Another Ode to Barry

TheEasyLife · Post by **TheEasyLife** » Mon Feb 18, 2008 12:39 am

Well I have finally scanned in the pictures of the restoration of my car. Apologies for some black lines/borders around the pics but my scanner isn't all that.

I have to start off by saying that this car would probably have been written off and scrapped by any other person. Thanks to Barry for saving her and letting me do this thread, here goes.

A long time ago in a garage far far away (from Leicestershire anyway) lived this little horror:

The 80's have a lot to answer for. Especially the Guards red, rear wheelarches and whale tail. I have a similar set of Gold and silver BBS wheels for her.

Marvel at the 935 lookalike front end. Flatnose with airvents in the tops of the wings and headlights under the bumper.

Not rusty or oversprayed with Guards red at all under the bonnet. Note LHD at this point!!

Note rear bumper (what is it? - actually I don't want to know), Engine missing carbs, fan sprayed red and peeling off. Classy. Original Emerald green paint (according to the Porsche Letter of Origin) showing at back of engine bay. To think this is only 200 chassis's away from this one : http://www.export56.com/carsforsale/sal ... ?SaleID=23

More in a few days.

Gary71 · Post by **Gary71** » Mon Feb 18, 2008 7:38 am

Many would have scrapped this on site, good to see it rescued!

Derek · Post by **Derek** » Mon Feb 18, 2008 9:57 am

My, what an ugly ba****d of a car

Bewildebeest · Post by **Bewildebeest** » Mon Feb 18, 2008 10:12 am

I assume the original perpertrator is now doing time ?

Helen · Post by **Helen** » Mon Feb 18, 2008 2:48 pm

Bewildebeest wrote:I assume the original perpertrator is now doing time ?

oh god, i do hope so

Helen · Post by **Helen** » Mon Feb 18, 2008 2:54 pm

Marvel at the 356 look alike frontend

like twins,

abzadams · Post by **abzadams** » Mon Feb 18, 2008 5:18 pm

here's another for you Barry..
http://www.pistonheads.co.uk/sales/380111.htm

Barry · Post by **Barry** » Mon Feb 18, 2008 8:58 pm

O.K.: so the above photo's represent the end of the first two weeks of knowing this car.

I'd been re-restoring a E21 BMW 323i that had been mine for eight years or so. It was thoroughly rotton, and boasted 330,000 miles. At this point I was level with the doors, and having dealt with new front chassis legs, front panel, inner wings repairs, and inner, middle and outer wings. There was still plenty of rot to deal with including boot floor, inner and outer rear wings, plus chassis legs and rear panel.

About this time an old friend popped in to see how things were going. He looked at me, I looked at him, and at the same we said 'it's clucked' (or similar). As it happened, he said he had a much better project for me....

Cut to him peeling back a tarp from the 911. He started at the rear: whale-tail (no problem, not too bad), then those arches (

, oh well, the rear wings would need doing anyway), then the glass DIY sunroof (

), and finally the full beauty of the front end was revealed (oh dear

). The icing on the cake was the fact that the car had been left in the rain through a whole winter with no airfilter housing or carbs. A look down the inlets confirmed the worst: solid chunks of corrosion everywhere.

Now all of this time he had been hinting at a pretty keen price 'it'll be so cheap you could chuck it in a barn and forget about it'. It was the best suggestion he'd made so far.

Still, you know me, and before long I'd talked myself into it, and a dreadful (for me) deal was done £2250 changed hands, and I got the car (with no paperwork at all, no keys, and the ignition lock poured over the driver's seat). Bargain! In my defence, it did come with a derelict 'E' engine, complete with (it turned out) a sumpful of water.

The journey home was a bit of a classic. We towed the 911 out of his barn with his rusty, trusty Suzuki 410 Jeep, and continued to tow it the four miles or so back here. The highlight of this was when a rear wheel bearing failed noisily just outside of the local primary school, perfectly timed for the end of the school day. Mark, the P.O. was happily oblivious to this, and continued towing merrily as the wheel bearing broke into more and more pieces.

The car sat on the drive for a few days, catching, as you can imagine, admiring glances from all

. It's true to say 'jealous' really wasn't the word. I had a couple of friends due to arrive so I thought I'd get the car into the garage before they got here. As I let the car down the steep drive bit by bit, it suddenly jumped the chocks, and with me leaning through the driver's window desparately trying to find the handbrake. I knew I was in serious trouble as I had lined the car up to shave down the garage door pillar. The car missed the pillar by 1/4 inch, unlike me. I got wedged between the car and the post hard enough to stop the car dead (I never did get to the handbrake). I must have looked pretty cool smeared down this wreck of a 911, with my legs now pinned down the side of the car (literally horizontal).

One way or another, I got the handbrake on, and wriggled out. Just then my friends turned up. Already both legs (and arse) were turning blue and I couldn't move at all. Still, they were very good and afforded me the sympathy I deserved. I've never seen a grown man wet himself before

.

This pretty much set the trend for the whole restoration ....

Barry · Post by **Barry** » Mon Feb 18, 2008 9:03 pm

BTW, that bodykit really was a class act. None of the vents actually 'vented' and were simply moulded solid, like a full-sized Tonka toy.

To give an idea of how wide it was at the rear, those are 9in rims on two inch spacers

. It's a real mystery as to why that wheel bearing failed

.

Neverthess the width of that bodywork did save the car from becoming a guilotine and gave me room to be smeared down it, rather than being chopped in two by it. Definitely not recommended.

964RS · Post by **964RS** » Mon Feb 18, 2008 9:13 pm

That truly is one of the most horrific things I've ever seen. Its one of the only cars I can honestly say taking all the panels off it would make it look better!

Something tells me Barry will have it looking quite different though....

hot66 · Post by **hot66** » Mon Feb 18, 2008 10:18 pm

Jason, the car was rescued & back on the road a fair few years ago. Barry sold it too cheap

It is again owned by a DDKer .. 'theeasylife'

Barry · Post by **Barry** » Mon Feb 18, 2008 10:33 pm

hot66 wrote:Jason, the car was rescued & back on the road a fair few years ago. Barry sold it too cheap

Story of my life

. I was trying to work out when I bought it. I think the above photo's must have been early September 2003.

I only found out about DDK (through Nick Moss @ Early 911) when the car was nearly completed, so the full story never got told here. It was long before I'd done the Contour Autocraft courses, and also pre-vintage coachbuilding experience as well. Although I had restored cars previously (and indeed did some for other people) this was the first one I had tackled here, and after a long break from restoration. I still regard it as the most challenging I've done for reasons that will become clear as the thread pans out.

Since the car is now back 'in the fold', and the story never got told first time round James (Theeasylife) and I thought it might be of interest to do it now.

IanMcLeod · Post by **IanMcLeod** » Mon Feb 18, 2008 11:04 pm

I can't believe that horror became the lovely gulf blue car ...

I hope you kept the bodykit so a future owner has the option of re-instating it if desired :-O

TheEasyLife · Post by **TheEasyLife** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 5:31 pm

Part 2,

I have Tim (Impmad2000) to thank for the purchase of this car. I kindly volunteered him into looking at a 69T for sale in Leicester which was fantastic mechanically but needed a lot spending on the bodywork within the next year or so. My first car was a 'restored' 69 Wolseley Hornet back in the late 80's as I wanted something that stood out a bit more than the Mk 1 Cavalier my dad was advising me to get. I soon found out that the Wolseley was a rustbucket with a cheap sprayjob and I swore to never knowingly buy a rotten car again. Hence as much advice as possible when looking to buy a 911 and lots of time researching via DDK and other places!

Bemoaning to Tim the lack of reasonable RHD vehicles in my very tight budget the subject of this car came up. I had been advised, and read, to steer clear from such LHD to RHD conversions as they had to be done correctly and then there is the 'loss of originality'. As such I was not that interested untill Tim showed me the before pictures of his car, then we inspected the shell to see where the work had been done. It turned out that Tim's car had been restored by the same chap who did the Gulf Blue car. I honestly couldn't tell where metal had been replaced on Tims car despite seeing pictures showing exactly where. I was very impressed with the level of workmanship and duly booked a viewing on the Gulf Blue car for the next weekend with Tim. Within 30 minutes of leaving the viewing I had made the call to the owner to buy it. These restoration pictures are worth their weight in gold (maybe abit more!) and were a large factor in me buying the car, without them the car would definitely be worth a lot less. The PO was a pleasure to deal with and the transaction smooth (am I spending too long on ebay?). Once again, many thanks Tim.

Anyway onto the pictures.

The car was stripped (I agree with 964RS, definitely looks better now

). Note rust patches under fuel filler and lack of battery boxes.

A RHD dash was sourced from a later 911.

The sunroof had to go. Have just noticed had correct LHD drivers door rest without pull at this point. Was replaced by second owner I think.

Some metal was cut to shape and welded in place

Sanded/ground down

Small amount of work required for the rear parcel shelf to fill in holes left by speakers. Note rot/lack of metal in the corner.

New metal ground down. New metal has same profile as original. Impressive.

Rusty rear window corner cut out. Horrible.

Rear corner tidied up a bit.

And tidied up a bit a bit more.

Now looking really good. You can barely tell.

More next week.

Cheers

James

Barry · Post by **Barry** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 7:20 pm

Ahh, those were the days!

Literally the day after I picked the car up, someone mentioned there was someone locally that did them, and had the odd spare for sale. I thought there was nothing to loose by visiting this chap, and popped down there.

At this point I had already made my mind up that I would convert the car to RHD as a) I had already done two TR conversions, b) the car had lost it's originality anyway, and c) I wanted RHD. Purely by chance, the visit to the restorer saw me coming away with a RHD bulkhead (SC I think), pedal-box and some other odds and ends.

Before tackling the conversion, as James has said I got going on some easier bits. I knew the sunroof had to go: it was a real car-accessory type, glass pop-up style. It was actually too big for the roof, so they had buckled the corners of the roof down slightly to make it fit: nice

. You'll have noticed that the sunroof replacement panel was red in the centre. This was becuase it came out of a Cavalier 5-door hatchback roof: I had made some plywood templates to get the profile I wanted, and visited the local breakers, plonking this jig over all of the roofs until I found one that matched. (These days I would wheel one up).

I cut it as closely as I could to the removed-sunroof hole, and butt welded it in bit by bit. Took about half a day, as each time the general area started to get too warm, I left it for twenty minutes or so, until it was stone cold. Then I'd start again, MIG welding a bit, then doing a bit opposite and so on. I'd still do the same now, but would TIG it in to leave a nice pilable weld that could be planished up afterwards.

The speaker holes were the very first bits of welding that I did on this car: I can't imagine the acoustics were ideal, as there were no back-boxes, and even the engine insulation had been cut away here. Effectively engine insulation had been reduced from two layers of foam, a layer of metal, and a layer of hardboard right down to the thickness of a speaker cone: doh!