Finally got my car back !!!

[ian c2]

It’s been a while ..

It went into the paint-shop for a little freshen-up where a car bra had scuffed the hood and front fender tops .
Also some parts I brought from England for the car where getting touched-up as well .
This only left the doors and rear quarters .

Once it was done , they looked old , so It turned into paintng the doors and rear quarters whilst it was there .
Around 6 years I think .

I got it back from the paintshop beginning of December , and it’s been in a hangar at a local airport whilst I finished my garage project .
Garage wasn’t finished , but ran out of time in the hangar .

So ... it come home Sunday afternoon !!!

Now the fun begins .

[ian c2]

My hood prop arrived yesterday , and my new gas struts arrived today .
So first job is replace the hood struts and remove the old stereo .

[ian c2]

Hers a little history .
I guess I should have started the thread with this , but was so excited to get the car back home I jumped straight in with pictures of a dusty part-stripped 964
In my defense , that first post was also sponsored by Budweiser . Official beer of the nfl , and official beer of this project upto now

I owned a 964bfor many years when I was in England .
A 93 carrera2 cabriolet 5-speed in black with light grey full leather .
In 93 porsche was struggling , and A lot of cars from this year where optioned to be sold to get them through the dip until the 993 could be released .
My car came with limited slip dif , embossed door-cards , full leather sports seats , 17” 965 wheels , and a few other things I cannot remember .

I totally rebuilt this car .
I got it cheap enough that I could spend on it has it had a small fire in the charcoal filter . Fire department did more damage opening the engine lid than the fire

Bare metal respray , wasn’t happy . Took it to another shop for another bare metal respray etc
New rear section added to the roof happened around this time as the plastic rear window melted in the fire .

I was working around the world whilst all this was going on and I think to get it back to how it should be took about 3-4 years .
trying to restore an okrasa golf and maintain the other okrasa that was my daily , plus restoring the 964 and a 73 vw bus for my elder sister and building her a new-beetle that was a secret gift took its toll on my down time in England . (Can’t find 964 pics , but have pics of oettinger golfs and sisters bug I’ll add later )
In the meantime my mind started wandering in the direction it ussually take with my projects ... nothing stays stock

I knew Marc from 9m before he moved in with them from my Volkswagen scene , and over the course of this project I was dealing with him and miles/carter ? at his shop for certain things and I think Colin at his shop was still 930motorsport at this time ?
Once the car was at a Bodyshop that could do the paint to my required standard , the engine came out and went to ninemeister for cleaning up , replacing any melted plastic or fire/water damaged parts , and making sure it was good to go back into the car .
By this time I had moved into a smaller workshop and only had room for my 964 snd a buddy’s escort rs rally car so I didn’t have the space or the time to do many jobs myself so they where given to contacts in the p-car scene ...

Dangerous people to know !!!

The next thing you know I’m talking to mark bongers at ruf about a 6-speed conversion , Colin at 9m about brakes and suspension , southbound trimmers about leather dashboards etc. all people that know their 5h1t , all people that are enthusiasts .
My kind of people

Finally got it finished around 6 years later ...
(Specs iirc)
@300hp motor that could get through the mot emissions with or without a cat .
6-speed rUf / Swiss turbo gearbox .
Rs flywheel turbo clutch .
A mixture of ruf , eibach and h&r suspension .
A mixture of rs and turbo brakes .
Porsche Motorsport Cup-narrowbody 18” speedlines .
965 turboS carbon Kevlar rear wing on 965 lid .
Dual outlet fabspeed rear .
McIntosh and dynaudio stereo system .
LG Seats re-treated and full interior trim in black leather (everything apart from buttons and vents )
And a few 964rs and 993rs parts thrown in for good measure .
Plus all stock parts replaced , wheel bearings , bushings , sensors etc.
Plus all the parts that the experts installed to make it all work that I didn’t need to be bored with .

WHAT A CAR !!!
I had planned on keeping it until the day I died , so it was made exactly how I wanted it with expert advice taken on my ideas . What would work , what would not work , and what was a waste of time and money .
Anything that wasn’t improved was new factory parts .
If that car was stock and did not have any mods it would have been better than the day it left the porsche factory , and any mods were keeping with the porsche/porsche Motorsport ethos of quality , reliability , and performance . ( I should probobly thank porsche Liverpool for the time they took dealing with porsche Motorsport via fax on my behalf)

The only thing left to do was either a 9m n/a motor a ruf turbo conversion , and I was talking to alois and mark at ruf , and around this time Colin at 9m was building the singer prototype n/a engine , and I think earlier christer was trying out a 4.0 motec on the streets in his car .

It was then when the unfortunate happened .

Long story short , I met a girl in Orange County California and decided to move over here .
My car could not come with me .
I had 2 choices : pay for storage and maintenance for years until it was old enough to bring to USA with no problems , or remove any parts that would fit on a Usa car buy the same car over here /

I chose the later option .
Car was left at 9m for stripping and putting back to “stock” then selling for me on consignment while I was in California .
Some parts where not transferable from rhd to lhd and they stayed on the car , as did the 6-speed as I couldn’t get a stock 5-speed within budget and time constraints.
Everything that was viable to take off and put in a shipping container was sent to America whilst I looked for the EXACT same car in lhd .
Whoever bought that car from 9m got one hell of a deal !!!

It was maybe a year to 18 months later I made a comment on a uk vw forum about my frustration ...
I had placed wanted adverts everywhere for a 93 c2 convertible that matched my uk car , and when I wasn’t too busy I was looking online .
I was pretty picky ... I even wanted the same mileage ....
I was ready to give up , and said “I’m going to give it another week and if I don’t find one I’m going to sell all my 964 parts and just buy a 997”

And then pelican stepped in !!!

About 2 days later I was wiring money to a seller that was away on a business trip

The wait finally paid off .
Same year , same model , same colour .
The only difference was this one had air-conditioning (not so bad in socal) and black leather seats instead of LG .
It was around the same mileage , but not exact . This one was 3000 less .

So there you have it .
Rather long winded , but that’s my story to this 964 .
Allthough I’m not sure about the need for a “special” 6-speed conversion for what will be basically a PCH socal cruiser , the car will be built to replicate my “car for life” English 964 and will become a “car for life” American 964 .

Thanks for getting to the end of my essay .
Sponsored by bud-light .

[plexiform]

Congrats on getting RE-invested in to your Porsche dream. I share your enthusiasm with my 75 911 hot rod project which I'm hoping to have back completed in the next few months. Does yours have a stock engine right now?

[ian c2]

Probobly nobody on here interested , but I just dug up a couple of new-beetle surprise gift pics .
Yellow one was built on England around same time as my 964 as a gift to my older sister . ( youngest sister’s youngest daughter is now driving it so that’s cool )
And green one was the USA version , gift to an ex gf .
I think it’s left “stored” on the street as Her daughter would rather drive a Nissan Versa .
What’s the world coming to ????

[ian c2]

[ian c2]

Dont ask me how much trouble it was to buy denim , suitable for trimming a car , in bulk in , different shades , that wouldn’t stretch or sag , that wouldn’t colour-transfer .. and then find an upholstery guy that would not turn the job down because he thought I was some crazy guy , just to trim a fricken new bug with a hint to an old 70s bug that nobody really knows or cares about

before singer and Theon etc . A uk p-car dealer called Paul Stephens started ps auto-art (or something) backdating 964s and had a company make the fuchs-type wheels .
After the first mag feature I got in touch with either seume or raby to get details and they passed me onto Paul .
He was cool once I told him I wanted to put his 964 17” Fuchs on a new-beetle and gave me his specs and contact at the wheel manufacturer , then contacted him to say it was cool to share his design etc.
The guy at image wheels worked with me and we came up with the wheels on the yellow bug .

More difficult than it seems as I wanted to at least run genuine porsche Fuchs caps , and these won’t fit within the vw 100mm Pcd .
We made custom offset wheels at 5x130 , and h&r supplied conversion spacers to go from 5x100 to 5x130 , then an engineering shop machined down wheel-bolts etc to make it all go together...

If it looks easy , it isn’t .....

[ian c2]

Got rained out at work today , and pep-boys had an offer on bosch agm batteries so I thought I’d go get one and stock up on Mobil 1 quarts as they’re on offer too .
No local stores had stock so I ordered online for pick-up tomm0row.
I decided to remove the old battery and clean up the front trunk a little .
I put a new genuine battery on it when I bought the car and I know there was no issues then , but today I had issues !!!
The bolt that holds the battery clamp was very stiff , and it turns out the captive nut came loose .
30 minutes later I had the battery out and I see rust ....
The nut came loose and I pulled it out of its cage , easy repair .
The abs unit bracket has surface rust , as does the protective cover over the battery + cable .

Can anybody help with part numbers for these ?
They’re easily repairable , but I’d rather install new parts ,

[ian c2]

Originally Posted by ian c2

It’s been a while ..

Bla bla bla .

Around 6 years I think .

Bla bla bla .

So ... it come home Sunday afternoon !!!

I think it could be more like 7-8 years

I still haven’t got around to digging out paperwork for exact dates , but I was in illinois when I found this car on pelican in San Diego and wired the asking price site-unseen .
Collected it when I returned to California a few months later , then 2 weeks later headed to portland .
Whilst in Oregon I found a porsche guy who had an unusual amount of parts for sale , and bought a pair of sports seats as my uk car had them and my new Usa car had stock seats .
These where then dropped with the dash-top at autos international in Escondido where I paid for the leather and retrimming , to be collected later .
And I think it was the same weekend I dropped the car at the paintshop ...

I called autos-int from work yesterday lunch to tell them I finally had the car back and we could proceed with the rest of the trimming .
He looked it up on the computer and the order was dated 2011

I have to call back and speak to the boss when he’s in Monday morning to apologize for being slightly late , offer to pay for storage for my parts , and schedule dropping the car off in May when they have space on the calendar .

Should be a fun conversation

[ian c2]

Not a lot happened this weekend ..
It turns out the Bosch agm battery I ordered online from pep boys is actually not available , so I’m going to go see them tomm0row about the champion agm they do have available .
I’ve only ever used genuine porsche or Bosch , and this car had a new porsche battery installed just before it went for paint ...
Admittedly I left it too long before looking at the car and the surface rust it has developed at the battery hold-down nut would have been caught as soon as soon as paint was damaged , but I’m still disappointed .
Hence my reasoning to go for an agm battery .
I’m english .
I HATE rust .
Even if it’s just surface rust on bolt-on parts , I HATE RUST !!!

I have a couple of little miller arc/tig welders at work that are similar in size and weight as a woman’s handbag , so I might bring one home this week and secure the captive nut temporarily until I can do a proper fix .

I hooked up the boxster just to power the car and check the gauges . Fuel is empty
That’s great news for me , so I dumped in a bottle of tank cleaner I bought from pelican and grabbed my red plastic “I ran out of fuel” container .
My plan is to fill the tank with new gas and cleaner , to dilute the small amount of old gas that’s in there then remove a hose and run the pump to flush it all through before installing a new filter and gas .

I pushed the car back in the garage so I have more room at the front , and my plan is to work from front to back over the next couple of weeks .
That gave me a little more room to work so I did a little cleaning in the frunk .

I only did one side upto now , but here are Before and after pictures .

[ian c2]

And here’s the surface rust I was talking about .
Car is good , just a couple of small bolt-on parts have surface rust on them .
Battery clamp bolt , main power cover , and the abs bracket .
I have to call dealers tomorrow to confirm , but I’m expecting about 100 to replace .

[ian c2]

Took parts to work and talked to painters about blasting them , then got the tin-bashers to straighten out the flimsy cable cover that was distorted .
Touched them with a wire on a grinder to see the (minor) pitting , then hit them with 97% cold-galve .
They’ll look ok with a couple coats of primer sanded back , then painted .
Too much work for me as I have a lot to do to get this car back together then I can get it out of the garage so I Ordered replacement parts today , but Germany order so will be around 30 days .
Hopefully sooner , but I have plenty to do in the meantime .

If anybody can use the parts I’m replacing , send me a pm and they yours for cost of shipping from ca92653 .
But I will not give them away until the replacements have arrived . Just in case there’s an unexpected delay .

[ian c2]

Originally Posted by plexiform

Congrats on getting RE-invested in to your Porsche dream. I share your enthusiasm with my 75 911 hot rod project which I'm hoping to have back completed in the next few months. Does yours have a stock engine right now?

Sorry for the late reply , I thought I was talking to myself in here

Thank you very much .

It has been an epic journey just to get this car here in my garage .
I said goodbye to my RHD 964 and left the uk in 2009 I think . Maybe 2008 .
When I took the pics of a dusty old 964 in my garage last week , I was probably the happiest guy in the world .

I’ve been looking through totes that haven’t been opened since I packed them for a shipping container back in Manchester all them years ago ..
found some nice little parts I’d forgotten about , but more importantly found some parts that aren’t quite as clean as I remember my “clean as new” car being when it went back to stock , and some plastic parts that have aged whilst in storage .

I’m gonna be THAT GUY with car parts in the kitchen , in and out of the dishwasher the next couple of days

Do you have a thread on the 75 project ?

[ian c2]

Here’s my latest thrilling episode !!!

My car cover from pelican arrived , bought as the car will have to go on the drive as it will be quicker to finish my garage project than my 964 project .
It won’t take anywhere near as long as the 73 next to it , but as it’s the middle-ground it losses out as I need space to shuffle things around as I finish garage .
I’m looking to be cruising pch by summer , but realistically hoping for this year .

I made an order with my local porsche dealers Monday lunchtime to replace the abs bracket and battery power cable due to surface rust discussed earlier , plus some exterior rubber trim , and fixings for sill/rocker covers etc simply due to age and not wanting to bolt on less than prestine parts as I rebuild it .

It’s amazing how small a box you can fit 1000 dollars in .
I don’t think I’ve ever spent so much on lunch in all my life ....

Also did some research on mild surface rust removal and decided on a product that got delivered today .
From what I saw on the car , I could simply rub with my finger and it rubbed of the coating in the trunk .
But the stuff I found was really mild and works on an overnight soak (on a par with vinegar I guess) , And I’d rather pour some on and leave overnight while I play on the Internet , than rub at a cars trunk with my finger ...

Here’s a step by step guide and some pics . With the car being black under led lights and using my phone the pictures look WAY worse than it is . Try it on your car

As you can see , the area were the battery clamp hits the trunk floor had more damage than the “rust” I’m repairing ....

I taped the drain hole from underneath with blue-tape , rubbed some of the areas with a brass wire toothbrush and vacuumed it . This was mainly the normal 25 year old “car fluff” that accumulates in small places on any car . Just like pocket fluff “nests” in lightning ports ...

then gave the area a quick wipe with a wet rag then wiped it dry .
Used a turkey blaster I found in the kitchen to inject the cleaner into the batter clamp nut hole .
Realized it was running towards the rear of the car so jacked up the passenger rear wheel .
After this was done gave the area a rub with the nylon “toothbrush” in the new set I got delivered with the rust treatment .

8.30pm Saturday night , Grabbed another bud and whilst sitting happy my work was being done for me .
Then realised I should place a bowl under the drain hole .

I could allready see the liquid changing colour , so it’s doing something ...









[img]










[img]http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploads26/AA440E60_21FC_4C88_BB4D_66F78E5DD8DE1548566851.jpg[/img

[ian c2]

It seemed to work ok !!
I had to leave it on longer than 24 hours as I ended up having to work this weekend , but it didn’t harm anything it just look the rust .
I just rinsed it off and rag dried it , and will be doing the same again before I go to bed .

I dropped the battery clamp in a bowl of it 10 minutes ago .
Will see how this looks tomorrow after work .

[ian c2]

Here are before and afters of the battery clamp after soaking for around 23 hours .
This gives a better idea of what this is capable of ...
I gave it a quick stir with a stiff toothbrush after about 3 hours and that’s it until today when I gave the rusty parts a quick scrub with the same brush one-handed before I took it out of the bowl .

Next experiment will be to remove a part after 12 hours , thoroughly brush the rusty parts , then back in for a further 12 .
I’m certain it will work perfect then .
I’m not certain I’m going to go much farther with this part , as I’ll either powder coat or buy a new one . I only wanted to free-up the captive nut to re-use it

[ian c2]

Got rained out at work today , so went to porsche dealers to pick up some parts , and Home Depot to pick up some more goof-off .

Actual work on the car was minimal , but I got one half of the front compartment seal off .

Whoever sticks these on at the factory does a really good job !!
It’s the second time I’ve had to take one of a 964 now , and I hate it .
On the upside , if I pick the right adhesive again I can get high when I glue the new one in

Here’s a couple of pics of the dealer haul ..
( includ9ng bosch sourced h4’s , and a couple of Mahl filters from pelican that are temp parts for my pre-run oil and fuel flush )

That cat knows something is happening in the garage and she’s trying to sneak in every time I open the door , and following me around the house watching watching what I’m doing
I even moved her favorite bed , but she wouldn’t budge .
I guess she likes genuine parts as much as I do

[ian c2]

I looked at it a little bit more this weekend .

The front fenders are coming off again now I have the new sealing strip so I could not finish this project I had planned to building up the sides this weekend .

Instead I got everything ready and gave the area a quick clean .
I will be revisiting this area after work this week and will go over it more thoroughly then .


Here’s it is as it came from the paintshop , with covers just hot-bolted on .


Hers the cover removed



Here’s the cover after a quick cleaning on the inside



And here’s the area that’s covered , before cleaning .



And here it is cleaned .




Here it is ready to go back together



And here are the parts needed

[ian c2]

Got rained out again today , but didn’t do much .
Got more detailing brushed from harbor freight , and started removing fender liners and front bumper ready for fenders coming off .
Also bought a cheap 1/4” metric set as I’m sick of looking for tools while my garage is in uproar .
I need the the 73 out of here for a week or two , but cannot do it in this weather we’re having ...

[ian c2]

It’s taken 3 attempts in the little time I Have after work in the evenings. But I finally got one fender off !!!

Nothing much to report , just a lot of dust and dirt .
A little bit of the brown stuff on the horn bracket and front fender support .

Should be an easy clean-up , and the plastic epoxy I ordered arrived today so I plan to do the “repair” on the sharks-fin before it actually breaks
Will also be taking a closer look at this area and making notes for when I start phase 2 of the project . Modifying it .

I have Sunday off work so schedule is to rebuild passenger side of car , then shuffle it around the garage so I can strip and clean drivers side after work next week .