Building our Hotrod

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For the past couple of months you have seen me Buying and Selling parts around here and ocasionally I've dropped some pictures around of what me and RSexS were building for our fun car. Some of you have asked me to post some more so I've started this topic for that. I had written a story for Esses, but there had not been enough space to print it yet because somany of you were showing their lovely rides with a brif one or 2 pager, so I'll just drop the story here and add some pictures for you to enjoy.

But let me start off with some picture of where we roughly are now. (I know the front wheels are on the back its just to keep it rolling for now)

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The story that I wrote a couple months back for esses:

RSexS and myself, bought a 911T sunroof coupe to keep next to our 911RS and 911S Targa to see the race track every once in a while. Not as a competition racer, but more like a track day car that we could enjoy every once in a while when there was an event that was just a little too rough for the other two cars. The idea behind buying a car together was that our current cars don’t drive that many miles, so the second car would probably see even les tarmac or twisty roads. So it would be a lot more economic (and keep in mind we are Dutch) do both invest in car and gradually invest in it to make it a real beast.

So just 2 weeks before we had to drive to Classic Le Mans last year we dropped the hammer on a silver 1972 sunroof 2.4T coupe. The car appeared to be in very nice condition, most of the panels and floors were original and it had little to no rust in the usual places. It did have some rear damage that looked like a minor fender bender and the rear window was not put in the car properly. It drove like an old lady due to the 4 gear box and the worn out bushings and shocks and weird tire combo. So there were definitely some things to address over time. First priority however was the undercarriage and tires and we had all that done just a couple of days before we headed out to Classic Le Mans.
A month or two after the Le Mans Classic visit (that I wrote a story about in the summer edition of the 2010 Esses), we decided to bite the Bullitt and have the lame 911T on a diet and give it a ‘make over’. The initial idea was to just punt a Fiberglas front- and rear deck lid and bumpers on it and do a simple respray of the original silver grey metallic. Since my brother does these kind of things for a living with his daytime job and likes to handle my Porsche projects in his weekends and holidays. (2 Targa restorations and a few cars of my friends)
After taking some thinks of the car to swap out the fiberglass and taking of parts of the shiny silver paint, we found some things that led us to believe we would be better off to have it done to the bare metal and then repaint it. It turned out that the car not just had a minor fender bender, but also rolled over on its side and roof. Quite a setback off course, but hey, once we are done with that, there could be much more right? So we sourced a roof panel and reshaped the left side of the car. Luckily my brother is more of the old school kind of panel beater, so he is good at that and knows how to work with tin instead of bondo of body fillers.

When we took a closer look at the interior of the car we found out that the previous owner had welded 2 large plates of metal on top of the original rear sets and had applied the same ‘solution’ for the rear deck. So from the outside it still looked original, but after removing the plates we found out how thin the original sheet metal had become from rust issues. So they had to be replaced.
When the roof was pressed back in its original position, we took some measurements and came to the conclusion that the alleged fender bender was also a bit more than just the fenders. We build a small Jig for the rear of the car based on a straight half car that we purchased for the rear deck and rear seats. The rear latch panel was too much out of shape to reuse, so we bought another piece of a salvaged car to solve the latch problem and part of the right inner wing with beam.

What seemed to be a simple rip and replace with fiberglass and a quick respray to make it presentable now suddenly turned into a complete restoration. Now that we have come this far down the line, we just had to go the extra mile and we had the entire chassis seam welded and reinforced in several places. Not that we were going to race or rally it that hard, but hey, if we would ever want to, we got the tool to do so. (and both of us keep on dreaming) We also bought a bolt in safety devices FIA approved full cage with door bars and had the mounting plates welded to the chassis. Currently the chassis floors, inner fenders and engine compartment is painted in its final color, we choose it to become Dolphin Grey, a 1965 Porsche color that is a very light grey color. We’ll put Schieffer Grey Porsche script on it and ditto fuchs wheels. The car is getting a R look for now, but we might change that in a couple of years to ST if we feel that we need wider wheels to stick.
After making all the above decisions it became apparent that we were not crating any sort of mils track day car anymore in appearance, but actually a full blown hotrod. It would look kind of silly if it would become an all show and no go kind of car. When we rounded up all the parts we used to upgrade the suspension just before Le Mans, I also came across a late model SC engine (204 Hp) that looked pretty decent. According to the PO it was a good running engine and it did not cost an arm and a leg, so we took it home. It will be made to look like an old racing engine with the 40mm Webers we had on de 2.4T and a ‘home made’ R style exhaust to cope with noise regulations on most tracks in Europe.

The list of stuff that we are going to put on this car.
Autoflug harnesses with inertia reels and locking
Safety Devices bolt in FIA full cage
Lollipop seats in leather/pepita
Cibie Biode headlights with clear SWB Hella glass
Cibie ‘hood lights’
Momo R-like steering wheel
R taillights with chrome ring and R front lights with park lights.
Bosch cut off switch in front cowl and dashboard
Fiberglass front- and rear deck lid and bumpers
Aluminum strut brace in ST/RSR style
Ate double brake fluid reservoir
Dash cocks met 10K tacho en 300KM speedo
Felt dash cover
RS door panels with unbreakable door pull and plastic R outside door handles
Lightweight carpet set with rubber mats
Plexiglass side and rear window in R style for the rear quarters
Center filler thru the hood and Oil filler through the rear fender
Tow hook front and rear
Fuchs 6j + 7j x 15 with steel nuts in matt dark grey color
3.0L SC 204Pk SC engine with clear shrouds and RSR engine bracket
40mm weber carbs with aluminum high intakes
R-look exhaust with early heat exchangers
Aluminum rear arm
Aluminum Cross member
Bilstein yellow struts and rear shocks
S-brakes
Front and rear stabilizers

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Rear section and seat section repairs

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More body work with parcelshelf replaced and dented side reworked.
We also added the thru the body oil cap, since it was a 72 body this was the easy upgrade.

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We have seam welded the entire body....well that is... my brother has. Added an extra 'hat' to the dash, so the ilumination of the gauges at night does not reflect in the windshield and changed the steel fenders to R looks.

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Some reinforcements

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Some more reinforcements....by now the car is getting heavy
So we had to loose a battery
With the 72 chassis, placement of the oil catch tank had to be a bit different than with the earlier chassis since the shock towers are placed differently. (and have reinforcements here) We also added a bracket for future dual coils should we want to go that route later on. The big plates are for safely mounting the seatbelt inertia's on the parcel shelf.

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We added a bolt in safety devices FIA cage and after testfitting and adjusting all the fiberglass parts, it was taken down to the bare metal and repainted.

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After some really sparkling color scemes for the car, we decided to keep it low key and have decided for Dolphin Grey with Slate Gray wheels and stripes. We also molested a standard tank to a bigger centerfiller tank

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More pics on paint prep