Project Minne - a 72 build thread

[jpnovak]

Thanksgiving 2017

Since it was so nice and warm... And my wife went shopping I decided to finish off the underside of the car.

Started with the grinder and flap wheel to dress a few last minute touch up weld beads. Then the process, treat the few spots of surface rust, wirewheel the surface, scuff the surface, mix epoxy and let it react, wipe down car, tape off a few areas, then start shooting.

45 min later there were two coats of primer on the underside of the car. It looks so clean now...

[jpnovak]

Thanksgiving 2017

Moving right along...

I have been working on the interior finish. After coating the passenger compartment with the thermal barrier paint it was time to add some sound control. I admit that I questioned going this route but it worked out well.

I decided to go with the Lizard Skin sound control product. It was easy to spray down using my shuttz gun (Eastwood) and easy to clean up. It was hard to cover the nice white interior color but I ended up with a dark gray after 2 coats. I used a 2 gallon pail and had enough for a sprayed a 3rd coat on the roof, rear deck and floors. These are the largest, flattest panels with the most resonance. After curing there is a dull thud to the panels meaning they are nearly acoustically "dead". This was what I was after, to dull the high-frequency sounds and attenuate overall volume. Mission accomplished - or at least I can say that until the car is built and I can do real testing.







There is just enough Lizard Skin material to spray a single coat on the inside of the doors. That will have to wait a few weeks.

AFter the lizard skin I applied another coating of the thermal barrier paint. This created a sandwich of technical coatings . This layer was tinted tangerine but came out very salmon in color. The different paint base did weird things with the color. So I had to topcoat with one mixed the correct color.

Yes, this is the first application of color to the chassis. And I like it. It really pops and the gloss is perfect for the interior. Of course, this will get coated with black in certain areas and carpet in the rest. I will just ogle at it for now and enjoy it. Now I just have to keep is clean and protected while I finalize the rest of the tub.

[jpnovak]

December 2017

Moving right along...

The fenders needed a bit of work before I can put them in primer. I also need to align them with the doors and set the gaps before I can move forward with the rest of the tub finish work.

So, the tub actually looks like a car with a single fender hanging on there. It is bolted with about half of the bolts but that was enough to hold alignment for me to do the repair.



Here you can see the usual work done by the tinworms while the car was sitting around. The dogleg section of the fenders is eaten away. This also includes the lower section of the fender support.



HUGE Thank you to LUFTKUL (PP Member) for offering up a lower dogleg section for fender repair. I was fortunate to see his ad early. The section was perfect for my needs. Here is the patch piece next to the repair.



After some careful measuring I cut the fender (off the car) then bolted up the two sections, trimmed, aligned and clamped in place.



Once it is clamped in place it is really easy to pull out the MIG gun and stitch the two sections together. After a little bit of finish grinding it is one piece.



Next up is to pull the fender off and weld up the vertical support and touch up a few sections. Easy Peasy.

I now have to dig out more hardware to connect the DS fender. It needs a little more work than the PS.

[jpnovak]

February 2018

After completing some finish work on the PS fender it was time to rotate the car and work on the DS. The DS needed a lot more work. Let's jump right in with the lower dog leg section. AS you can see it had been invaded by the early car loving tin worms. Doesn't look that bad on the outside. Just simply cut off the outer skin and weld on some metal. Easy.

Starting Point


I am sure everyone has heard that the rust you can see on the outside is just the tip of the iceberg. Here is what happens when you go scuba diving below the surface. When I cut off the outer skin and exposed the lower flange I found this much fun. Basically I opened the tuna can expose the worms nest. Yeah, it looks worse in person. I started with the fender bolted to the car. This will help me keep this whole things aligned during the welding process.






I was fortunate to have a donor fender from one of our local guys. The front corner was dented in a fender bender and there was a replacement sourced. It is a later fender and there are some differences in the flange stamping but it still works to transplant sheet metal.

The first cuts were to recover the lower skin and flange. Don't forget to clean off all the undercoating and paint so that you can get a clean weld. Yes, that also includes removing the zinc primer coating.



Once you have the patch cut, its time to offer it up, scribe a line and start putting it back together.



After some work and some welding it was attached. Now that the skin is aligned I will start to replace the flange underneath. I needed a reference to the rocker before I could attach the vertical mounting flange. The fender PO's sticker will remain as reference until the car is painted. Call him my garage buddy for now.



Before replacing the vertical flange I had to treat the top longitudinal flange. I forgot to take a before picture but it was full of holes. This was what I considered some strange rust because the body had no rust. This was all contained above the hood seal. I guess there was some leaves or other buildup along the seal that trapped water and rusted the fender. My same donor fender also gave up its flange. Overall, I transplanted a section about 31" long. I was able to use the mounting clips as my reference to keep it all straight.

[jpnovak]

February 2018

Since the fenders would bolt up and hang straight it was time to see how well they fit. My household CFO authorized the purchase of the missing body panels. This meant an order of fiberglass. It took a week or so before the truck dropped off a huge box on the driveway. About the same time I bought a decklid from Jim (jimtweet).

With all this stuff hanging out in the garage I could not help myself but to mock up the car. This is all assembled with tape and clamps but overall fitment is pretty good.

The rear gets a fiberglass decklid and narrow body body, one piece bumper. Simple clean effective.



The front gets a hood and S bumper. The bumper will get some oil cooler vents to cool my drivetrain of choice. Details on that will have to wait. For now, I can just sit back and enjoy the view. This is the first time I have been putting parts back on the car in several years.





until next time...

[jpnovak]

April 2018

More time goes by and a little bit of progress has been made. Big news is that the tub is no longer on the Octisserie. I built a new body dolly that uses an old steel steering rack to mount to the front suspension mounting points and a large rectangular steel section that bolts to the transmission mounting holes. This new dolly give great access under the car and takes up a lot less space in the garage. It is still on wheels and very easy to move around.




The primary reason for switching to a body dolly was to have access to the rear spring plate mounting points. The octisserie was bolted to the car at these points and prevented me from having access to weld some reinforcements. Thanks to Dave MadDog Motorsports for having these laser cut. Over the years I have updated suspensions on a number of 911s with cracked spring plate bosses. The worst was 5 out of 8 on a single car. Yes, these really take abuse especially if you have worn bushings.



I am sorry to say I did not get any pictures of the welded plates yet. Suffice to say that you really need to jig them and ensure they stay in alignment. I am using Rebel Racing rear spring plate bushings and the outer support plates bolt up perfectly.

Moving along I decided to mount the rear bumper. No reason other than the car was turned this direction during the weekend when I had a chance to get in the garage. Look Ma! no clamps. The bumper is hard mounted to the tub. I use the forward fender mounting tabs and then additional bolts along the fender seam. These are #12 machine screws through the perimeter seal flange into rivnuts in the fiberglass. It is very secure. I have used this process on the past few builds.



There is always a question about fiberglass and fit. These bumpers are from Peter at RennSpeed. At this point I have only bolted them to the car. No other fitting has been done. The only cutting was to the top flange where it meets the body under the decklid. I had to cut it back and bevel the outside corners to match the tub profile. This took all of 15 minutes. These fit really well. I will still close up the existing muffler cutout and then make new ones for my sport muffler. Crap, I guess that means I have to install the drivetrain...



One of the things I find discontinuous about the 911 is the fender profile. All the fender lips have this hard edge profile. Here is a rear fender that I ran a sander down to highlight the hard edge.



In my opinion this hard edge does not match the bumpers in stock or aftermarket trim. So I decided to profile them. the end goal was a rounded lip similar to a 930, RSR, ST, etc. It is just more fitting with the smooth lines of the car.

It takes about 45 min per lip to reshape the metal and remove the hard edge. On dolly, off dolly, stretching, shrinking metal - all done with by hand. Its truly satisfying to stand back and see a smooth profile glimmering in all its bare metal glory. Kinda like this...



I am currently starting to mock up the oil system. This is one of the last items on my checklist before I can finish the underside of the car.

Until next time... Thanks for following along.

[jpnovak]

April 2018

I had some time this weekend to play in the garage. One of the big tasks currently is to get the oil system mocked up. The car will get a nose mounted oil cooler. I decided that low and wide would be sufficient. I am using an RX7 cooler that has been modified to fit the car.

The first step is to TIG some mounting tabs to the outside edges. This will allow it to bolt directly to the nose latch panel. My Al welding skills are rusty. No worries, its all hidden behind the bumper. I did pressure test after welding. There was one pinhole and it was a factory weld I had dressed to clear the new mounting tabs. Easy fix.



ONce the cooler was setup for mounting it was time to bolt it up. I previously cut the nose but had to do some final trimming. I also had to raise the cooler such that the lower edge is flush with the lower edge of the nose. The bumper fits really close here and I had no clearance. I first clamped the cooler in place and the bumper did not fit. So more adjustments until it cleared.

Finally fit I drilled some mounting holes. The cooler is now Hella Flush. I still have to workout the fittings and hardware. I will probably end up cutting off the existing fittings and welding in new ones.



ONce the cooler was in place it was time to mount the bumper. Overall it fits well. I still have to make a mounting bracket for the passenger side. Since I cut the battery box there is nothing to mount to. That is another day... For now the bumper is bolted and hanging on its own.



Since the front was staring to come together I went to the back. I bought a fiberglass decklid from JimTweet. It was a leftover from his previous project. Fit my needs well. I planned to use 911R hinges. So, I started this assembly today.

First I align the decklid using shims and tape into place. This method works well because it holds the decklid flush with the body line and maintains the gap. (more on that in a minute).

The archives show the hinges mount centered, 12.5" from the outside edge of the decklid. I aligned the hinges with the middle grill mount. this ended up being right at 12.25" over. I left a slot in my tape mounting points to insert the hinges. Then I aligned to my center line marks. Then after drilling some holes I could slide the hardware in place.




You can see the alignment marks here. The hinge is not mounted in this pic.




The tape method works well to maintain the gap. I chose to align the decklid to the upper gap. This is the most visible to me. Seems to be relatively straight. I still have to block it down to fine tune. The side edges also need some love to make the gaps work right.



At the end of the day, the decklid is mounted.







Next up... oil lines.

[jpnovak]

April 2018

Oil lines...

This project started a few weeks ago. I just could not quite wrap it up until the oil cooler was in place. I admit that I am following Matt's excellent thread.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/porsc...r-install.html

I found a partial roll of the 100R5-16 hose on ebay. It was about $1.50/ft. Couldn't pass it up. And so the line pulling adventure begins.

First You drill some holes in the rear. Here are two holes in the inner fender support (kidney) panel. Keep them as close to the inside as possible. I used a 1.25" hole saw. The top hole is angled downward to better match the hose as it has to snake down under the rear section of the outer rocker and yet above the jack point. Thankfully, I have replaced a few rocker panels in my day so I know exactly how these all fit together.



After the rear it was time to move to the middle and drill some holes in the vertical fender support. I connected these holes with the cut off wheel to make an oval hole. This will be sealed once the system is all installed.



I needed a place to bring the hoses into the front trunk. I made another oval hole just forward of the shock support area. The edges of the holes are pulled in (upper) and out (lower) to allow a more straight approach. This should be high enough to still have wheel/tire clearance.




This is the same hole from the fender well.



Once the holes were drilled it was time to pull it all through. Starting at the rear, push the hoses through your drilled hole and all the way to the front. It will pop out of the rocker and dead end at the fender support. A lot of twisting, tugging, pulling and cussing is involved.



Next, pull the hoses upward to clear the fender support. This was the toughest part. I suggest to pull the "upper" hose first. the lower hose slides easily against it. I grabbed the hose with some adjustable pliers for more grip. Once you have a few inches exposed you can pull through. I wish I had someone to feed hose on the other end. I will certainly have that available when it is time for in-car assembly. When the hoses pull out of the rocker they turn upward into the fender well.




Hoses go up and over the wheel well providing plenty of clearance. The hoses will later be secured with strategically placed Adel Clamps. The enter the front trunk through the hole I cut eariler.




And finally, the follow just above the battery box cover plate and make a final bend to the fittings on the cooler. I just have to decide what termination fittings I am going to use. Banjo would be the easiest but I am concerned about total volume flow here.



I am going to build the oil cooler air dam this week. I will leave the hoses in place until then. I need to plan the hose angle of attack into the air dam. Afterwards, it all comes back out so I can start to primer, undercoat and color the bottom of the car and the fender wells. This was a big accomplishment. It was the last major fab project on the car before I could start to top coat the tub. Getting really excited. Motivation levels are high right now. Trying to beat the summer heat before its too hot to paint.

[jpnovak]

September 2018

Wow. hard to believe its been 5 months since the last update. Usual story. Day job getting in the way. And the TX summer heat is not exactly motivating to work in the garage. But there has been some progress.

In the last installment there was a big hole cut into the nose of the car. I admit it was tough to cut out all that good sheet metal that I had just replaced. But, it was necessary for airflow.

To fill the hole I needed a duct. So using my CAD template (Cardboard Aided Design - Ref. Project Binky) I mocked up an oil cooler duct. Plenty of clearance for the cooler. Hot air exhausts through the bottom of the cooler.




Once my cardboard mockup was complete I transferred the pattern to sheet metal and added some flanges. This duct sat in place all summer. I finally welded it into place last week. The nose of the car is once again solid and the oil cooler fits nicely.

[jpnovak]

Since the gap was closed up it was time to mount it back on the car. The work seems to look pretty good. Visually this is what I wanted.





Since I could not quite see what it looks like all one color I put a quick coat of white primer on top of the repair. Visually this looks right.





Next time Minne goes to the Dentist office.