912 Targa : A slow restore / refresh

[neilbardsley]

After sleeping on the train and missing my station on Friday while I was kicking myself at Rugby station waiting for the next train back to Long Buckby I received a very welcome txt from Garry (on his birthday)! He has been working on my rebuilding the Targa targa roof on my car and refreshing the dash. It appears that the end is in sight.


"Extremely tired Targa roof in for complete restoration"

On his web site

http://classiccarrestorationsurrey.co.u ... storation/

[neilbardsley]

I picked up my car from Garry this morning and drove it back to the office. 2.5 hours to get to Warren Street! I had forgotten what a joy this 912 is to drive. Smooth through all the rpm range. Direct steering. Nice torque in the lower end. Now a water proof roof! Much less wind noise. A working radio.

Garry's closing words were that he was very happy with the fit. This means that it is done right because at the start of this project Mr Temple had 'warned' me that Garry was a bit of a perfectionist and will not cut corners. It appears that someone does read these posts since Garry got 6 inquiries about Targa roofs after my last post.





More pictures to follow when I get time. I'm taking it up to the midlands tonight to put into a garage. It's becoming too nice/valuable to leave on South East London Streets.

[neilbardsley]

The weather decided to be kind on the drive up to Daventry. The car ran very strongly for a car that had been sitting for 6 months. Another thank you to Garry getting it going before giving it back to me. The last MOT had shown some rust spots on the underside which needed looking at. The plan was to take the car over to Angus at Greatworth on Saturday for an assessment. Lovely drive over. I wasn't really pushing that hard and I kept having to slow down for Mrs B to catch up.

When we got the car up on the ramp it didn't look good. Looks like some previous repairs were sub standard. The words no classic car owner wants to hear are "we might have to replace the floorpans". More news to follow on Saturday when then the ramp in the body shop becomes available.

[Bootsy]

oh dear!

[impmad2000]

Be lucky Neil, but sometimes your hand is forced by what is found. I've been there, I know ! Good luck .

[jb]

fingers crossed for you

[hot66]

Hope it's not too bad ... Either way I'd advise repairing and keep enjoying rather than being tempted into a more extensive resto

[neilbardsley]

Dropped the car off at Greatworth to get MOT worthy today. It's not being driven enough. Once warmed up. It reminded my why I like driving this car so much. When I get it back I need to do a road trip.

[neilbardsley]

Hopefully Picking the Targa up on Saturday.

Rumour has it that it might actually look like this



I have some interesting photos from Greatworth to share. It's almost be entirely rebuilt. Floor replace but lots of metal added to allow the floor to connect to good metal. New pedal box area. Over 70 hours of work on the body. New steering box. New bushes in the frontend. Suspension rebuilt and recoated. One of the great bits of working with Angus and the others at Greatworth is that they don't give you the car back until they have driven it and it running nicely. Last time I put my 356 into them it really ran nicely. Until some muppet decided he could do better and regressed it to 95% of the previous setup! Angus is saying the car has been transformed from when it went in. I'm looking forward to using it again. The only downside is that the interior now needs sorting and all the rear trim is coming back in a box. Lack of funds means this has to wait until next year. I had better speak to Santa and Garry