Nice car. Welcome to our forum. Probably one of the best on the planet.

For paint, consider going to one of your local shops that supply paint to the body shops. They can make the correct color and depending how you want to go, you can add a hardener and or clear coat. I personally use a PPG supplier. For touchups like yours I use a pint of the correct color, reducer, paint prep solvent, hardener and cleanup solvent. I do not own paint spray equipment so I use Pre-Val sprayer to makeup small quantities.

Unless your name ends in Hamilton, Verstappen, etc, the high up weight is not as important as overall driving experience. IMHO, leave it alone.

Agree, If weight was such a thing driving a 200hp car from 1983 on the street, shave you head and drive naked.

I don’t have any intention of tracking my car, at least in any serious competitive way, so minimizing weight for things I like isn’t a priority. The sunroof and windows stay open pretty much all the time as it’s parked in the garage or covered parking so I’m not excessively concerned about potential wear/tear.

I’m all about pulling the bumperettes as they don’t look great and the weight savings is a nice bonus.

I don’t have spray equipment either and I wouldn’t mess with paint except it’s on the bumper and I didn’t mind a temporary fix to make it look “good enough” until I have a chance to have a body shop do it right.

That sounds like a great solution… I’m gonna have to look into it. Did you send them off someplace for that work or a local shop?

I had a shop that is a couple hours away perform the work. They took care of me and kept me updated thru the progress. I also purchased tires from them.

Wheel Concepts
1170 Avenida Acaso
Camarillo, CA 93012
O: 805 376 2113
www.wheelconcepts.comhttp://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1683418648.jpg

Opening up my taillights a couple weeks ago I discovered the seals were very rotten, presumably original, and were in dire need of replacement as there was a bit of rust. Just because I can’t leave well enough alone replacing the lens seals I decided to remove the entire tail light assemblies just to make sure things were in good shape.

It turns out things were just filthy with a lot of mud/dirt that had been kicked up by the tires over the years. This was after I gave it a quick cleaning, unfortunately I didn’t take a shot of it when I first pulled the tail light assembly out as it was a filthy mess.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1683858926.jpg

To get to that point it’s necessary to crack open the tail light assembly to pull off the electrical connectors. It turns out that has its own gasket which was in even worse rotten condition.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1683859293.jpg

The right side tail light was similarly filthy and rotten with the added bonus of oil mixed in… fortunately it didn’t seem like a leak so much as just old drippings from being changed.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1683859502.jpg

The outside of both tail light assemblies got a good scrubbing and while they were finishing drying I went online to confirm what I suspected… the gasket for the tail light assembly doesn’t seem to be available. Best solution I could think of was a thick bead of silicone caulk to seal up the actual assembly.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1683859721.jpg

I hadn’t thought of ordering new screw seals, or even know if they are available, but of course they are in questionable condition as well. Easy solution comes from a handy Harbor Freight O ring kit and all the screws get sealed up that way.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1683859968.jpg

The left side also had some rust on the reflector

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1683860207.jpg

Hitting it with a Dremel wire wheel cleaned it up but didn’t exactly do a great job of restoring the reflectivity. A bit of aluminum tape did a decent job of restoring some reflectivity.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1683860352.jpg

With a bit of scrubbing the tail light areas were also clean… one bit of curiosity: on the left side there are the wires for the tail lights, wires that go to the left side license plate light and then a couple wires that were clipped and there was no obvious place they should have gone. I’m going to check it out in the Bentley manual tomorrow but would appreciate it if anyone happens to know. The extra two wires weren’t present on the right side of the car.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1683860503.jpg

The new lens gaskets were reinstalled and everything is back together now and functional. Didn’t take a pic as it was getting dark and I forgot… try to remember tomorrow. I suppose some purists might not care for caulking the tail light assemblies back together but mine isn’t a concours car and I wasn’t interested in buying new assemblies at ~$600 each. But it’s functional.

REV: You're doing great so far. You obviously have worked on a few cars before. What you see with the signal light housings is pretty typical. I did the same thing with gluing them back together with silicone sealer. Someone here makes 3D printed replacement signal light buckets for a fraction of $600. I'll see if I can find the link.

See these links:

https://forums.pelicanparts.com/porsche-911-technical-forum/1092635-new-lightweight-3d-printed-tail-light-housings.html
https://forums.pelicanparts.com/porsche-911-technical-forum/854989-led-brake-lights.html?highlight=3D+print+tail+lights

The extra wires are likely for your license plate light.

Hah! I was wondering if someone made lightweight light buckets, thanks for the links. While I appreciate things that are robustly designed they did seem to be excessively heavy.

I wouldn’t say I’m particularly experienced with working on cars but I’m willing to take things apart and give it a try. There are a bunch of things I need to do some more reading on to look into, all this timing, distributor and ignition stuff and I’m in over my head at the moment.

Nah, the license plate wires are currently taped to the bumper strut after I got rid of the bumperettes. I’m going to hook up a new license plate light one of these days but haven’t got to it yet.

These wires are for something else… they are easy enough to get to from underneath and if I can’t figure it out from the Bentley manual will check it out with multimeter. They don’t seem in a logical place for third brake light but it’s possible.

Maybe unused rear fog lights…? they don’t look as if they’ve ever been connected to anything.

Rear fog light.

Straight pipe is not worth it, it’s soooo loud and makes the car sound like a mustang. Don’t do it, it sounds truly awful.

I’ve had the Fabspeed Supercup for a decade or so, it is great sounding but it is also very very loud. Your neighbors, despite what they’re saying now, will know your every move so to speak. It gets annoying, especially since I pretty much DD my car.

It is obvious you are making the car into your vision of what you want. That is great.
Enjoy the fun of making your car into just what you want it to be.

I am way too cheap to spend the money to have my sunroof removed, but I wish it were not there. In 28 year it has been opened three times. I use my AC or heater and the windows are always up. Just my version of what my 911 should be.

Keep having fun with your car, and just keep driving!

For a muffler, just making sure you're aware of this:

https://achtungkraft.com/products/gtk-active-porsche-911-muffler

Keep up the good work. I'm doing a bumperette delete but I think the removing the rub strips on the side is a mistake. Go look at you front front bumper. See the rubber strip? The rear rub strips on the corners make it look like the front bumper. If you do a search on here people just add another screw to the end and plug that just like the other fastener in it. That is what I'm going to do.

That’s an interesting muffler option… thanks for sharing.

So in the long term I’m thinking of deleting the rubber strips from front and rear. I couldn’t point you to the threads right this moment but there have been a few and it looks pretty good with the groove/indent whatever in the front filled smooth. I’m not in any rush to do it, more of a long term thing once I find a body shop that can do the work. I would also like to get rid of the front and rear accordions so that’s sort of pushing me towards finding aftermarket front and rear bumpers so I could just pull the originals and leave them alone. Problem is that I don’t know enough to really know what I’m looking for yet. For now I should probably just add a screw, like you suggested, to tack down the bumper strips and leave it alone.

I guess I kinda go the other direction… Windows are down and sunroof is open pretty much all the time. I only close them if I get caught by rain and my parking is usually shaded/covered if the car isn’t in the garage. I’m not opposed to driving the 911 in the rain but I have other cars I prefer for those days. I also have a Jeep that spends a lot of its time with the doors and roof removed. I like the open air.

After a few weeks of straight pipe driving I put the stock muffler back on for the moment… hopefully the Fabspeed Supercup I ordered will be here soon.

At low RPMs the straight pipe does sound a bit like a generic muscle car but at high RPMs it sounds incredible. My commute goes down the beach so it was awesome to start out the day letting the flat 6 gloriously rip with the windows and sun roof open. But as you say it’s is REALLY loud and though I don’t know exactly what decibel level it was at it was definitely not hearing safe above 4K rpm or so. It was also limiting my driving a bit just because I did try and minimize the trips in/out of my neighborhood.

I’m really looking forward to getting the SuperCup on it as the car is just so quiet with the stock muffler, even without the cat.

New to the 911 and diving in… questions
 

The Supercup with cat delete (euro pre-muffler instead) does sound terrific. With the cat, it doesn’t have the pop that it should. So do as recommended by Fabspeed and delete the cat and add the euro premuffler in its place. The car sounds mean and aggressive! After a decade it starts to be too loud for me day in day out after a while in the car, but it’s still amazing enough that I won’t change it out.

You’ll be very pleased, and let us know what you think of it. It’s very well made for sure. Everything fits well and a cat can be swapped in easily if needed once in a while ;)