RHD 67S Aga Blue Restoration

[Mark111]

A couple of years ago when I was only just over a year into ownership of my first early 911 an opportunity in my eyes came along, but in other people’s eyes, ,my wifes included this was not really an opportunity it was a case of your heart ruling over doing the sensible thing.
At the time I owned a very nice original 2.4E in a very nice colour combo of black interior and tangerine.

So after being pulled out of bed early one Sunday morning by my 4 year old son I found myself scouring the car classified, I came across an add with a well-known Porsche specialist in the UK, they had a 1967 swb 911, which on first appearances looked a little sorry for itself, it had obviously been converted for weekend racing (more about that later). On closer inspection the car appeared to be a 1967S RHD, which even to my limited experience of early cars I new it to be a pretty rare car.
Anyway after initially coming across this advert, I found myself over the next week or so each time I was logging on to my laptop, pulling up the sellers website and looking over the advert again and again.
After a few weeks of deliberating and telling myself that I had a lovely car and that this swb 67S was a mile away from the car that I had, i picked up the phone and spoke to the dealer, I found out that the car had been owned for a fair few years by I gentleman in Ireland who after a number of years decided to realise his dream by driving his car in the tour Britannia. As a consequence the car was in a fairly sparse state, roll cage, stripped out interior FIA registered etc.
This didn’t deter me, I found out that the car was originally registered in May of 67,it was originally aga blue, with a black vinyl interior, at this point I was hooked….. I arranged a PAI with a well-known early 911 expert. The day arrived of the PAI I drove my 2.4E over to the dealership and left the dealer to inspect my car whilst the independent expert looked over the 67S. The car on the outside looked pretty good solid and on test driving her mechanically checked out extremely well. However on closer inspection even to my eye the car obviously had issues in all the normal places.
So the moment of truth keep the 2.4E or sell up and start a new chapter….. with a car which is certainly a project….. well I went with my gut feeling the 67S…………….. and two years on i definitely made the right decision.

[Mark111]

Apologies for the poor quality pictures hopefully my camera skills will improve as I progress with this thread.
A few pictures of the cars current disguise….






Then theres the interior or lack of it..... the only original interiors parts still with the car are the dials, minus the clock and dash...
I quickly found out that a 67S had a large number of 1 year only parts, a large amount being interior pieces

[Mark111]

So what are my intentions for car……., I believe a RHD 67S should be brought back to its former glory, more about this in my next update, I will leave you with a couple of pictures which the original owner who bought the car back in 1967 gave me earlier this year

[Mark111]

Picture of the car back in 1967 from the original owner, somewhere in London...

[Mark111]

When I first acquired my car 2 years ago I did so with the sole intention of restoring her eventually back to its original road specification. A few people on this and other forums back then made similar comments “ I hope you have a deep wallet” … well I am not in the fortunate position to have a bottomless cash fund, however with a change in jobs and a move to the other side of the south (from south west to the south east) I find myself to be able to fund a restoration project by selecting a few specialists to do the main bulk of the work and with myself managing the project and picking up a few of the easier jobs, which even I with no previous mechanical / restoration experience should be able to pick up without making a pigs ear of them ….
So what is my plan for the car, well over the last couple of years I have been drawn towards reading as much as possible on the world wide web around swb cars especially around the 67/68 era and more specifically around sports purpose cars which would have been built in the day. As much as building a sports purpose car appeals, I will not be taking my own car down this route… well not in its entirety.
Due to the sparse condition of my car when purchased and the obvious need of many parts, I have been accumulating many parts over the last couple of years and I am glad to say I have been able to purchase some great one year only original pieces in great condition as well as NOS parts. However with any build such as this there will inevitably be some parts where I will have to go down the repro route, fortunately there are a number of great providers around who specialise on the swb market.
Build sheet is as follows
Running gear – existing is 67S correct so this will be stripped and refurbed, no great modifications – stock set up
Engine – When I picked up the car the engine was built upon a 65 case, some original bits for a 67S such as IDS webers were in place however a number of parts were not correct. Engine will be rebuilt on a 67S case, with as many original NOS parts as possible.
Gear box – fortunate to have the original gearbox, however the set up was such that gear ratio’s had been shortened when the car was prepared for the previous owner and the tour Britannia. Gear box will be taken back to original stock set up initially with potentially some minor modifications later down the line, currently I have a gripper diff in place, again the current set-up is not ideal for road use so this again will be looked at.
The car will be taken back to original Aga blue, have to admit I Love this colour….
Interior – this has been one of the areas that I didn’t have to think long and hard about, I have never really been a big fan of over restored / new interiors (apologies to all those fellow members who have gone down this route on their restorations. One of the most alluring things about old cars for me is that their interiors when you get in them need to tell you a story, therefore the interior in this car will be 90% original.
All the interior parts I have will not be over restored or recovered where ever possible. Given I am very unlikely to be able to discover an original correct carpet set or headliner, this will be the only new interior parts that will be going in the car, everything else will be as near as possible 40-50yrs old.

[jos.hall]

Subscribed! Looking forward to the updates and don't ever be shy about adding more pics. The more the merrier

[ibmiked]

Congrats! You made the right choice. Can we see some pics of the 2.4E too?

[Mark111]

Over the past few months I have been drawing inspiration ahead of restoring my car from both fellow enthusiasts on ddk who have or are going through their own restorations and from fellow early 911 owners across the pond on the early S Registry. A few early 67S cars which have inspired me can be seen on the PORSport.com web site in the US, many pictures of both original road cars and cars which were raced back in the day.
Bahama yellow car with its original paint, great reference car



Factory Trans Am racer, very cool….

[Mark111]

In my first set of posts I provided a hint that my car may have a few subtle or personal touches which will not entirely be in keeping with original road spec for the car, but they may well have been added by someone at the time back in the day who would have purchased an early car for weekend racing …. so the changes they will be nothing to drastic, but easy to return to original spec if the desire ever takes me.
Original parts which either came with the car or I have managed to source such as original leather 420mm steering wheel, 4.5” wheels, Heat exchanges/exhaust and Std seats will be replaced with 67/68 original alternatives

[Mark111]

So after dropping the car off with experienced shop in the UK, I was able to pop along this weekend to check out progress of how the stripdown and logging of parts is coming along. Glad to say gary has completed this in pretty quick time, although I guess there was not much of the interior in the first place to worry about.

The car hasn’t really thrown up any surprises at this point, There are a number of poor repairs around sills, internal rear qtr areas and around where the roll cage was installed. I guess back when this car needed some tlc they really were not worth very much so you can probably expect some of the repair work to be a little sub standard.
So the next step is getting the car to the body shop where the sills and rear qtr will be cut off prior to the car being sent to the media blasters. So hopefully in the next week or so we will know exactly what condition the shell is in.