I am not afraid of rust…I am not afraid of rust…POR15 is my friend!...POR15 is my friend!
Good evening Guys and Gals,
Thought I would give you an update on what’s happening with my little project. Since last posting I have made some progress. I finished stripping the remaining portions of the interior to assess the condition of the floor pans and strategize on a plan. When I first inspected the car before purchasing it I noticed that the rear floor pan had already been replaced and the front appeared to be in good condition. After stripping the interior I was not happy with the seam sealing job that the PO(s) had done on the rear pan so I striped it out. After doing so I discovered that what I thought to be a good “stitch” job with six inch interval spot welds was actually be held together mostly with the seam sealer that I just removed. I am also not happy with the gap between the floor pan and the outer longitudinal and inner transmission tunnel – a non issue since, in places, the pan can be easily raised and re-welded. At this point I also started poking around at couple of poorly executed patch panels at the lower potion of the rear fire wall below the rear jump seats that were previously hidden by carpet. It seems that the patches are covering some good metal with most of the rot cut out. These are all things that I want to fix before continuing on with the other restoration line items that I’ve previously identified. I spent the rest of the day (Saturday) scraping undercoating both inside and underneath the car. Side note – I don’t think you can claim to be a true porscheophile until you’ve scraped cosmolin undercoating off the underside of a P-car. It's a zin like experience when square inch sections fall off the car when properly probed by your putty knife. Having said this it’s really a sucky job when the stuff actually sticks to rust free metal).
I’ve purchased a 120V MIG welder and have POR15 on the way to help me address the above issues. Man if I hadn’t done this kind of stuff before on my 356 I’d be really worried right now.
Today, in the spirit of putting things back on the car, instead of taking them off; I put the set of used door handles that I purchased from Marco on the car (Thanks again Marco – they look great!). Before installing them I took them completely apart, and filed the tumbler pins to work with my keyset. Nothing like the crisp sound of a P-car door closing. This week I’ll continue to clean up, prime, and paint the bits of the car that I’ve taken in house. All in all I estimate that I have about 24 more hours of scraping and grinding before I'm ready to weld and paint the floor pans.
matt