1973 911E RHD Light Ivory and ex NZ...another one.

[Darren65]

Loving this thread Kieron...

.....and to think I look back on those times as 'happy days!'

Maybe it was just the joy of seeing a true master at work!

Thanks for sharing

[aston]

11. Transmission tunnel, rear seat area, remnants of cage mounts, sill flanges..etc..

An assortment of some small(ish) repairs along the transmission tunnel, rear seat ..


















And where the cage was mounted and at the end of the dash




















The rear cage mounts had left some really nasty areas in the corners of the rear bulkhead. A pair of repair sections were fabricated, and the offside one has been let in. Also there was some corrosion behind the bulkhead (actually part of the parcelshelf), so this was repaired at the same time.






























According to Barry the car is heading for at least it's third pair of outer sills so not surprising the sill mounting flanges are getting thin and ragged, so best to remove and replace with new ...

...pictured is offside 'before' and nearside during and after





















The nearside rear wing mounting flange was pretty rough, so that has been replaced.

There were some areas of the nearside rear inner wing that were pitted, so the first area has been replaced, and Barry's underway on forming a second repair panel which needs some tweaking to get the (compound) curve right















That's all for now, more pictures tomorrow.

[aston]

12. Outer sills, floor (rear).....


So, for those of you with insomnia today's update....


Previous repairs....the new outer sills had been put on over the top of very poor inner sills. In addition, the outer sills were barely attached in several places. Finally, and the previous repairer may have been intending on returning to this parts, there was quite a bit of corrosion being hidden by the new (now removed) floor.

The new floor had been plug welded into place, albeit with very wide spacing - about half the number of factory welds if that. Barry will plug weld as well, but use factory spacing, that being about a weld every 20-25mm, rather than 50-60mm. A result of plug welding is that you can't drill the welds out, you have to grind them. All you can do is thin the metal down with the grinder, tickle it up with a very thin sharp chisel, grind a bit more, then slice the metal off.

By the time the previous repairer had beaten the old floor off, welded on the new one from the top then Barry removing everything, the flanges were in quite a bad state.































Offside sill plus some previous welding, dustpan is the result of a couple of hours of grinding back the plug welded floors.




















Barry spent a long time getting the old (new) floor out and then repairing all of the flanges. Obviously, having strong flanges to weld to makes putting the new floor in so much easier, it all looks smarter and is of course a lot stronger.







First fit of new floor to check tight to flanges......all good

















N/S rear inner wing repairs - just a few pinholes so lets just weld them up! Perhaps not, better take a look inside, just in case.

In fact, they all do this, and it's one of the areas Barry usually allows for unless it looks (and sounds) perfect on the outside.

Barry already had a starting point with an old template, which he just remarked with tape where required. That showed him the shape of the blank, to which he added enough for a new mounting flange at the base, and enough metal to curve up to the vertical on the outside.
The repair panel was finished with curves to blend into the remaining inner wing. With this done, the two could be scribed together, and another bite of inner wing removed, exposing the failed reinforcing area.
A new reinforcement base was made, and a new torsion tube cover bolt socket turned up over-length to allow for cutting down once the sheet metal was tacked in. The socket was made from EN8 which is a fairly strong steel which won't micro fracture when welded. Onto the reverse of it Barry turned a top hat section, in order to spread the loading out a little further than original as you often find stress cracks in this area.

There then followed some tricks to get the socket into a place that was the correct height and orientation so that it would fit the jig bracket and his test cover. He got there in the end, and with it welded to the reinforcement, and that assembly welded to the car, the inner wing outer repair could be tacked in before being fully welded. Well not quite fully welded as obviously he can't weld to the floor yet, as that's coming out again, and also he's replacing an area to the front of the inner wing as well, so he will do a final weld session much later on.

Also, he repaired the second inner skin that shares some of the stresses with the inner wing skin you normally see.




















13. Torsion tube mount cover area.





































That's all for tonight, News Night's about to start....

[neill]

Damn he's good! Incredible work. I wish I was half as good...

[911hillclimber]

Personally, I can never tire of seeing these shells repaired by Barry.
Every one seems a bit flaky in different ways, esp the last bit, to my mind the most tricky part of the 911 shell to fix and for it to look factory after.

Just so good and so skilled.

Thank you for taking all the time to present these shots and descriptions to us; please do not stop.

Just makes me feel I need to re-do mine after I did similar patch repairs in '88.....but not 'quite' to these standards....

[Midlifecrisis]

His work is sublime and the amazing thing is the guy is so modest and down to earth. Its the total opposite of all the show off b*llocks that can be associated with the Porsche brand. A true craftsman.

[Darren65]

Simply amazing

Really appreciate the detailed updates Kieron, thanks for sharing.

Cheers,

[aston]

14. O/S Torque tube cover and fitting of rear floor half.

Glad to see some of you guys are enjoying the updates...it's taking a bl**dy long time to upload all the pictures... although it's Barry doing all the heavy lifting..

Latest update.. the second side torque tube repairs followed pretty much the same pattern as side one, except that the stud was fine which saved a lot of messing about. Again the reinforcing area to the torque tube had failed at the bottom, although not as badly as side one, and the reinforcing skin had again failed, but to a lesser degree.






Fitting rear floor half....

With the floor position well established, the whole area could be prepared for fitting. All cavities were cleaned up and painted with black etch primer, as was the floor, other than the actual weld areas. These were painted with Wurth zinc rich weld-thru primer, as the black etch is, according to Barry, 'a real stinker to weld near'. The keen eyed among you may notice a row of plug weld holes missing on one side of the floor....these were added in just in time!

One of the pictures shows some seemingly random welds, but after Barry's cleaned everything right up, he goes back over every weld just to make sure he hasn't left any pinholes or flaws.

[rhd racer]

Wow, just caught up with this from the first post Keiron.


Fascinating to see the level of work that goes into a professional shell resto. I wish I could make my welds 'disappear' like Barry does..amazing

Cheers for sharing such detail

Wayne

[Bez1]

Fantastic to see. Please keep the progress pics from Barry coming.

[sladey]

Great work - thanks for sharing. Love watching Barrys fabrication skills

[aston]

15. Fitting floor (front half) and under dash repairs.

Latest update as Barry moves towards the end of phase 1....


Front floor half and inner wing repair - with the rear floor half in and welded, giving the shell support (although it has been on stands during the works to help ensure a sideways sag wasn't introduced!), the front half could now be removed. Happily the flanges were in much better condition this time, and Barry just replaced one lacy area some six inches long (not shown).

As before, the floor and tunnel / flanges were prepared with black etc and weld-thru primers as appropriate.

With the floor out Barry had a perfect view of one of the very tricky-to-reach inner wing areas............

The centre tunnel on the replacement floor has one section that is deeper than on my original, so this was removed and replaced with mine. This is shown in pictures 14 & 15 below.














Small inner wing repairs - with the front floor half removed, all of a sudden many areas became accessible. This was great as for starters Barry could massage out the remains of the kinks and buckles from the accident damage, and could tackle all of the inner wing repairs without being upside-down in the cabin. It's not a completely invisible repair by any means, and the adjacent panel will be repaired from the top, but does give Barry a good base to work up from.
So with that done, the rest of the preparations for the front floor could be completed. It's now all ready for welding in, and is currently held into place with a few dozen self tappers. Barry doesn't want to fully commit to it until the car is back on the jig and fitting perfectly. At that point he can weld one in, say, every five welds, and then finish it next time the car is on the spit.








16. Parcel shelf repairs.


Parcel shelf repair - the parcel shelf on my car had only gone badly in one corner, plus another tiny area over one hinge. With this in mind, it wasn't worth buying a whole panel, especially as Barry has the tooling to make parcel shelf ends; a legacy from the days before you could just buy new pattern (or genuine come to that) parcel shelves.

A fairly simple hammer-form operation, it just uses a few clamps, a nylon drift and a hammer. You end up with the whole lot formed out of one piece of metal with no welds. It's one of Barry's favourite tasks, and he'll do another couple for my car later on ....

With the panel made, the hinge mounting has to be dropped away, the panel dummied into place, scribed in, trimmed and welded. Lastly, the hinge mounting can be welded back in. In fact, he'll do this later on as he'll just double check that he doesn't want to move it for any reason.

He was going to do the small repair to the other side in the same way, but actually decided to leave the hinge mount in place and go in from the top. The screen corner (that is covering it) is very poor and pitted where it's not holed, so he'll make up a new one, and during that repair, will deal with the, now opened, parcel shelf.



l]












So, the rear floor half welds are just as-welded, and will all get cleaned up. Next stage will be to put it back on the jig, re-tug as required and get the front end underway. During this process the front floor half will get tacked. After that he'll play things by ear, but essentially phase two will be to complete the floors, the front end, all inner wing repairs (front and rear) and get the inner / outer sills dummied up with the new kidney bowls.

[911hillclimber]

Very interesting as ever, and thanks for posting so much detail.

Seeing these shells being done today makes me realise how good mine actually is, but I would still like to re-visit the parts I did way back.
Great progress.

[aston]

17. Phase2

'Post' floors jig check.... floors finished
When we got to the end of phase 1 the front part of the floor was self-tapped into position, ready for the car to be double checked on the jig before final commitment on the floor position. This would obviously lock another area of the car, so it seemed a good idea just to make sure nothing had shifted.













18. Floor fitting.

With everything looking good, the floor was tacked into position all round, and then returned to the rotisserie for final welding.













With that done, the car went back onto the jig once more for a final, final check , and a good tidy up to the inside














]







19. Tabs etc..

Barry is replacing any little brackets / tabs etc, as he comes across them. He obviously (obviously) makes these little hose holders.









20. Bulkhead holes

Holes are probably a clue to the car's competition past.


Anyway, holes gone.



21. Oil tank area

Barry wasn't too sure of this area initially, but when he revisited it, it was clear it needed doing.

He has several ways of making this area depending on how big the repair needs to be. Apparently, it used to give him a whole heap of trouble until he realised it's essentially a big thrown flange with a little return at the base. Once you've got that sorted in your mind it's a doddle! (Of course it is)..














22. Second rear bulkhead area

Really, really difficult to get it to go in neatly...

[aston]

23. Rear wing flanges

Welcome to the glamorous world of flange restoration! These cars are getting to the point of having had so many panels now that the mounting flanges have had it. It's often better just to bite the bullet, slice them off and start again. The trick is to leave a tail of the old fold there so that you know 100% that the new flange is in the right place.

It does pay off as a) you're not trying to tidy up and patch an old flange, b) you spend almost no time trying to unpick the remains of outer panels and welds, and c) they give a lovely substrate to weld to later on.

Not exactly headline news stuff, but it needs doing ....

















24. Rear bumper mount area

Not sure what had gone on here, as it initially looked like a patch had been put on, but no, nothing there. We wonder if it was an old towing bracket or similar, or even if someone had welded on a fixing to pull out some old damage? Either way it was ugly, so went.











25. CDI area
Another area finished. After making the repair panel earlier Barry had to tweak the shape a bit. When the big welded is next fired up he will weld on the correct 'rounded square' reinforcements for the fuel filter bracket.





26. Farewell old (new) front end
Just a reminder of why we're doing what we're doing on the front, bearing in mind that before I bought the car I saw pictures of it on a jig being 'attended to' by a concours winning restorer.
The offside front inner wing had already been majorly bent then straightened, but with much damage still evident. Both it, the battery box and the front panel had suffered from poor repairs in the past, and all panels were distorted.

















My particular favourite... filed top strut mount .. now it will fit..


In addition, during the pulling it became clear that some of the suspension mountings had never been welded in fully. In fact Barry had fully expected the reinforcing 'bridges' to the front pan to be missing, but to be fair they had been fitted, although not fully welded. The pattern front pans only have the mountings tacked into place, and Barry guesses that's to leave some wiggle room before the restorer fully welds them up.













To the nearside, the 'new' tank support was running at quite an angle to the chassis leg and was a non-backdated impact bumper car type.






Finally, both bumper mounting areas had suffered from rust-induced de-lamination



27. Front end removal
So the front end removal is now well underway. Barry will leave the A-post and the very rearmost of the inner wing in place for a bit longer whilst he tackles as much cleaning up as he can. He'll also do the various bulkhead repairs, and get the new front pan dummied up, before cutting much more out.