1986 Carrera 3.2 Restoration

[Zero-H20]

Originally Posted by G450X

Nice job, I will probably do the same thing next year on my SC.



IMO ‘86 is a good year with a few updates, and the 915 weighs less than a G50.



That’s a nice shade of blue, is it Minerva blue?



Enjoy!

Iris Metallic Blue, actually. I'm planning to have it repainted in the same color next year.

[Zero-H20]

Well, finally hit some stumbling blocks. The carpet kit had a lot of pieces that didn't make sense to me on where they went, so I've decided to outsource it. I don't want to mess up and have to look at a screw up for the next few years. I attempted the upholstery myself, and you can see how poorly that went. Put foam down to replace the carpet jute on one of the rear quarter panels, then used 3M foam glue with marine vinyl. Soooo lumpy. I obviously used the wrong type of foam. Tried again without foam and it looked decent for a bit, but then the vinyl pulled away. I decided to just outsource this stuff too and dropped it all off today at a shop. Should get it back at the end of next week and will post pics then.

In the mean time, I replaced the hood struts with heavy duty ones from our host. You can see one of the old with the new in the pic below. They work great! I can leave the broom handle at home now.

[Harpo]

Love that color blue

David

[Zero-H20]

Got the upholstery back - the shop did a great job. I also attempted to install the Rennline floorboard on the driver side. The bolt on the floor doesn't line up at all. After doing some reading on Pelican, I am pretty sure it's because my floorboard is warped. Probably from incorrect jacking in the past. Not sure what I'll do. In the mean time, I put the wood one back in and took it out for a spin. Sure was nice to drive it again after almost 2 months.

[Mellow]

My Rennline floorboards did not fit either. I put them in a vise and tapped the upper tabs a little with a rubber mallet and then they fit like a glove.

[Zero-H20]

Let's see, August 2019 to February 2023.... World's changed a bit the past few years! Figured I'd try to do a summary of the various projects on the '86 since 2019.

Late in 2019 I replaced the stock seats with Recaro's, in addition to new carpet - no more musty old car smell!






In January 2020, I replaced the pathetic stock gauge lights with LED's - huge improvement and easy project.



In March of 2020 I attended my first Hill Country Rallye in Kerrville, Texas. Absolutely amazing event - it's air-cooled heaven for sure. Right after the Rallye, Covid took off and everything locked down. Not much to report during that time. I did what most others did - I made bread, I gained weight, I lost weight, I questioned my sanity... I went on a few social distanced drives with some Porsche buddies in my area, which was a nice way to get out of the house.






Over the next couple years, I enjoyed the car quite a bit. I didn't do too much myself, but outsourced a fair amount to Einar's Garage in Houston. They took care of the transmission rebuild, suspension refresh, sun roof rebuild, and replacing the fuel lines.

At this point the car is pretty solid mechanically, but cosmetically it needs a lot of love. The paint is very rough but I'm not ready to pull the trigger on a full re-spray. In the near future I'm hoping to remove the wing and have the front bumper resprayed to limp the current paint job along for a while. More to come!

[Zero-H20]

Today I spent about 6 hours scrubbing wheel wells and the under carriage after watching a YouTube channel called Greasy Fingers do rust repair on his car. His rust scared the heck out of me so I jacked the car up and used my hot water hose spigot, pressure washer, and foam cannon to tackle the job. Highly encourage everyone to tackle this project to at least blast the crud out of the kidney bowls in front of the rear wheels and the seams at the top of the front fenders. I couldn't believe how much stuff came falling out. I also unscrewed the fuel vapor expansion tank in the front driver side wheel well - there was tons of stuff sandwiched between the tank the the fender. Last place tons of stuff hid was between the oil tank the the rear fender wall that makes up the side of the engine compartment. Don't have pics but I used a light and the jet nozzle on the pressure washer to clean everything out of there without having to remove the oil tank. Here's a few pics of the fun:



This is the area behind the vapor expansion tank - at the front of this area is the driver side headlight housing. Tons of grime!





Pic of the front after much scrubbing



And here's a pic of the driver side rear after scrubbing



This is the kidney bowl area I mentioned - Not the best pic, but you can kinda see just how much dirt and rocks are living in there.

[rokemester]

I wish I could see your neighbors!! Nice job. Some Porsche OCD for sure!

[Hotshot]

Love it. They’re so nice when grim is cleaned out. What did you use? Thankfully you didn’t have a seater or PO spray black gravel Gaurd in there.

[Zero-H20]

Originally Posted by rokemester

I wish I could see your neighbors!! Nice job. Some Porsche OCD for sure!

Oh man, I'm pretty sure I'm referred to as the "crazy Porsche guy with too much time on his hands" by everyone who drives by. My neighbor walked outside when I was scrubbing away and just said "do I even want to know what you're doing now?" Lol

Originally Posted by Hotshot

Love it. They’re so nice when grim is cleaned out. What did you use? Thankfully you didn’t have a seater or PO spray black gravel Gaurd in there.

Sure are! I bought a 20 dollar foam cannon for my cheap ryobi pressure washer and mixed Chemical Guys Mr. Pink with maybe 3/4 of a cup of Titan 12 degreaser from Ammo NYC. After blasting off what I could with just hot water from the pressure washer, I coated everything with foam and scrubbed away. Rinsed and repeated until I could run my fingers along the surfaces without getting them grimy.

It's way cleaner than it was, but there are still tons of areas I couldn't get to. I would love to dry ice blast it all, but that's a ways off. I think after a rally next month I'm going to remove the front fenders and bumpers to go even more crazy with my battle against grime.

[Zero-H20]

Made a lot of progress on various smaller projects this weekend after tackling the undercarriage on Friday.

My new coco mats came in, so I was able to get those installed. Very happy with the fit and look!



One thing I've been researching is the heating system and whether it's feasible to backdate my full auto heat to something more simple, even if it's just the 3 speed auto heat with the levers for the heater boxes instead of the servo mine has. Haven't found a good walk through on how to do that, so I tackled bench testing my footwell blower motors and adding fuses. I picked up a couple inline fuse kits from Autozone and butt-crimped them in with 10 amp fuses. Went for a cruise afterwards and everything worked just fine. Nice to know my motors are healthy. I think it's time to buy a soldering iron and learn how to use it.



Next, I tackled my front condenser blower motor. I had pulled the entire assembly about 3 years ago to discover the motor was totally seized up. I figured I'd just go ahead and buy a new assembly, only to find out they cost over a grand. Hard pass on that. I attempted to remove the squirrel cage from the seized motor and ended up bending it. Annoyingly, I ended up buying the Griffiths replacement with the new squirrel cage attached.

The next hurdle was the plastic housing. Multiple mounting points were cracked or broken off entirely, along with a big chunk from the top where it meets the front of the trunk. I bought a plastic welder on Amazon and watched a couple videos on YouTube to figure out how to do it. Here are my results. Not quitting my day job, but the repairs seem sturdy so I'm hopeful it'll hold up. All of these repairs have very fine metal mesh melted in to the plastic for reenforcement - you can see a couple pieces of it on the workbench in some of the pics. I'm still waiting on the new motor from our host, but once that arrives I'll get it all put back together.

[Mr. Merk]

I had a few "frames" (for lack of a better word) CNC'd that overlay over the front blower housing so it can be completely attached despite having a broken plastic flange.

send me a DM if interested

[Zero-H20]

Originally Posted by Mr. Merk

I had a few "frames" (for lack of a better word) CNC'd that overlay over the front blower housing so it can be completely attached despite having a broken plastic flange.

send me a DM if interested

Wish I had thought of that.... Should be good with the plastic repair, but if it doesn't work I'll definitely reach out!

[Frog76S]

Your gauges with LED’s look great. Can you please identify where you go them and they look to be white lights?

Thanks and like the 911 color. So refreshing to see colors other than silver, gray, black, white or red.

[Zero-H20]

Originally Posted by Frog76S

Your gauges with LED’s look great. Can you please identify where you go them and they look to be white lights?

Thanks and like the 911 color. So refreshing to see colors other than silver, gray, black, white or red.

It's been a few years, but I'm 80% sure I got them from Carmagic. They're the bright white ones with the blue and green bulb included - bottom right on this page: Carmagic, LED Lights for Classic Porsches

Thanks! I wish it was one of the darker blues like Oslo or other similar ones, but I do like having a non-standard color. I'll stick to the same color when I repaint it eventually. I know it'll look a thousand times better with a good paint job, vs the flaking poor quality respray from the early 90's that's on it now.

[911 Rod]

Nice!
Bringing back lots of memories.

[Zero-H20]

My idle control valve was giving me grief last year, so I bought a used one on eBay. It limped me along for a while, but even that one was causing the car to stall when pushing the clutch in when the RPM's were higher than about 1200. The Greasy Finger's channel on YouTube mentioned buying a new ICV from the business linked below in Germany. I took a gamble and ordered one. It arrived today and it works! Took the car for a spin around the neighborhood and it is idling fantastic. No stalling at all. If you're having ICV issues and spraying out with parts cleaner doesn't fix the issue, I wouldn't hesitate to order from these folks again.

https://maf-shop.com

[Zero-H20]

I decided to tackle my pathetically dim tail lights by swapping the US lenses out for euro ones, and installing Spokeworks LED lights. I started by removing the tail light housings to power wash behind them to remove all the grime and gravel. Hot water through the pressure washer had me laughing at how easy it was to blast away all the grime. Very satisfying project.






When I reinstalled the housings, bulbs, and lenses, I discovered that my brake lights wouldn't light up when I pushed on the brake pedal. The passenger side markers didn't work either. Figured I had screwed something up while pressure washing so I took it all apart and verified the connections were tight and the wires weren't damaged. No issues there. After a whole bunch of troubleshooting, it turned out to be BOTH of the brake switches on the master cylinder had failed. You can see the switch closest to the master cylinder here:



I verified the switches were the problem by jumping one of them and testing the brakes, which then worked fine. After replacing the switches (and bleeding the brakes), everything worked except for the side markers. Those ended up being due to a failed diode under the dash. This diode was apparently only on the '86 year model and no one really knows why it's there. I was able to track down a new one which fixed the last of the light issues.

After my new LED's arrived from Spokeworks, I got them installed in about 30 minutes.I don't have any good before and after pics, but the difference in light output is huge. The pic below has all the lights on. I had the car in reverse and snapped the pic while the turn signal was illuminated (brake lights were not activated, just the night time running lights).



Very nice to have tail lights that can actually be seen!

[nospiners]

Very satisfying projects , awesome job !!!!!!!