sobamaflyer

After several years of no Porsche crested toy in my garage, some months back I drug home this beauty. I'd had a 944 on my list of "want to play with" for a long long time but as yet had never really touched one. I traded a '91 300zx that I'd very quickly gotten tired of, after making it worlds better than I started on it. It's very debatable who got the better end of that stick but I've already had my 944 (Molly) longer than I had the Z and I like it more and more all the time.

What I brought home had fubar rear bearings, no working passenger window, extreme exhaust smell in the cabin, non-working air & the interior was a horror show (that was just what I knew in the first couple of hours)..... yet it was still a damn sight better off than the last couple I'd played with when I got those so.... My poor wife somehow still smiles while joining me in driving these wrecks 2-5 hours back home.





After some serious scrubbing and polishing I was here:





Fixing the ^%$#@ wailing from the rear:
The first thing that HAD to be done was replacing the rear axles and bearings, which was a royal tee total pain in the **** (the bearings, not the axles). This took me several weekends and ultimately a resigned trip to a mechanic not far away to break loose the rear axle nuts.

My air gun & 2 broken 1/2" breaker bars inside my 3' long pipe (which before that time had never met a nut it couldn't free) couldn't get those damn things loose. I drove it there with the center caps off and left less than 5 minutes later with loosened nuts that I was then able to take off without further headache.

The rest of that procedure was equally frustrating, a FLAPS loan-a-tool bearing remover only got 1 bearing half way out after hours of agony and swearing. I finally called up a friend that had a proper bearing removal tool and had both sides done in less than 2 hours. Moral of the story, use the proper tools!







Front suspension:
Next up was addressing the front suspension that just felt "all wrong". Preliminary investigation showed that the rubber isolators at the top of the struts were beyond shot and at one point I took the top nut off one of the strut inserts and watched it drop unchecked down into it's shock body. Not good, poor old girl.

That same 944 buddy kindly offered me a pair of entire front suspension assemblies that he'd taken off an '86 Turbo some years back for a ridiculously low price (which my typically broke self appreciated very very much). All I had to add were new brake pads and lines to that. I feel like I need to take him up on his offer of some old hidden [thicker] sway bars he couldn't immediately put his hands on but to say that driving and stopping is improved is much akin to saying that the Gulf of Mexico is a nice little pond.





A new skin:
Hi, I'm Trav, I'm a Dip-A-Holic. Some may have noticed in the last pic that my quickly improving steed is no longer Guards Red. While I was able to buff her out to a respectable 20' shine, this poor old girl has had at least 2 coats of paint (one due to a front end fender bender 4-5 years ago), and not done to any sort of level befitting a fine automobile, or even a level of my 7 year old's painting come to think of it.

I got addicted to the DIY-able, easily reversible, not terribly expensive Plasti-Dip a few years ago. My project cars that badly need paint (or hey, lets just have ONE color) get it as do my DD just for the sheer fun of it.









Interior:
It's a mixed bag - I'm trying to do the poor man's refurbishment here, for the moment I wanted the interior to be "better" but not really wanting (or having) the almost $5k that I spent restoring the inside of my 911. Everything in there was torn, stained or sun baked (or all 3).

I took out the dash, it had at least 2 dozen cracks/fissures. I dremelled them and filled them with plastic JB-Weld then body filler. Then I coated the whole dash in bedliner and matte vinyl dye. It's much better but not awesome. I probably should have/will cover what I did in new vinyl.





My passenger door panel was water damaged and awful, I re-formed it as best I could on a thick piece of plywood and slathered it with fiberglass resin and cloth. It's not pretty but it's solid now instead of a floppy mess . Then I scrubbed the hell out of them like everywhere else and vinyl dyed them.







Seats.... oh the seats.....
Let me start by saying they will be short lived! For the last 4 project cars I've looked at those sparkly ads on e-bay for "sport seats", how cheap they are, how not horrible they look, how cheap they are! For the previous 3 I've bought new upholstered seat covers and redone what the factories deemed appropriate. This has produced some really really great results, each better than the last.

Well new seat covers for 944 thrones are at least $400, so I did a dumb thing (of course). Now, I will say, outside of the boy-racer wings they really don't look bad (I had this exact pattern made for the Z's seats I reupholstered, the suede and diamond stiches, I like it, sue me). Due to the 944's flat mounts they were really super easy to engineer a nice solid bracket system for and mount. But the good ends there, they are exactly as comfortable as a park bench and quite oddly they only reach out to my mid-thigh (I'm not a big dude). They fit ok in the butt but are too wide in the wings, wt...?!

So if I continue to enjoy this car Mama is gonna be getting me new covers for my stored away stock seats (she just doesn't know it yet).







So... you're caught up. I've got so many little non-op things to figure out, headlight issues, fresh air fan which worked for a bit with a new relay but I believe is cooking it's replacement so...short? Leaks galore in the engine bay (I deep foam cleaned it last weekend to see from whence they come better). An iffy compression test result (3 ~180's and 1 12xpsi). She's a work in process but I'm enjoying the crap out of her.

tempest411

Wow, congratulations on the results of all your hard work!

Regarding the rear axle nuts, I've read many accounts that you need a 3/4" breaker bar+pipe to break them loose. That's what I used and it worked. Arnnworx sells a tool that works very well for removal and installation. That tool was $90.00, and totally worth it!

alfonso944

Wow! Great job! The dash and door cards came out looking awesome. I like to know more about the stuff you used on the door cards. I have a pair of door cards with Porsche written on them that needs repairing.

sobamaflyer

Thank you :-)

noted [now] on that 3/4" breaker! - I now say the same thing my friend said when I borrowed his removal tool "take your time, I hope I never have to use that thing again".

sobamaflyer

Thank you :-)

I assume you are talking about my back-side fix? I removed all of the totally rotten press-board, laid the panel face down on some plywood. I rolled up a towel to approximate/form the inset pocket area. Then weighed down the panel with several small dumbells (mostly where the panel was still good) so that it was flat again.

I used cut up old t-shirts (which I keep a stock of for shop rags) into smaller sections to cover all the areas I was going to fix, arrange them in the way they are going onto the panel off to the side. Then I mixed up about half a container of fiberglass resin, poured about half of that over all the bad areas and spread it out with a disposable brush. Then placed down all the pre-cut fabric into the resin, soaking it as much as possible . Then I poured the other half of the resin mixture over the fabric and spread it all out with the brush.

I'd had the bottom edge of the panel lined up with the bottom edge of my plywood and had some wax paper handy. Here I used about a dozen spring clamps across the bottom line (over the wax paper so they don't stick in the resin). This gave the bottom edge of the panel a nice clean hard line again.

This isn't hard and the stuff is pretty forgiving, hope I didn't make it sound harder than it is. You have to work quickly(ish) as you probably only have about 10-15 min working time after you mix up the resin, which is why I suggest you have it all laid out and ready to assemble. Don't forget to wear gloves and don't scratch your nose as you are sweating and working with the resin :-D (I once had a week of a nasty face rash from that little tidbit)

alfonso944

Thank you for the awesome DIY. I will try to fix mine when it gets warmer. Yeah I wear gloves and long sleeve shirts now. I have updated my interior with carbon fiber. That stuff gets itchy!

sobamaflyer

I'd like to see that! Are your headlight buckets diy or over the counter units?

alfonso944

My headlight buckets are carbon fiber from GT racing. The projector lights are 90mm HIDs from HELLA. I just updated my headlight and added a projector led fog light. I will add some pics of the interior and headlights when I get home.

dmjames

Did you spray the door sills and around the hood where it wraps under by the windshield wipers? I'm seriously considering the same basic process on my 84, but there are always a few niggling questions out there!

sobamaflyer

I did go to the trouble (this time) of doing the jambs as I didn't want the bright red to scream out. You can see the painted jambs in the open door interior shots. I'd wrapped the entire hatch glass so I could leave it open enough to spray, had the door panels off, dropped the windows into the doors (after the masked picture of it in the garage) and sprayed the black trim and rubber around the outside of the windows as it was horribly worn.

I had the hood popped and the engine covered a few inches into the bay until the final coats so I could get in there but it's not nearly as covered.

sobamaflyer

Here is a shot I took last week, the dip was peeling off the outside rubber between the door and body, revealing what was formerly just sprayed red with the rest of the car



I'll admit to a little cheat, I colored that red and it's mate on the other side with a black sharpie - until I can justify the few hundred in new door rubber that it would take to replace it. You can also see all the rubber/trim I left as dipped because it's covering over dying rubber and faded black. Maybe one day that will all get replaced but if that happens she'll see a proper paint job to go with it.

alfonso944

Here are the pic off the interior. real carbon fiber overlay

sobamaflyer

Very nice! something tells me I could have abbreviated my back of the panel fiberglassing diy :-D

sobamaflyer

Would anyone mind throwing a suggestion to me on what is the cause of this? When I turn my headlights on they go all the way up then back down to about 3/4. About 5% of the time they will go up and stay there until turned off and then back to "my normal".