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Engine Lid ALU "trim delete"
When first mounted on the car, it was evident that the contour of the lid created a proud surface relative to the body panels surrounding the engine bay cavity. See first image below.
As these lids are light weight and the aluminum quite pliable, the guys were able to tweak it lightly so that is nestled down into the cavity quite nicely. See second and third images.
Next the lid was stripped down to the bare aluminum.
In the prior post the "trim delete" lid was discussed in some detail.
Once down to the bare aluminum it was plain to see that this ALU lid did not start out as a trim delete lid.
The holes for the script and model designation had been impressively welded with aluminum rod and expertly metal finished. This is the work of a talented welder but the questions remain: just exactly who did the welding and when was it done? Factory, team or restorer?
Did the factory really stamp out some trim delete lids? Is it just an ST myth?
I have a friend in Germany who will be stripping another like this one with holes for rubber locks and rain guards. It will be interesting to see if that one is also welded.
So, for the meantime at least, the mystery of the "trim delete" ALU engine lid remains unsolved.
Provenance of this lid indicated genuine factory prepped ST DNA : "The ST enigne lid came off the Targa florio class winning car (73) 911 1 300721" Perhaps Hugh has some info on that car.
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Uh, yeah sure, I guess we better do it...
OK, we are not going to hold back on the short cuts either.
The car is going into final paint as soon as it stops raining in New England. It seems like it has been raining all summer around here.
After final paint, it will go to final assembly. The guys in that section of the shop won the Manhattan Trophy back in the day and just don't tolerate dirty old work surfaces.
At this point the rear suspension was dropped and the body guys did a quick but effective clean up on the transmission tunnel and torsion bar area.
The first image shows the mess I had been studioulsy ignoring: a real rats nest.
Next image shows it bare of everything (except harness, brake lines etc.) that could be removed.
Third image shows how the factory undercoat cleaned up - pretty nice. We wanted the look of the factory style race chassis described in Sports Purposes as No stoneguard and soundproof matting but did not want to actually do all the work to strip off the undercoat in this area of the chassis.
Then some color to make it all look Olive.
A short cut.
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Fabricate oil line and fittings for uberdruckventil
Back in post 229 we looked at the pressure relief valve employed by the Race Department to help avoid damage to the somewhat fragile Behr fender mounted bilateral oil coolers and lines under cold start conditions and other situations causing sudden spikes in oil pressure.
We discussed the special valve manufactured in Berlin by Armaturen-Apparate- Fabrik Preschona for this purpose. This valve is set to open at 5 atm.
You may recall that we sourced a proper valve in good used condition. The one we were able to acquire is the later version found on some factory prepped 2,5L cars but fitted universally for RSR. This second version of the valve may have been used on some of the very late MY 71 2,3L cars.
However, we did not have proper lines with factory style fittings for its use.
In order to ensure a "factory correct" looking installation, the related oil line required fabrication. The difficulty in making proper oil lines is sourcing the aluminum fittings employed by the factory back in the early 1970S. These fittings have not been made in about 40 years or more and are no longer available new. About a year and a half ago, a friend in Germany agreed to commission a small run of the proper threaded fittings and aluminum collars so that the uberdruckventil could be plumbed into the oiling system.
Special threaded fittings and matching aluminum collars for the hoses were made up in the correct sizes and thread pitch to duplicate the factory fasteners and hardware. I know, this sounds pretty straight forward. You would might think this stuff can be found in the Aeroquip catalog or the Geman equivalent. Actually, some of these old fittings used by the factory were indeed military surplus hardware, but they came from the old Messerschmitt factory - used to plumb the hydraulics of the Me109, which had gone out of production all the way back in 1945. So we wanted original hardware, but the surplus had long since run out. In order to accomplish this seemingly trivial goal, we decided to find someone who was willing to fabricate original looking fittings, collars and lines. In the end it required several months waiting before the fabricator (a gent known to another 2,3L enthusiast) found the time to make up such a small run of fittings for the hot rod.
Once the correct fittings were finally produced, the soft lines were assembled by another firm in Germany. I think it was worth the wait.
Here is a pic of the of the newly fabricated lines together with the old Preschona valve after it was cleaned and detailed.
The second image shows (Frank's ex-) RSR engine bay and illustrates how the fabricated line and the old pressure relief valve will look when we plumb the hot rod's engine lubrication system.
