It's been quite some time since I've updated on the progress of my '72 Targa hot rod, I've had a lot of other projects to attend to. But I have made some good progress on the Targa, here's some photos I shot today.
The first 2 photos are before and after, the one with the blacked out wheel centers is the before shot. Major cosmetic changes are the wheels were refinished by Harvey, I fitted a "S" style aluminum rocker trim to work with the SC flares and I stripped the silly black paint from the stainless Targa bar cover and took it back to a brushed stainless look.
The wheels are Fuchs 16s that came with this car and were refinished by Harvey in the '73 RS style, with satin petals and rim lips, and matte anodizing on the inside of the petals and rims. His work is outstanding, really beautiful...I almost didn't want to put them back on the car, I felt like putting them on the wall in my office. While not period correct, the 16" size offers lots of tire selections that are not available in 15". It's a reasonable trade off.
The instruments were cosmetically and functionally restored by North Hollywood Speedo. All faces have been re-silkscreened, and the spun aluminum centers were installed in the '73 RS style. I also had them do their LED upgrade and that is a really nice and much needed upgrade. The really cool thing is that the got the electric speedo calibrated to be exactly right on as measured by my Garmin GPS.
The seats are by GTS Classics, Nurburgring style, in black leather with perforated inserts. Very comfortable, much more so that the 944 seats that the car came with.
Other changes that can't been seen are a triangulated front strut brace, new brakes with cross-drilled rotors and super sticky Kumho tires.
My goal for this car is, while it is completely not original in so many areas, to have it look period correct and reasonably stock.
When I bought the car, the engine and transaxle had undergone complete rebuilds and only had about 300 miles on them. Now, with a little over 5K on the clock everything seems to be breaking in nicely and most of the final sorting is done. The car fires right up after sitting for a few weeks or longer, never skips a beat and gets pretty decent fuel economy as long as I keep my foot out of the throttle.
I still have a few things I want to tend to, but I'd say it's about 85% done.
Mike
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