salo65

After nine months of painstaking restoration, Helga is finally done... Is there such a thing? Other than the pesky little things that one finds to have been done wrong of course. This 1984 Carrera is my first air cooled Porsche. I started with a 99 Carrera in 07 and put 80k miles on that one in three and a half years. It was a dual use tool for track and street. Then came a07 Cayman S that was awesome in the curves and long trips. This one was street only as I quickly learned the cost of tracking a Porsche often! So I bought a spec Miata for that duty. Now I have a 991 CS with a PDK for long trips, date night and traffic jams and an air cooled girls to keep my heart pounding! Here are before and after pics:




A big thanks to Tony M. and the guys at Carl's Place in Las Vegas for making a nightmare turn into a dream come true!

Reiver

Nice, like that blue.

oh snap

Love it.

SARGEPUG

Wow she's a beauty, color is stunning!

Not sure of the name "Helga" though, reminds me of a Gertrude or Bromhilda!

500

That color is superb!

justinsrx7

Beautiful

Amber Gramps

Love it. How many total man hours do you think it took for the paint? .....and how many months went into paint? What else was done during the nine months she was underway?

salo65

Unfortunately, the reason it took nine months is because the body shop messed up repainting the car black the first three times! Each time the painter was fired. Finally, we had to go down to metal and restart again from scratch! Not fun. While down to metal, we decides to do a color change. Oh by the way, since it sat around for soooo long, you can imagine how many parts, screws, nuts and all else was lost, or stolen.

At the end, they had lost or broken the rear window, fog lights, lens covers, and many other small trim pieces. They had no clue how to put it back together correctly and cut wires instead of unplugging them. We spent over $3000 paying an independent Porsche shop to re assemble the car properly and fix all that they broke!

The car was mechanically perfect before going in the body shop. I bought her from a Porsche mechanic. He rebuilt the engine, tranny, and suspension. Upgraded the a/c and fixed all small issues. I had all the interior redone including the dash and headliner. We used German leather and vinyl(are German cows better?), new carpet kit, stereo and speakers, new rubber and seals. Everything! The car is now as beautiful as a Porsche should be and runs great!

Amber Gramps

Crazy. She looks good now.

aratapuss

Man o man, that is cool . . .

pu911rsr

Great color, I'd love to repaint my silver 77 in that color.
Phil

bcgreen

Love that Mexico blue, that was my first choice is colours when I was looking. Ended up with Viper green which is really nice as well.

irobertson

Nice, what a fantastic transformation.

TKO

So nice, congratulations! Great to see something other than red, black, white, silver (nothing against those colors .... )

Enjoy.

salo65

Thanks all! I've been driving the car the last couple of days and I have to tell you that it's addictive! The knot chinless when you shift from first to second, the pause, the way you sit in the cockpit, and oh the steering feel! Awesome. My wife didn't like the idea of Mexico blue at first. She wanted either black or red. It wasn't till she saw it live that she liked it.