Aga Blue 67S

[210bhp]

Very nice Mark. Aga blue is a great colour. Always good to get to the painted shell stage.

Regards
Mike

[stretch]

Lovely colour. A good high moment for you Mark.

[MarkIII]

Lovely colour. A good high moment for you Mark.

Could do with a few more of those ...... was hoping to have the car for best part of the summer, but it's looking likely that I will have to wait a little longer

[911GP]

Superb, Mark. As my car draws near to the end of the metalwork stage I am very much interested in this. Love the detailed work and I think the colour is great. It reminds me of the colour of my dad's car when I was young. Very retro and very cool. Looking forward to more photos.
Kind regards
Gitesh

[MarkIII]

Spent Friday morning at the paint shop looking over Grahams work, the main shell and all panels are complete and looking rather nice, just the bumpers and fuel tank left to go which will all be done by the end of next week.

Graham pointed out that even after blasting, all the metal work that has been done on this car, there was still some areas of the car which still had original sealler in place, pretty cool....





















So next step is off for its rebuild

[MarkIII]

A few more pictures

I am not a paint expert by any stretch of the imagination, so was very reliant on Graham who has painted quite a few early porsches as well lots of other Marques such as bentley's etc. at the start of my project graham was painting a 2.4S for another customer the finish on this car was show concours quality the car when finished was like a mirror, which a lot of customers want. My car is not going to be stuck in a field on the odd sunny day in concours events, its going to be a driver so when i first spoke to graham we agreed the best finish would be as close as possible to factory back in 67, however given how much cars cost to paint these days i wanted an end product which clearly looks top quality, i am glad to say Graham has definately delivered. the car after leaving the spray booth has had a little polishing but minimal compared to a car which is going to be a concours car. It was good to compare finishes of a lightly polished car and one which has had many hours of polishing work.

[Darren65]

Very nice Mark, it's going to be a stunner!

[911hillclimber]

Mark, is that 2K paint?
Torn to paint mine in cellulose or 2K.

[visualfx]

As you know Mark I've seen Graham's work in the past.

Looks the mutts

[MarkIII]

Mark, is that 2K paint?
Torn to paint mine in cellulose or 2K.

Indeed 2k, PPG range of products

[MarkIII]

So whilst the car is being transported to the shop for its rebuild I thought it would be good to try and bring this thread up to date.

I am hoping that the final rebuild will go as smoothly as possible. Half the battle with this stage in a rebuild I guess is having all the correct parts to hand, any original parts restored and ready to go to try and ensure the build doesn’t stall.

So I thought I would start off with the most important part of any 911 rebuild, The Engine

When I purchased the car the engines performance seemed pretty strong. The engine was rebuilt back in 2009 by Tuthills for the previous owners rally exploits. My intentions for the car was to always use it and abuse it in its race / rally spec for a few years prior to going into a full restoration; and for the first year the car was fine, never really missed a beat. I then started to get itchy feet to start work on the car, so at this point I decided to start off my restoration by pulling the engine.

After speaking to a few shops and DDKers I decided to use a guy in Oxfordshire who was recommended by a couple of people, Mike Fletcher engineering. Mike had worked for several years at Prodrive followed by several more years at Tuthills, in the engine and gearbox shop, before deciding to go solo.

I was already aware that the engine in the car was not the original, the case number was from a 65 car, 901/01

So what was the plan…….., To try and replicate a period correct 67S / sports purpose engine. Any modifications needed to remain within what would have been available back in 67/68.

I dropped the car off at Mikes and he stripped the engine, it became clear quite early on that my engine was not a std 67S spec engine. Luckily the IDS Webers & manifolds, ‘S’ cams, were present.

The Engine being stripped:

[MarkIII]

So I then went on a hunting spree trying to locate a number of original engine parts

I managed to locate a 67S Ally case just 200 numbers away from the original engine number for the car.







A set of correct date stamped 67S heads were sourced, now these were probably one of the purchases I have been most lucky with, as I have not seen another set come onto the market in the last 2 yrs.





There were also several other items which were none std to a 67S engine, upper and lower valve covers, chain boxes and covers, so a lot needed to be sourced. Unfortunately at the time I could not locate these last few items, so I made the call to go forward with the rebuild without them as they can always be fitted at a later date.
So I was in a good place I had managed to find a correct Ally case for a 67S engine for the base of my build, so next step was the rebuild…..

[MarkIII]

Start of the rebuild

Standard crankcase oil modification carried out and piston squirters fitted.





The S heads were typical of an old set of heads, they required a skim, new guides, valves, seats recut etc, but overall were in great condition.

Original barrels were machined to take a set of new 81mm Wossner pistons











So in summary:

• Crankcase aquablasted
• Crankcase oil modification & piston squirters fitted
• Standard rods
• Rebored barrels to 81mm, fitted Wossner ‘S’ pistons
• Heads skimmed 0.25mm, new guides, valves, seats recut
• Exhaust studs replaced, heads timeserted
• S camshafts timed at 5.2mm @ tdc
• Forged rockers
• New chain and pressure fed tensioners
• Compression ratio 10:5:1
• Fittings / pulleys replated

[MarkIII]

So the engine was fitted back in the car and I spent a month or two just running it in. and a further couple of months enjoying the engine.

So after around 1000 miles of enjoying the new engine I started to have some intermittent running issues, my first thought was oh shite.. its an engine issue….. compression test carried out no issue there, so we then started to investigate the fuel system. Low and behold the fuel tank was contaminated with a crystal like material which almost resembled sugar. So at this point the fuel tank / system was pulled from the car. This was the start of the cars Restoration, Some 18 months ago, so the engine has not run since.

So this brings the thread up to date, I have a few other plans for the engine ahead of re-installing her, the heat exchangers and std exhaust will be replaced with a set of headers and a twin outlet sports exhaust. The other none std 67S items such as aluminium chain boxes / covers and upper/lower valve covers have now been sourced, these will be fitted at a later date as the plan is to re-install the engine and enjoy it and take stock of its performance before any future engine modifications / work is considered.

[210bhp]

Mark

Some on here have said that they would not aqua/vapour blast any areas that come into contact with oil in a running engine. I have no experience of this myself but I would be interested to hear of any other experiences regarding the possibility of contamination from the process once the hot oil mixes with the treated cleaned surfaces.

Regards
Mike