Mid Nov. - Stripping Her Down, Assessing the Damage

Had a productive evening last night by getting the car stripped down enough to take a good look at what I have, and the extent of the rust damage. Initially I was thinking that I really got a pretty bad chassis, and it would be too much work to bring it back, but the shop got a visit from the Bill Caswell team last night (more on that a little later) who needed to put the finishing touches on his Baja 1000 BMW e30 for the race this weekend. Bill's good friend Cameron, who does Porsche restorations in Chicago, was here and looked over the chassis giving it his stamp of approval, which made me feel pretty good about the project. Cameron is the man behind some recent tribute cars, including this Porsche Paris Dakar tribute car, and an uber-rare RUF Slant Nose 935 he restored. Too bad Cameron lives in Chicago because he is a Wikipedia of Porsche knowledge, and I know I could learn a lot from him.

One thing has become pretty clear early on. This has turned into a huge project quickly. Going from what would be a quick paint job and electric motor swap just turned into a ground up total restoration of a 912. I'm only hoping that I can stay on track and be zipping around in less than a year. I know just a restoration alone can take that long, so I really have to stay on track and not get too caught up in the process. I'm finding this tough as the car is so easily loved that cutting corners might not be wise.

Here's some pics of the progress. Interior, and most exterior parts have been stripped. Time to start sourcing the panels that I'll need to replace, and practice some welding on thin, aged, sheet metal.

The good news is that the front end is in really good shape, and has never been in an accident. It's really too bad that a car can avoid accident damage for 45 years, but is a victim of it's own doing by being covered in water soaked sound insulation for decades. Rust never sleeps. The doors, hinges, and alignment of them, including hood and trunk, are all real nice, so more good news there.

Bill's team needed a trailer to take the Baja e30 to Mexico, and since you can't rent one and take it across the border, we lent him ours from our POSRacing LeMons Team. This leaves us without a trailer for our track day at Buttonwillow this weekend, so now we have to rent one. Oh well, we just want to see Bill's e30 do well in Baja.

Here's some pics of the Baja e30 as the finishing touches were being put on it.

That's Sam Smith of Jalopnik fame in the last pic. He's going with Bill to Baja and has a Twitter feed that he'll be posting updates of Caswell's Baja status. There will also be a lot of stuff on Bill's $500 Craigslist Rally Car Facebook Page.

Alright, time to go source some panels.