Jadz928

Awesome! Love Excellence. I hope someday to have my car in their mag.

Is the Carrera motor in?

JackW

I'll start on the Carrera motor shortly - I need to do a few other things to the car first - like fixing the leaking Autopulse fuel pump - currently bypassed - and getting the electrical stuff sorted out before I get ready to put the engine back in.

Here's picture of Leonard Turner hard at work shooting the car for Panorama yesterday...

Jadz928

Nice article in Excellence, Jack!

kccampro

This is just a great thread all the way around

jcnesq

I stopped by Dean Jeffries shop this morning and had a nice chat with him, about this car and other stuff. (I had never met him before but I remember his shop going back to the 60's when I was growing up in the neighborhood and driving by it constantly.) We did have a lot of "old neighborhood" type stuff to talk about - when I was a teen I used to wrench my cars a couple blocks from the shop he still has.

Cool to see his Ford GT40, which he was messing with when I arrived. And his Mantaray and other infamous cars still sitting in his shop.

He's the guy who painted "Lil Bastard" on James Dean's 550 back in the day.

Here's a very interesting interview with him in Motor Trend some years ago: http://www.motortrend.com/classic/fe...iew/index.html

Dean is a very friendly and nice guy!

rebattery

wow-----I started reading Rod and Custom in that era---have seen Jefferies work in person and read much on the man------great car and what a project-----wow again

Floodj

Great car, I really enjoyed the article in Excellence also.
thanks,
--Joe

JackW

Here's the coolest picture that will ever be taken of the Carrera...

Maltese Falcon

JackW you have a part of automotive history and you are now the guardian + torch bearer of Dean's '56.
On May 5, 2013, at age 80 Dean passed away. When I drive by his old Cahuenga Pass building I always remember all of the cool projects that were visible. Now just another Hollywood building.
I look forward to seeing the Karrera !
Marty

Maltese Falcon

JackW,
I will miss driving by his Cahuenga Pass shop and seeing the cool projects on his lot. It's just another Hollywood building with a car culture history. The city of West Hollywood is demolishing Robert + Marge Petersen's "Petersen Publushing Offices" high rise this week...another one lost. Your restoration of Dean Jeffrie's Karrera lives on !
Marty

User 040621

I love this thread! Thanks for the updates on this car, owner, and journey!

JackW

Why are my posts being deleted? I've been a member of Rennlist since 2007!
I've owned three Porsches and had one of them for over 45 years.

points

You are not a member. You are a USER. USER's are not allowed to sell on Rennlist. USER's do not have the same privileges as members.

Your 356 is outrageous but you cannot advertise it or try to sell on rennlist unless you are a member.

I see you are trying to get 795,000.00...for 19 bucks you could do this the right way.

JackW

OK - I apologize for inadvertently breaking the rules - I was just trying to give an update since I hadn't revisited this thread in a while. I just wanted the forum USERS to know that Dean's car will be on display as a participant in the PCA sponsored Werks Reunion at Amelia this Friday, March 10, 2017. It will be only the second time I have shown the car since completing the restoration just in time for the Amelia Island Concours last Spring. I also wanted to include a couple of pictures that I had taken of the car a few weeks ago with my camera as the overhead shot is one of my favorite pictures I have captured.

The story of my restoration of Dean's Carrera has been a long and exhausting saga that I have enjoyed sharing with the people who frequent this forum. I have a few more stories about adventures in the 4-cam world which I will share if the mods will allow me to.

JackW

There are a number of guys I want to thank for being a huge help to me in finding the parts I needed to get the 4-cam motor in the Porsche - plus a little back story of how the particular engine that I have in the car now is not the one that I bought in 1973 (for $900) when I first figured out that the funny looking Porsche I owned was originally a 4-cam Carrera. The dual coil switches and fuel pumps in the nose were giveaways once I learned enough about 356's to realize what I had.

Back then one of my best friends owned a 550A Spyder so when I needed a 4-cam engine I turned to Ernie Cabrera and asked him to find me one. Shortly I was the owner of engine # P90009 - a Type 547 roller bearing engine with an exceptionally low serial number - the ninth production 547 engine. There were some other 4-cam motors produced as prototypes with a different numbering system but it seems that P90001 was the first regular "production" engine. I knew that this meant that the engine I had was probably out of a 550 Spyder originally. When Steve Heinrichs first let us know that he was writing the definitive book on the 4-cam Carrera engines and would have access to the factory records I asked him to see which car my engine was originally installed in. His answer was Spyder 550-0022 and that it was originally raced at Sebring in 1955.

I posted this information on the 356 Registry Forum and someone contacted me to say he knew who currently owned 550-0022 and would I be willing to talk to him. Of course I said yes. Soon I got an email from Brescia, Italy from the Spyder's owner (he bought the car in 1975) and he wanted to know if I would sell him the engine. I told him that I needed a 4-cam for my 56 Carrera and he said that he had a freshly rebuilt 1600cc plain bearing crank from a 1958 Carrera street car. After a little negotiation we reached a mutually agreeable deal where I would ship my engine to Italy and he would return the 1600cc 4-cam to me in the same crate that I shipped my motor in. I didn't press him too hard because I really felt that it was the right thing to do so that the original race engine was returned to the car that ran with it at Sebring in 1955. It probably made his $3 million dollar car worth $4 million but it was the right thing to do and I got a fresh engine from his race shop Scuderia Italia.

Ernie was going nuts saying I just couldn't ship an engine worth more than $100K to some guy in Italy that I didn't know so I googled him and found out that I was dealing with a very interesting man. He had a pretty good collection of Ferraris and vintage Alfas (including a Ferrari GTO - one of the 36) and he used to own the Dallara Formula 1 team. His mechanics are all ex-F1 and work on his private collection and the race team cars - including an Aston Martin that ran the 24 Hours of Le Mans a few years ago. He also started the modern day Mille Miglia. So in the end my motor went of to Italy and a month later I went down to the air freight office at ATL and picked up my new 4-cam.