My First Porsche - 86 Targa Project Thread

[PeteKz]

Nice work.

Let me recommend that you stay with the stock 19mm front T-bars or go to 20mm T-bars. Those will provide a better balance to your 26mm rears. Or go with 21mm fronts and change the rears to 27mm. Otherwise, the rear will feel more sluggish than the front.

You will probably find that the rear bushings on the front A-arms are squishing out. Count on replacing those. The front bushings do not support the weight of the car, so they are probably still good. If so, do not replace them--only replace the rears. You may want to send your A-arms to someone like Elephant Racing to replace the rear bushings. I find that stuffing the new ones into the brackets is very difficult for a home mechanic.

[mooch29]

Originally Posted by PeteKz

Nice work.

Let me recommend that you stay with the stock 19mm front T-bars or go to 20mm T-bars. Those will provide a better balance to your 26mm rears. Or go with 21mm fronts and change the rears to 27mm. Otherwise, the rear will feel more sluggish than the front.

You will probably find that the rear bushings on the front A-arms are squishing out. Count on replacing those. The front bushings do not support the weight of the car, so they are probably still good. If so, do not replace them--only replace the rears. You may want to send your A-arms to someone like Elephant Racing to replace the rear bushings. I find that stuffing the new ones into the brackets is very difficult for a home mechanic.

Interesting, I didn't come across this in my research when I was hunting around. Will definitely keep it in mind regarding the 21mm torsion bars. I have the Rebel Racing bushings ready to go on the A arms within the next couple weeks. My stock ones have been squeaking since day 1 of ownership so am looking forward to getting that squared away. Appreciate in the insight!

Edit: realized I forgot to mention those bushings in my post in here about my setup, just edited it to add it!

[PeteKz]

Mooch: I put the RR polymer bushings on my 911 street car. I wish I hadn't. They operate smoothly, but do increase road noise transmitted to the cabin. If you intend to use this as a street car, stay with the rubber bushings.

[nospiners]

Originally Posted by PeteKz

Mooch: I put the RR polymer bushings on my 911 street car. I wish I hadn't. They operate smoothly, but do increase road noise transmitted to the cabin. If you intend to use this as a street car, stay with the rubber bushings.

Agree 100%.. Staying with rubber bushings has made my 87 driveable by my wife with zero complaints. Noticeable difference...

[Melanie at Pelican Parts]

Looks amazing! Keep up the good work!

[mooch29]

Thanks all for the input! I have a whole bunch of updates as of the last few weeks. I got the front of the car up to begin tackling the front suspension updates. Decided to stick with what I have, theres a whole host of mixed input on everything and it is all subjective IMO.

Ran into some missing parts/specialty tools pretty early on in my suspension process, so I decided to install my "new to me" rubber chin spoiler I got from jwolfe on here. My old one was pretty hammered, enough to the point where it actually bent the bumper in multiple areas. No idea how it can get this bad but 39 years of history will do that.





Much better!



I was also feeling a bit antsy, so I ended up caving in and ordering a new dashboard. The time was going to come sooner or later, so I figured I'd just get it out of the way. To my surprise, installation was actually quite easy. Not sure if my vent is sitting properly or if the old one bent the tabs up, it was so warped I couldn't see the fender headlight curves from the driver seat. Regardless, it is A LOT better.





hit the vent while it was out with my favorite paint lately


Pls excuse the benchtop mess, this suspension project has had me pulling my hair out

[mooch29]

Speaking of pulling my hair out, I have no idea if it was just me, or this car, or both, or neither, but this front suspension install has truly put me to the test.

I feared the tie rods the most (mostly because I don't own the proper tools to get them out). Upon unboxing all of my items I've had since before the winter, I realized I was missing the spacers that were supposed to be included in the kit. I ended up calling a local shop who was able to source them for me the next day, however, upon my attempt to install the 930 turbo tie rods, I could not get my original ones out. I decided to not fight with it and move on to something else, removing the control arms...only to realize I needed the special ball joint socket.

That is on me, I probably shouldve done more research, but more waiting for parts to show up and I really didn't want to unhook my brake lines. While I wait, I'll toss my new bilstein inserts into my struts, easy job, right?!?!

Come to find out, the ones I ordered didn't include the correct gland nut. At this point I'm wondering if I'll be able to get anything done. I called bilstein directly and they no longer make this part on its own I guess? Ended up finding 1 pair on eBay, placed the order, guy is on a business trip and can't ship until hes back. I scheduled an alignment for next week, so I needed to get this done as soon as I can.

Once the set backs decided to stop setting me back, things started rolling, FINALLY! Ball joint socket worked like a charm (with a little assistance from my friend Map Gas) and the subframe was out shortly after.



Took it all apart, inspected some stuff. Probably a good thing I am replacing the torsion bars as my factory ones were showing some signs of corrosion (probably where my squeak was coming from too)


Gave the parts a clean and a quick scuff and hit them with some Eastwood Chassis Black


And after much fighting, bolts not going in, aligning the bushings, fighting the sway bar (ratchet strap method worked wonders), it's all back in. Don't think I've ever had a project fight me nearly every step of the way, so when things decided they wanted to work, it was very rewarding. Ultimately I decided on just having the shop do the tie rods for me, thankfully they're less than 15 min from my house, so it's a quick drive over.

Current status as of today:


I left the pan off for now, I repainted that too while it was out. I had legitimately the hardest time trying to get the sway bar brackets to bolt back to the body I decided against trying to align a 4th thing in the bolt sandwich. It will be coming off for the tie rods in a few days anyways.

Will probably double check all my bolts today and clean the wheel wells while the car is still up. The weather sucks here today (and all weekend), so hopefully can get the car on the ground and take it around the block to help it settle to dial in the height before alignment. Sorry for the long saga, but it's been a bear!

[ccallana]

In doing the Griffiths AC update, his instructions mention unbolting the skid plate/sway bar bolts while on the ground - I didn't take it off that way, but found getting them back in was much easier with the car down... a bit harder to reach - but everything aligned better.

Had similar issues with tie rods.. very large set of channel locks and a tight grip got them started was a lot of work though.

[maverck]

Great work. Isn't it so fun building a relationship with these cars part by part - update by update - as you bring it closer to "new"?

[mooch29]

Update: Car is back on the ground! Went for a quick drive down the street to shake it down and everything feels great. What an incredible difference with the new stuff. To my surprise, the car feels "quieter" because everything was so worn out. Also the steering wheel is much easier to turn with the rack spacers.

Today I washed off all the garage dust and adjusted the height to get it ready for alignment on Wednesday. Ceramic coating really makes washing this thing a breeze.



This pic really makes me want a replacement side skirt as this one is dented in lol, it never ends

[mooch29]

More updates! Dropped the car off at EPE in Natick MA for an alignment and the turbo tie rod installation. Rebel racing strikes once again and the technician told me that these were not OEM tie rods (despite what the website says). He was able to get them in but said they were more of a pain to work with vs the 'real' ones. So that kind of annoyed me after all I dealt with Rebel and their non-existent customer service.



This past Saturday was 80 degrees here so I did some yardwork in the morning and spent the afternoon in the garage. I got the frunk carpet back in:



Also removed the door pockets and rear seats for some rattle can restoration. The drivers side door pocket was not in place correctly and they were both faded, so I epoxied the broken areas and resprayed them with some Duplicolor fabric paint. Literally night and day difference, I was going to buy new ones, but this was a great $20 fix.

Some before pics:






aaand after








Got the car all cleaned up and ready to go for the PCA NER Ramble this weekend. Cannot wait to get some miles on it!

[mooch29]

Back from the Ramble! Had a great time, but the weather was downright awful the entire weekend. Rained the entire time and racked up 600 miles on the car. The suspension feels amazing. It's a little "darty" on the highway right now, but I think that can be solved with a proper bumpsteer kit in the future.

The car started running intermittently rough and cutting out sometimes on me at cruising speed. Not sure what is up with it, but I somehow made it home without it needing to go on a tow truck. Going to dive into that this week if I get some time.

Some photos from the ramble:




Got to chat with Tom with the 730+k mile 996 Turbo. Awesome guy, beautiful car, extremely comfortable GT2 buckets.


and all cleaned up. Car was so dirty when I got home I had to do a wheels off detail scrubbing the fender wells. Cleaned up great tho!


Also to top it all off after driving 3 hours, went to get out of the car and my door handle unhooked itself from the metal rod. Got out and I somehow hit it with my leg and snapped it. So I replaced that while I was cleaning the car up.


Onto some diagnosis, will report back with findings once fixed. Open to any suggestions if anyone has dealt with the same issue. Symptoms: Rough idle (~750-800), misfiring, then clears itself up. Cutting out at cruising speeds and can't speed up. Goes away if I rev the car up a bit and I am able to drive off.

[mooch29]

Been a while, Pelican fam. Got the car fixed back in May at a local shop. It ended up being the cylinder head temp sensor causing my issues. Sure enough, he told me to keep an eye on the crank sensors once I picked the car up. Hindsight, I probably should have had him just do the sensors while he was in there, because I thought it'd be nice to attend a local cars and coffee recently and I ended up stuck there with a crank no start situation.

Figured I'd go ahead and order the crank sensors once the car was towed home. Sure enough, the problem was fixed and the car runs great again. Frustrating, but I think I'm running out of sensors to replace at this point LOL

I need to get this car out for some new pics with the big camera soon. Also craving some silver wheels...the all black look just isn't doing it for me.

Also redid my garage minus the floors. I was out of storage space and was much overdue for some cabinets and a repaint. The car now has a much nicer home.

[mooch29]

More updates! Didn't drive the car a ton after I did the crank sensors, went on vacation, but came home to perfect fall cruising temps.

Popped in some small spacers on all 4 corners.



Since day 1 I knew I wanted to brighten up this car a bit. The all black is nice, but it gets a little "boring" after a while. So I mustered up the motivation to give the wheels an overhaul. I spent HOURS trying to figure out the best way to mask these wheels off. Once I figured out the first one, the rest went much faster. I was able to give the existing black a light scuff, mask off the areas I wanted to keep black and then clear over the entire center once the silver was sprayed down. I used Eastwood 2K Rally Silver Wheel Paint and their 2K Satin Clear. Great product!











I spent a lot of time thinking about this next part. I really love the look of the RSR cars with no center cap, but my car doesn't feel "racer" enough to me to rock the no cap look. Im not a big fan of the all silver or all black caps on the silver fuchs, so I painted them to resemble what I believe is the best of both worlds.





Task completed VERY successfully. The masking job didn't come out perfect, theres some spots I may try to touch up if I can, but I am really happy with the result of these.

[mooch29]

Doing the wheels motivated me to pick away at a bunch of smaller tasks while in the garage. I re-dyed some small sections of the leather that were looking a bit tired.

Before:


After:


Before:


After:


Before:


After:


Also finally got some carpet to cover up the missing sections where the footwell speakers were before I removed them. This is probably the best this interior has looked in 30 years.

[mooch29]

Continuing with my motivation from the wheel paint, I wanted to tie the look in a bit further and decided to finally go about repainting the targa bar. It was definitely resprayed at some point in the past, but it needed a refresh.

I originally started out just my giving it a light sanding, hoping the paint would fill in the marks that were on it. But I learned quickly that paint does not fill just about anything in. So I decided to back track slightly, sand it down more and prime it. I made a stupid mistake and grabbed the wrong can of primer first which cause it to crack, thus requiring more sanding. But once that was all figured out, the self-etching primer did its job.

Before:








I did not feel like disassembling the targa bar to reach the emblems, but I saw a trick somewhere on here from an old thread saying you can basically just pry the emblems off. So with a little finesse, I was able to get them out.

This next photo was after my first few coats of paint and quickly realizing I was in for a bit more work on my end. As you can see, just about nothing filled in. Onto sanding!



My silly mistake of grabbing plastic primer out of my cabinet thinking it was good for everything. Its the same stuff I used on the wing, so I just automatically assumed it was fine...it was not

[mooch29]

Turns out, O'Reilly keeps SEM products in stock, and the one down the street from me had the paint in stock. So I ran out to grab extra so I wouldn't run out mid spray and some self-etching primer. Glad I got extra, ended up using almost a whole can all said and done.







Results were definitely worth the extra effort! I had a new targa bar seal in my drawer knowing I was going to tackle this project at some point. So in that went as well.



New badges are on their way, hoping to have them next week


I want to get this thing out for one last photoshoot of the season before prepping it for its winter slumber. Hopefully within the next couple weeks.