, I would recommend option #2 for you...

Good luck!

[Tcrate]

Well funny you should bring up option 2 I have a good friend who continues to bring that up as the way to go.

One more question I have on body repair. I spoke to someone who suggested they use zinc coated material to replace metal with. Not sure how that works with weldng but is that a good approach to keep rust from coming back.

Thanks for the input.

[bpu699]

Originally Posted by Tcrate

Well funny you should bring up option 2 I have a good friend who continues to bring that up as the way to go.

One more question I have on body repair. I spoke to someone who suggested they use zinc coated material to replace metal with. Not sure how that works with weldng but is that a good approach to keep rust from coming back.

Thanks for the input.

You can buy sheet metal thats zinc coated, but you need to scrape it off where you weld. Most repair panels aren't zinc coated.

I had a 76 911s 10 years ago, so I can relate to what you are going to work on. Yours has a lot of rust. If you plan on paying folks to fix that car, I would budget closer to $100,000 than $30,000.

My 930 needed little (or so I thought), but I probably have well over 1000 hours into it... And its not done...

Its fun to work on for the first several months... after that, it becomes a chore.

There is a reason that 90% of cars that are taken apart for restoration/etc never get put back together....

[jpnovak]

I have been there multiple times and swore I would not do it again. Now I have another project in the garage.

My $0.02. Looking at the picture of the DS torsion tube area I can see inside the rust hole. From the looks of it, the torsion tube might be severed from rust. If you can see the torsion bar (suspension) then the tub is not worth saving. If it were another car with some significance then you could fix it. The torsion tube runs through multiple layers of sheet metal and this is not a normal DIY repair - especially for someone who admits they do not have much fabrication experience. Access would require removing much of the seat pan and heel panel to correctly weld.

If the rust is only the lower sections of the sheet metal then this can be repaired. There are panels available from many sources.

The only way to truly know is to start taking it apart and exploring the innards of the chassis with strategic cuts. you try to be as minimally invasive as possible during these cuts but you have to go deep enough to make an informed decision.

This will be a long project to bring back. If you drop it off at the shop realize that each section of repair will be measured in $1000 increments. At a shop rate of $85/hour or so it will take full days to repair each section properly. Only you can decide if you have the budget or the personal time to take this on.

Motivation is another area of concern. How motivated of a person are you to complete tasks?

[ganun]

I took me 1 1/2 years working full time including Sat and Sun on the car to do a similar project on an 87. My first project after retirement.
I would not do it while holding down a fulltime job.
To do option 2, I think some structural repairs are safety related, but just to do those requires some serious disassembly. Windshield pillar, kidney bowls, front jack points an pan are some for starters, doors, fenders etc are cosmetic, like someone mentioned.
Another option (#4) of course is to sell as is and get something better

[Cook&Dunning]

I bought a 72E with perhaps worse rust than yours. In order to really see what you are up against, you are going to need to start pulling it apart - I did that and it was heartbreaking to realize I was totally over my head, and I would not get it done. And realizing that if I didn't do an excellent job on everything, it would be a lousy restoration - which would be a shame. And of course having a disassembled car for sale is easily the worst way to try to sell a car.

The other thing I found was I did not enjoy the process. I thought I would, but once I started I realized that I was looking at years before I could enjoy it.

I ended up selling it. Looking back I should have sold it before I started.

[Dpmulvan]

Sell it and move on unless your retired and love metal work.

[porschetub]

Originally Posted by Dpmulvan

Sell it and move on unless your retired and love metal work.

Thats not the reply the OP needs,from what I have seen on here many have done great work with research and the right tools.

Plenty of people on this forum to help,besides you start rough and soon become very good @ rust repair,fact ,thats the way it is,been there.

These old cars are now getting TLC from average skilled owners and the results that I have seen are remarkable,any body work by a skilled person is expensive,to the garage guy its disposable free time that can later be put into other area's of the car....like a really nice repaint for instance.

[sc_rufctr]

Just hook in and do it. No one knows what they are doing until they get into it and then it's too late to back out. lol

Seriously, once you start and see each area fixed it inspires you to keep going.

(Who knows? You might even enjoy it a little )

[mepstein]

Do all the breakdown prep. Take it to a pro that you trust. Pay them to do the job. It will be more than you expect but that's the world of rust repair. Reassemble yourself.