Mid February - Time for a Nose Job

Following the work on the fender rails, more rust on the front meant that I had to drill out and remove the front trim rail. Thankfully this is a part that I can still acquire as a replacement, so this went pretty smooth. 

Beyond repairing the rail.

The rail removed. It was then treated with Metal Ready for the rust, then covered in weld through primer.

And here it is, all welded up. Toughest thing about this was getting the rail to stay tight to the chassis while welding it. I ended up using wood to make small jigs that I could clamp. For a metal car, wood keeps coming in pretty handy.

Early February - Fender Rails and Fire Walls...

The fender mounting rails up front needed some serious attention. The area wouldn't really be seen, as it's sandwiched between a fender, and a weather seal, but these were full of rust holes, and would continue to leak water, so some sections were replaced, and the smaller ones were just welded and ground down.

Fabricating the replacement section. I used a birch wood mold to bend the steel over. This was just a strip that I copies the hood curvature onto, and cut with a jigsaw. Took about 2 minutes, and gave me perfect curves for all the replacement sections that I had to pound into shape.

Before trimming down the final part.

Fitting the section.

Passenger side fender rail is worse...

This weekend my friend Cy came by to help out. His skills are impressive. He tackled the rear firewall replacement. Cutting the section out of the donor car, and cutting out the firewall and parcel shelf in the 912, he's no stranger to the cutting wheel.

Bye bye firewall...

With the new firewall tacked in, and parcel shelf (sorry, missing pics), the only replacement section left is the rear seats. I'm going to mock up some battery packs with accurate dimensions so I can remove the rear seat pans, and build the battery boxes right into the rear seat area of the car. They will be roughly the same dimensions, but much more square to accommodate the square Lithium battery packs.

Away from the car I've made some progress on procurements. I've managed to finalize the details on the 12 volt system, so I've ordered my DC-DC converter that will take 200 volts from the DC pack, and step it down to run and charge the normal 12 volt system for the car essentials. I've also ordered the DC motor controller, the Evnetics Soliton 1. A real solid, well reviewed unit capable of delivering 1000 amps to the motor! This translates into over 340 ft/lbs of torque. Much more than the car was designed for, and it will be a blast to drive. I've also done a lot of work tracking down suspension parts so that once the body work is done I'll get her rolling right away. 

Late January - The Big Clip

Well, after getting about 90% of the small rust damage fixed, it was time to address the 900 pound gorilla in the room. The rear C-pillar. This was an extremely difficult clip for me. The clip went across the rear window, the trunk, the parcel shelf, and the drip rail. All very unforgiving with the slightest mis-alignment. 

I marked out the cuts to bypass factory welds, and inner bracing so that there was access to the welds from the inside as well. 

Below is the section all cut out. 

Here's the old section with the lighter yellow donor section. It still needs to be trimmed down to size, taking all kinds of care not to cut to much. This was a pretty tough clip to track down as most all unrestored early 911's and 912's have rust in this area. In fact the clip that I have has a lot of rust right below this in the parcel shelf, which I'll replace from yet another donor vehicle. 

A quick fitting and final trimming before welding.

And here with the section welded in. This took almost 3 hours due to extra time cooling the sheet metal to prevent warping and distorting the panel.  

Here's the donor clips lined up. Parcel shelf from the white one, c-pillar from the yellow one. 

And now you see why I've started calling her the "Quilt". Well, I've managed get the toughest of the rust work behind me. Some time is needed on the front fender rails, and a little time behind the drivers rocker panel, and then it's paint prep time. 

Mid January Update

To prevent further damage to the underside in the future during service work, I welded in some lift points, front and rear. 

I've also been doing a lot of messing around with instrumentation ideas. I'm going to try to keep most the original gauges, with the addition of some status displays. I got an Arduino programmable board, and a simple display. I've been playing around with some code for it to display multiple readings. I'm not sure if I'll have all the time to do what I want with it, or if I'll find something in an existing solution. 

Happy New Year 2011 - Early January Report

Happy New Years folks. I was hoping that I would have something a little more exciting to post here other than a bunch more rust repairs, but I'm sorry to disappoint.... all I have is more boring rust repairs. While wire wheeling some of the small rust spots, the inside of the passenger front wheel well just disintegrated. I had to cut a pretty big section out of the inner well.  

Here I fashioned the piece out of an unused section of pan that was still around. I pretty much used the pan metal on all the various fills that I did. Recycle, right?

Here the new section is tacked in. This was a little tougher of a fabrication due to the metal curving in both the horizontal and vertical directions, so it was actually stretched out in the middle. 

On my quest for some good replacement sheet metal, I headed down to Autobahn Parts in El Cajon. These guys.... coolest guys around. Sean and John have the best European parts yard. Bar none. And now they are racing LeMons with us... Look out! I can't these guys enough for the help with this project. I've been collecting parts to convert the windows to power, and parts that I needed to upgrade the front cross member to aluminum (more on that later). 

I tracked down a C pillar that I needed for the rear, but unfortunately it had a rusted parcel shelf. I also needed rear seat pans. Autobahn had this parted out '66.

I took the whole C-pillar, parcel shelf, fire wall, and rear seat pans. I'll stitch these in later. 

Poor parts car...we'll put the clips to good use.

Another item I got from Autobahn was a steering rack. The original rack in the car with a 1964 manufactured stamp had a bad internal rack. It was notched pretty bad by feel, and after getting it out and inspecting, looked like it had been in an accident. 

Since I had the 'early' rack, I wanted to keep my lighter, original case. This meant pulling both racks apart, and rebuilding them with the best parts that each one had to offer. We'll call it the budget rebuild.

You can see the damage below. It doesn't look like much, but it's enough to cause play and notching in the steering wheel.

Below are some pictures of the jack receptacle on the lower rocker. 

Ending the Year 2010

Well, the month, and the year, ended well with good progress. Now that all new pans are welded in, it's time to concentrate on all the small stuff.... and there is a lot of small stuff. The body is covered will small rust and structural defects that need to be addressed. After 45 years on the road, just about every corner of the car needed attention. 

Here we see the rear passenger side frame rails. Sometime in the past the car suffered some pretty good trauma here. You can see that the frame rail has been punctured! This allowed water to penetrate the frame rail, and caused quite a bit of rust on the lower side, and rockers. 

After cleaning the area, it's readied to be cut.

Frame rail cut open.

Replacement section is fabricated.

Here the section is tack welded in place. 

After finishing up all the welds, the section is ground down, and ready to be undercoated.

It seems that rust really likes to live around the wheel wells. Plenty of water spray, and rocks to chip the paint. Here is the lower section, just rear of the front wheel on the passenger side.

Section cut out.

New piece is fabricated, and ready to be welded in.

And on and on it goes like this. Several other sections had this 'spot' treatment, but I didn't really stop to take pictures along the way. This is the part of the restoration that I just want to get done. I'm counting the days until it's paint ready.... and that's not soon enough.

Here's how I spent most of my free evenings in December. 

The underside of the pans and rocker panels were pretty bad. Looks like the previous owner maybe landed on a curb, or something of that nature. There is also extensive damage done from jacks and hydraulic lifts over the years that it was serviced. I'm going to fashion steel plates that act as lift points once the bottom is finished. More on that later.

Here we can see down the rail of the rocker, and it's pretty bad. Time to pull the seam out.

I didn't have the "proper" tool, so I welded a bolt from my vise grips to the slide hammer. This worked amazingly well to pull out the seams where the stud welder wasn't strong enough. 

Here's a picture of the seam, all pulled out and straight again. It took quite a few studs with the puller to get the pan out.

Since the internal combustion engine had so many fluids, the body had a lot of drain holes. Especially in the front section where the old gas tank was. Since this car will no longer house a gas tank, I took the extra time to weld shut all the drain holes, and grind them smooth. This will prevent areas where water can enter in the future and cause rust problems. 

Now it's a hole, now it's not.

Well, so that's how the project ended the year. Upside down on the rotisserie, getting all sorts of small sections all over the car, cut, and replaced. I started calling it The Quilt the other night. It just seemed so appropriate for all the patch work going on.

Happy New Years everyone.