Starting my restoration project - 56 Carrera
01-03-2011, 09:14 PM
#91
Nordschleife Master
Love the look of the smooth clean lines and frenched lights all around.
What are the other final touches that you have planned?
What are the other final touches that you have planned?
01-30-2011, 08:37 PM
#92
Headliner, fuel pumps and front and rear glass are in - waiting for the wheels to come back from Stockton Wheels in California. Interior is under construction and should be installed in the next two weeks.
01-30-2011, 11:54 PM
#94
Nordschleife Master
Yea Baby ... 
02-26-2011, 12:08 AM
#96
Fred - Haven't got the Glasurit code yet - I'll have to remember to ask the painter what it was but I'm not real sure he'll have it as the paint was mixed at Glasurit and sent to us.
I finally had some good weather so we could apply the silver leaf to the dash - that part turned out well but we had a little trouble with the airbrush and got a bit heavy in spots with the edging around the glove box door. So it 's not perfect but pretty close to what it looked like when I got the car forty years ago. The silver leaf is a real neat effect.
I finally had some good weather so we could apply the silver leaf to the dash - that part turned out well but we had a little trouble with the airbrush and got a bit heavy in spots with the edging around the glove box door. So it 's not perfect but pretty close to what it looked like when I got the car forty years ago. The silver leaf is a real neat effect.
03-16-2011, 11:12 PM
#99
Here are a few from Amelia
First up - the Friday Hot Rod Lifestyle seminar
Waiting to go on the show field Sunday morning
and with the Aztec at the end of the day...
and a chance encounter at the trailer storage area
First up - the Friday Hot Rod Lifestyle seminar
Waiting to go on the show field Sunday morning
and with the Aztec at the end of the day...
and a chance encounter at the trailer storage area
03-18-2011, 04:42 PM
#100
Some f the backstory behind the Amelia trip - how not to prep for a concours...
I've uploaded a few of the Amelia pictures up to my smugmug pages:
http://solaros1.smugmug.com/My-Cars/...17496784_c4g6u
As Christy said it took quite an effort to get the car "ready" for Amelia - if you define ready fairly loosely. If you had seen the car Monday evening you would have thought "No Way is this car going to Florida in four days".
The interior guys were late - they messed up the pleats on the tuck and roll upholstery and had to remake a bunch of the interior panels so we didn't start installing the interior until Tuesday afternoon - two days before we were supposed to be leaving for Amelia. The interior installation continued right on into Thursday night.
Three of the wheels came back from the chrome plater in California - two months late - the fourth one still hasn't made it here yet.
The 4-cam motor had a hole in the #4 piston so I had to build a pushrod engine to use until the Carrera motor can be repaired. After rounding up most of the parts I needed I started that project with just over a week before we were scheduled to leave. I had to borrow some parts from friends and buy some other stuff from Al Zim, NLA and Stoddard to basically build up an engine from a set of empty cases. To further complicate matters someone (not me) had installed the cam gear incorrectly and I didn't discover that until the engine was almost completely assembled and I started to adjust the valves. After taking the motor back apart and reindexing the cam gear we finally installed the engine on Tuesday night.
The rear quarter windows were awful - especially assembling the right rear frame/weatherstripping - I NEVER want to do that job again. It took two of us to finish that job up Thursday evening.
Installing the seats was a struggle as well - the custom front kick panels interfere with the outboard corners of the seats making them almost impossible to install.
When we did fire up the engine on Thursday evening for the first time in ran great - then one of the autopulse electric fuel pumps in the nose split a bellows and started leaking fuel so we had to shut everything off. I had a mechanical pump for the pushrod engine but no phenolic spacer so I had to dispatch Ernie back to his house to bring some more fuel line, a spacer, and a spare pump while I bypassed the electric pumps. When Ernie got back I was installing the rear quarter window and other friends were helping install interior trim pieces and adjusting the clutch cable.By now it was after 11:00 PM on Thursday ( I should have been at Amelia already) and we still had stuff to do. Somehow in all the confusion and exhaustion from being up past 3:00 AM all week working on the car we hooked the two fuel lines up on the fuel pump backwards - so the car wouldn't start again.
By now its almost 2:00 AM and if I have any hope of getting the car to Amelia for the Friday afternoon seminar where Bill Warner wanted to unveil it we had to go - even if I had to push it into the ballroom. So we loaded the car in the trailer and headed southbound just before 4:00 AM - we didn't even get to wash the car first. We arrived in Fernandina at 11:00 AM and my bodyman Mike Marcelic arrived shortly after. He had volunteered to detail the car while I changed the fuel pump (again) to see if I could get the car to run. We pushed the car out of the trailer behind the Shoney's next door to the motel and Mike cleaned the car up while I tried to get it fired up - no luck as I replaced the fuel lines as they were incorrectly installed. I also looked for the winshield wipers (left behind in Atlanta) so after we got the car all shiny we pushed it back in the trailer and delivered it to the Ritz in time to stage it for the 4:00 PM Hot Rod Lifestyles seminar with Pete Chapouris, Dean Jeffries, Tommy Ivo, Don Prudhomme, and Bruce Meyer.
Bill set the car off to the left center under a black drape - it shared the floor with one of Prudhomme's rail dragsters, Tommy Ivo's four engine 4wd drag car, and the So-Cal coupe. After an entertaining hour and a half of panel discussion among these hot rod greats Bill called Dean over to pull back the cover on the Carrera and reveal it to the crowd. It was nicely spotlit and the interior looked just like the original Eddie Martinez design (pay no attention to the few missing trim pieces that we didn't have time to install) .....
Dean was extremely pleased with the result - he declared the car "Bitching" and "Really Neat" about six times - and I saw tears in his eyes again - I've got to stop making that man cry.....
The next day (Saturday) Ernie and I went down in the Ritz parking garage and figured out that the fuel lines were reversed on the pump - after correcting this error the car fired right up (plus installing a second new battery after the first one croaked). Then we discovered that the throttle pedal wouldn't move the carb linkage so we had to adjust the throttle rod - which meant removing it from underneath a car with 3 inches of ground clearance. The solution was a nearby bag of concrete which we rolled the left rear tire up onto in order to gain enough room to reach under the car and disconnect the throttle rod, make some adjustments and reinstall it. The end result was that about 5:00 PM on Saturday afternoon the Porsche moved under its own power for the first time in over 27 years in the parking deck of the Ritz Carlton at Amelia Island. Satisfied that we had the car in a condition where it could drive onto the show field under its own power the next morning we had a small celebration - I'm sure passerbys couldn't understand why we were all so elated.
I'd come very, very close to giving up at several points during the week leading up to the event - if it hadn't been for the constant encouragement of my wife Christy and the help of friends such as Neil Cawley, Mike Pado, Gordon Smith, Ray Morgan, Mark Ritter, Mike Marcelic and most especially Ernie Cabrera we would not have been at Amelia Island this year. The main driving force I had was that I did not want to disappoint Bill Warner who had given me such a tremendous opportunity and especially Dean Jeffries who was looking forward to seeing the car. As I stood in the ballroom on Friday afternoon - bleary eyed from being up for the past 36 hours - I was very glad that we were able to pull this off. Frankly most of my friends are as amazed as I am that we actually drove the car onto the field on Sunday morning.
I've uploaded a few of the Amelia pictures up to my smugmug pages:
http://solaros1.smugmug.com/My-Cars/...17496784_c4g6u
As Christy said it took quite an effort to get the car "ready" for Amelia - if you define ready fairly loosely. If you had seen the car Monday evening you would have thought "No Way is this car going to Florida in four days".
The interior guys were late - they messed up the pleats on the tuck and roll upholstery and had to remake a bunch of the interior panels so we didn't start installing the interior until Tuesday afternoon - two days before we were supposed to be leaving for Amelia. The interior installation continued right on into Thursday night.
Three of the wheels came back from the chrome plater in California - two months late - the fourth one still hasn't made it here yet.
The 4-cam motor had a hole in the #4 piston so I had to build a pushrod engine to use until the Carrera motor can be repaired. After rounding up most of the parts I needed I started that project with just over a week before we were scheduled to leave. I had to borrow some parts from friends and buy some other stuff from Al Zim, NLA and Stoddard to basically build up an engine from a set of empty cases. To further complicate matters someone (not me) had installed the cam gear incorrectly and I didn't discover that until the engine was almost completely assembled and I started to adjust the valves. After taking the motor back apart and reindexing the cam gear we finally installed the engine on Tuesday night.
The rear quarter windows were awful - especially assembling the right rear frame/weatherstripping - I NEVER want to do that job again. It took two of us to finish that job up Thursday evening.
Installing the seats was a struggle as well - the custom front kick panels interfere with the outboard corners of the seats making them almost impossible to install.
When we did fire up the engine on Thursday evening for the first time in ran great - then one of the autopulse electric fuel pumps in the nose split a bellows and started leaking fuel so we had to shut everything off. I had a mechanical pump for the pushrod engine but no phenolic spacer so I had to dispatch Ernie back to his house to bring some more fuel line, a spacer, and a spare pump while I bypassed the electric pumps. When Ernie got back I was installing the rear quarter window and other friends were helping install interior trim pieces and adjusting the clutch cable.By now it was after 11:00 PM on Thursday ( I should have been at Amelia already) and we still had stuff to do. Somehow in all the confusion and exhaustion from being up past 3:00 AM all week working on the car we hooked the two fuel lines up on the fuel pump backwards - so the car wouldn't start again.
By now its almost 2:00 AM and if I have any hope of getting the car to Amelia for the Friday afternoon seminar where Bill Warner wanted to unveil it we had to go - even if I had to push it into the ballroom. So we loaded the car in the trailer and headed southbound just before 4:00 AM - we didn't even get to wash the car first. We arrived in Fernandina at 11:00 AM and my bodyman Mike Marcelic arrived shortly after. He had volunteered to detail the car while I changed the fuel pump (again) to see if I could get the car to run. We pushed the car out of the trailer behind the Shoney's next door to the motel and Mike cleaned the car up while I tried to get it fired up - no luck as I replaced the fuel lines as they were incorrectly installed. I also looked for the winshield wipers (left behind in Atlanta) so after we got the car all shiny we pushed it back in the trailer and delivered it to the Ritz in time to stage it for the 4:00 PM Hot Rod Lifestyles seminar with Pete Chapouris, Dean Jeffries, Tommy Ivo, Don Prudhomme, and Bruce Meyer.
Bill set the car off to the left center under a black drape - it shared the floor with one of Prudhomme's rail dragsters, Tommy Ivo's four engine 4wd drag car, and the So-Cal coupe. After an entertaining hour and a half of panel discussion among these hot rod greats Bill called Dean over to pull back the cover on the Carrera and reveal it to the crowd. It was nicely spotlit and the interior looked just like the original Eddie Martinez design (pay no attention to the few missing trim pieces that we didn't have time to install) .....
Dean was extremely pleased with the result - he declared the car "Bitching" and "Really Neat" about six times - and I saw tears in his eyes again - I've got to stop making that man cry.....
The next day (Saturday) Ernie and I went down in the Ritz parking garage and figured out that the fuel lines were reversed on the pump - after correcting this error the car fired right up (plus installing a second new battery after the first one croaked). Then we discovered that the throttle pedal wouldn't move the carb linkage so we had to adjust the throttle rod - which meant removing it from underneath a car with 3 inches of ground clearance. The solution was a nearby bag of concrete which we rolled the left rear tire up onto in order to gain enough room to reach under the car and disconnect the throttle rod, make some adjustments and reinstall it. The end result was that about 5:00 PM on Saturday afternoon the Porsche moved under its own power for the first time in over 27 years in the parking deck of the Ritz Carlton at Amelia Island. Satisfied that we had the car in a condition where it could drive onto the show field under its own power the next morning we had a small celebration - I'm sure passerbys couldn't understand why we were all so elated.
I'd come very, very close to giving up at several points during the week leading up to the event - if it hadn't been for the constant encouragement of my wife Christy and the help of friends such as Neil Cawley, Mike Pado, Gordon Smith, Ray Morgan, Mark Ritter, Mike Marcelic and most especially Ernie Cabrera we would not have been at Amelia Island this year. The main driving force I had was that I did not want to disappoint Bill Warner who had given me such a tremendous opportunity and especially Dean Jeffries who was looking forward to seeing the car. As I stood in the ballroom on Friday afternoon - bleary eyed from being up for the past 36 hours - I was very glad that we were able to pull this off. Frankly most of my friends are as amazed as I am that we actually drove the car onto the field on Sunday morning.
thanks for sharing the photos and the back story
03-29-2011, 04:57 AM
#103
Miserable Old Bastard
Rennlist Member
Rennlist Member
Jack, thanks for posting all the updates - I am truly enjoying this!
As a humorous aside, a while back I drove by Dean Jefferies shop; a red 356 coupe was parked out front and I stopped. The 356 owner and Dean came out to see what the hell I wanted, and I started talking about the 356, basically ignoring Dean, who after a minute or two wandered back into his shop. I didn't really think about who he was. The 356 owner was the "star".
One of these days, I need to go back. When I was in junior high school, his shop was a few blocks from my school. I believe when I was in high school, he had moved to his present location, and I spent endless hours at a "gas station (shop)" a block or two away, where we hung out and messed around with our cars. Hell, I probably met Dean way back when! (My Dad lives not that far from Dean's shop.)
As a humorous aside, a while back I drove by Dean Jefferies shop; a red 356 coupe was parked out front and I stopped. The 356 owner and Dean came out to see what the hell I wanted, and I started talking about the 356, basically ignoring Dean, who after a minute or two wandered back into his shop. I didn't really think about who he was. The 356 owner was the "star".
One of these days, I need to go back. When I was in junior high school, his shop was a few blocks from my school. I believe when I was in high school, he had moved to his present location, and I spent endless hours at a "gas station (shop)" a block or two away, where we hung out and messed around with our cars. Hell, I probably met Dean way back when! (My Dad lives not that far from Dean's shop.)
04-02-2011, 11:38 PM
#105
The Carrera is going to be photographed for an upcoming article in Excellence magazine tomorrow - I spent today working on getting the brakes and engine working a little better.
