Restoring the Bahama Yellow '67 911S Targa

[jerryg]

Many of you fine readers will remember this Porsche from the LA Lit Meet and Swap from 2013. At the end of the day at the Lit meet this car was broought into the entrance of the LA hotel on a car hauler. I pointed it out to my German friend, Chris Brehme, and said that I had a similar car years ago and that this one was a very rare car: A 1967 911S Targa. It showed up the next day at the swap meet. Chris used his skills to find a right price for the car, with the understanding that I would do the restoration work. I met with the owner in Yuma, Arizona and hauled the car to my home in California. The car had some obvious problems; no engine, no transmission, wrong wheels, an epoxy paint over what should have been Bahama Yellow, and it had been sitting in the Arizona desert under a tarp for who knows how long. A lot of hidden issues were hidden at this point. I disassembeled the car and took it to a media blaster. And then the fun (?) began. Here are a few of the early pictures showing 500 159S. The saga will continue to where we are today.

[gulf908]

Jerry

this is what you're aiming for .....
perserverance and lots of pics please !

Cheers,
Dennis.

[jerryg]

I had welded support steel in the car's cockpit prior to placement on the rotissery to prevent twisting and bending. The next thing to be done was to prime the existing body panels to prevent rust. Notice that I'm still working in the shed behind my garage. I use to do this in our large three car garage, but my wife won't let me in there with our other cars in residence. There is a big follow-on story on this issue. The next pictures indicate a bit of the rust damage. The supports beneath the Targa bars on both sides were completely rusted out. The previous "repairs" on the car consisted of jaming newspaper in the rust holes, filling with builder's insulation foam and covering the spaces with bondo. I enjoyed reading newspaper's from the Arizona Tribune from 20 year's ago! I began to inventory required panels that were available. A big thanks to Restoration Design for their support. However, many of the rusted out areas required sheet metal fabrication using hammer and dolly, English wheel, and lots of cutting and welding. My goal was to keep any parts that were salvageable, using new panels where available, and fabricating everything else. Some of the fabrication, where not ending up visable, will not match the original Porsche panels. But new metal and strength is my goal.

[jerryg]

I mentioned that my wife did not like the idea of another auto resto project in her garage. And the shed behind the barn was a bit tacky. So I/we had a 36X60 foot barn/shop built on the property. Here is the Targa finding a new home for the rest of the work. That is my grand daughter doing the help with the move.

[jerryg]

Shortly after receiving the Targa, I began searching for an engine. I located a 2.0 911S engine in March, 2013 on this site. The engine was located in South Carolina and included the Weber carbs, manifolds, engine tin, starter and all else to make it complete. That was the good news. But it had be subjected to a hydraulic lock and bent a valve. The valve was reported replaced, but the engine was still partially disassembled. No matter - I needed the engine. The money was sent and shipping arranged through a ground agent. But my wife and I had a trip to Europe at the same time the engine was to arrive. I left word with the shipping agent to notify my nephew when the engine would arrive in Fresno, CA and he would pick it up. The weeks went by and no word of arrival. When we returned from Europe, still no engine. Long story short - the shipping tag somehow fell off. The engine ended up in a warehouse in Florida. Thanks to my shipping agent they located the engine and finally got it to Fresno. Talk about sweatng bullets for almost two months. I disassembled the engine and upon strong recommendations from you fine readers took it to COMPETITION ENGINEER in Lake Isabella and placed it in the fine hands of Walt Watson. He did the complete machine work required and ordered all the proper parts. The inventory sheet was pages long! I picked up the engine, took Walt to lunch and headed home. The engine and my wife went with me to a racer/engine builder friend in Oregon to put the engine together. Thanks God for the books from Pelican Parts. All went well.

[jerryg]

Locating a correct transmission for the project was a whole lot easier. A gent living less than 20 miles from my California foothill community builds vehicles which I would call Manx dune buggies. He is quite famous in his line of work and frequently uses Porsche engines and parts, rather than the approach of VW drive train that the Manx's originally used. Anyway, he had a number of Porsche transmissions (and other parts) that he acquired for his work, and one of them was the correct 5 speed, properly geared version for the 1967 911S. Yay!

[jerryg]

When I opened the rocker panels I expected the usual rust. But as previously mentioned, the newspaper and builder's insulation all covered by bondo were a bit of a surprise. The pictures are not pretty, and are included to warn people that what you see is not always what you get. I have included one picture which clearly shows a longitudinal support between the heater tube and the inner rocker panel, and it was also rusted out on both sides. I do not believe this support is on coupes. I think that Targas have it for additional support for the open top. I have not had to open a Targa to this extent so finding this panel was a bit of a surprise. I have not been able to find the piece on any after market sources not on diagrams of body parts in the Porsche manuels Any body experts out there that can add to this? Since it seems what it is, I have taken great effort to restructure the panels and secure them to the inner logitudinals. I'll show this in future posts.

[Schiefer]

Wow, massive project!
Will follow with interest because I´m pretty sure I have very similar surprises waiting for me

Cheers, Radmund

[jerryg]

Three suggestions/recommendations based on my past many welding mistakes. Many of us watch the on line videos from Restoration Design regarding "rosette welds." Since the Porsche factory had huge spot welders back in the day, many of the panels were spot welded together. We cannot do that, particularly when attaching interior panels. So using Restoration Designs approach, using a drill to make holes about one inch apart on an outer panel we can weld through the holes to the inner panel replicating the spot welds. Three important points that I have learned over the years. (1) always screw the panels together to insure a good tight connection; (2) Drill through the outer panel holes into the inner panels to create a divot upon which the weld can secure to both panels; (3) IMPORTANT - when attempting to weld a new piece of panel onto an old piece using the rosette approach, even if I think all of the rust has been removed, I frequently get contamination on the weld from the old panel. This contamination will cause a weak weld and frequently blow outs. When I do this weld, I always reinforce the welds on the two panels with small welds along the seams of the two panels. Once ground down they hardly show and the rosetta welds can look like the original spot welds. I think RS builders also weld all of the seams for additional strength.

IMPORTANT INFO - always wear a protective mask when cutting and grinding all metal. The old metal has lots of nasty stuff in it and an amazing amount of metal/rust dust is created when doing these tasks. Last week I had a few of these projects and I couldn't find my mask. I ended up with a very nasty sinus infection. Lots of pain and lucky for me it cleared up with a week of sinus rinses.

[jerryg]

Hi Radmund

My family had the pleasure of living in Oslo for three years while I was assigned to North NATO in the early 80s. My wife has lots of relatives in Norway (as a Minnesota Norwegian - she has been told many times "that there are more Norwegians in Minnesota than in Norway.) Our years in Norway were among the most pleasant in our lives and my family tries to visit when possible. Ironically, two years ago we visited a cousin in Alicante Spain and celebrated "syttende mai." It almost seemed that there are more Norwegians in Spain than Norway!

Good luck with your 67S project.