Found My 87 Coupe - So It Begins

[almostordinary]

Bought a roller a few months back here on Pelican.

Both rockers were rotted out, but everything was repaired.

Went off on a roadtrip from LA to pick it up from Nebraska and had a blast towing it back home.

This is going to be a dream build of mine, so it's going to be a bit different, as are all of my builds.

Going to document my process here and rely on all the knowledge here on the forum as I dive into it.










I bit the bullet and bought the car and had it immediately torn into, luckily the internals weren't rotted so got all new parts replaced as well as a new passenger fender.

[almostordinary]

My daily G55 did a great job driving the northern route to pick the car up, and breezed through the southern route back to LA.

Had a ton of folks chatting my buddy and I up at all our gas stops and people waving on the freeways











Great dane and wife approved!

[almostordinary]

The wing that came with the car was damaged, but I found a replacement locally.

Still on the fence if I want to run a wing, really liking the look of the hot rods I've been looking at with the slick decklid.... so may be on the hunt for one.

[almostordinary]

Going through everything and just removing the 200K+ miles that were put on this car.

It's going to be my daily. My first big trip is going to be with the wife up the PCH to visit her family in Victoria next summer.










After chatting with the tire/wheel gods here on the forum it turned out the previous owner was running a dangerous combination of tire/wheel sizes. So I snagged some maxilite 16x9 rears and put my 16x7 up front... will have a set of Fuch 16x6 up for sale next week.








Cant wait to do the engine transplant and get this sitting properly.

[almostordinary]

We had a ton of rain here in LA last week, and I had to tear down what will be my last motorcycle build (Wife said bikes go for the hot rod, so they are almost all gone!)

Found a bit of water in the foot well behind the driver's seat.... and decided to investigate.

Look what I found.



Wearing a respirator the entire time, didnt want to breathe in the the fibers from the matting



Thinking it's the rear window as the water was all throughout, in the 200k miles this car lived I am assuming it never saw rain, as a touring build this car will see all weather outside of snow and salted roads, so glad I found this now.

One thing that I have never seen is this, gravel under the rear shelf! Inside the car.

Anyone ever see this? Definitely came from outside. Luckily there is zero rust inside which was my first concern even before seeing the gravel.



Going to tear out the engine sound deadening next to see what's going on there.

Should have all the glue removed by tomorrow.




I'll be looking to take out all the windows and replace all the seals, replace the headliner while I'm there as well as repair the dash.

Still amassing parts for the motor swap and slowly starting to look for a G50. Just bought the shifter and shifter mount.

Fun times! More to come.

[Cairo94507]

This will be a great project to watch come together.

[Antonov]

Great project, love the Geländewagen.

[almostordinary]

Thank you the G55 was one of many pandemic builds.

LS swapped a 1976 Scout and drove that across the country last year, and built up a few motorcycles as well.

Picked up in Boise built in West Seattle




A little transmission gear selector issues on the road.


1980 CX500 I picked up from a junk pile and totally customized, off to a good friend in Tampa now.


Really love taking builds and making them my own, this 87 Carrera will be another one that I'll look back on with a smile as I learn more and more every day.

[almostordinary]

Jumped back into the car after an amazing Brazilian GP.

Interior removal is coming along.... slowly. The adhesive they used to hold down the fibrous carpet is a pain in the ***

Having a magic wheel shipped to the house tomorrow, hoping that will get things going.

I'll be repainting this red once I have all the old adhesive and old factory sound deadening out. Then adding killmat and another fire/sound barrier under the rear cover.



Also removed the sound deadening material in the engine bay to inspect for any rust/etc and looks good.... aside from even more old glue. So that will also be replaced.






Since I won't be using heat exchangers in my build I removed the highly corroded valves and purchased the Rennline aluminum blockoffs from PP.

Also took my endoscope and checked out the tunnels, there's a small amount of surface rust... nothing concerning, but may get back in there and spray some conversion sauce down there for good measure.

[NeedAJoker]

Following.

[slow&rusty]

Nice work and progress so far.

Your body guy did a really good job on replacing those rockers.

Love the tow rig as well, how does the M113k and the G-Wagen in general fair for towing? I've been toying on and off with a '15 or '16 G550 (just before MB went twin turbo).

Keep the updates coming.
Yasin

[almostordinary]

Originally Posted by slow&rusty

Nice work and progress so far.

Your body guy did a really good job on replacing those rockers.

Love the tow rig as well, how does the M113k and the G-Wagen in general fair for towing? I've been toying on and off with a '15 or '16 G550 (just before MB went twin turbo).

Keep the updates coming.
Yasin

Yea I was looking for a newer G500 when this single owner G55 popped up for sale. In the 2.5 yrs of ownership i've put about 40k on it.

Towing quite a bit and a lot of offroading and trips up to Victoria, BC during the pandemic with my wife to see her family.

The supercharger has handled everything I've thrown at it. Have a similar build post on MBWorld for that.

G55 Build thread












Just towed my last two bikes for our move back to LA.

Just sold the CB750 and almost done with my K75S that will be sold to cover the cost of a G50.

Moved to Seattle for work during the pandemic when filming shut down... living up there was interesting. But made a 2hr and change door to door drive to Victoria which was nice.

[Classic11]

Hey, great build, planning on doing a similar but safari inspired build in the near future, just picked up my roller yesterday. How you planning to run heat? electric?
Daniel

[almostordinary]

Originally Posted by Classic11

Hey, great build, planning on doing a similar but safari inspired build in the near future, just picked up my roller yesterday. How you planning to run heat? electric?
Daniel

Awesome Congrats!

As far as heat, I may go two stages.

Stage I, retrofit seat heaters.
Stage II, find an electric solution.

Now that I'm fully back in LA, it gets brisk, but dressing for the weather and seat heaters is how i've gone about things in all my other cars here, even w heaters.

AC is where I am definitely going to be looking at classic auto air or classic retrofit, likely leaning toward the latter as it just fits, but going with two condensers.

Still working on getting all this damn glue off the floor board, may snag some dry ice this weekend and give that a try.

Have some large ticket items I'm holding on buying until Jan/Feb, so trying to keep momentum and knocking out the low hanging (inexpensive) fruit.

[Porkshop]

good to see who ended up with this. I contemplated it. but thought too long. will be watching....

[3literpwr]

I deleted my heat temporarily, but plan to put it back in my SC rally car. I have two 911's and notice how much I use the heat in my '87. I also installed a heated windscreen in my car and the mountains do get chilly this time of the year. I'm based in Ojai and an early morning run is always accompanied by some heat.

Heat in a 911 is free and really low weight, assuming you buy the right headers.

[almostordinary]

Originally Posted by Porkshop

good to see who ended up with this. I contemplated it. but thought too long. will be watching....

I had too many slip through my fingers, when I talked to the owner on the phone I bought a ticket that week to secure it.



Terry has an amazing shop and it was at the best place to get fixed before I brought it home.

There was an 86 that a widower was selling on here through a forum member that just needed some reassembly, I was on vacation and the misses wouldn't let me leave LOL.

So now we have a roller. But my full vision will be achieved with this one.

[AG81]

Following along.......

[almostordinary]

Done with the back half of the carpet removal process. This will all be covered in Killmat/Dynamat and have the OEM rubber without the fibrous stuff. Likely going to do a dual layer of killmat on that rubber as well.

I used a myriad of products to get this fiber stuff off as well as the glue, and the best was this citrus stripper. I've used it to fully strip motorcycle tanks, but the sweet spot here is just about an hour of soak then grab dozens of microfiber towels and wipe it off.

In between I used sprayaway glass cleaner to remove the stripper.

Spray Away

Microfiber towels

Citrus stripper

Also used some Behr paint, I'll get a photo of the can soon. Opted to stay red will be going black in the engine bay though.















A little goes a long way with this stuff, with a bondo scraper, lots of towels, a brass and a steel scrub brush and a lot of patience I was able to get almost everything off.

Definitely overkill since it's going to be covered, but figured I would do it right since this will be the last chance I'll have.

Going to remove the factory sound deadening that was in the rear footwell since it was cracking, the front drivers and passenger's sides are flawless so they may just get a cleaning and stay as is. The entirety of the floor will get covered.

[75 911s]

Great progress!