NineMeister

Great to see fellow enthusiasts having a lot of fun with their early 911's and hope that you are enjoying this ride.

Will post an update later.

NineMeister

Once we were happy with the overall fit of the roof skin it was lifted out of the way to fully weld up the inner wings and will be the last panel fitted after the left inner quarter.

NineMeister

The left inner quarter proved to be a real problem since Porsche had no stock. Checking through part numbers revealed no alternatives either, however an internet search for a convertible part turned one up in California which we duly purchased and air freighted over to the UK. This was probably the last new inner quarter panel available anywhere in the world so we were relieved when it finally arrived.

Interesting to see the heater tubing buried behind the quarter, note the concertina paper silencer which is located inside the inner sill before welding.

NineMeister

The new convertible inner quarter obviously had a different top profile to the coupe panel, so we were lucky that there was enough solid metal left of the original to seamlessly blend the two together. Where there is a will, there is a way.....

Heater tubes refitted, inner sill welded, late model kidney bowl in place before the outer sills are offered up, the thicker L section kidney bowl a useful addition to any early chassis for increased rear body stiffness.

Jherriott

Colin, if this job is still going to be £10,000 per side... I'm your next customer :P

Jase.

Raven 666

The work in this car in incredible ,,,,great thread really enjoy this

NineMeister

If you exclude the painting we're actually not that far off. The total cost of the fabrication work was around £15-17k (just over 300 hours) plus the cost of all the panels at £8.5k, excluding taxes. The downside is that since we finished this job Porsche have seen fit to grossly inflate the price of the panels, more on this later.

NineMeister

So, nearly there with the fabrication, finally the quarter panels are aligned with the doors fitted then welded into place. The beauty of fabrication is that not only do you use a full range of expensive welding equipment, you also get to hit very expensive panels with a hammer and chisel....

On the subject of expensive panels, note that these are genuine 2.7RS panels that we decided to fit, which at the time cost £1200 each compared to standard at £780. The big news is that I priced them up a month or two ago for another job and was shocked to be quoted £4200+VAT each for the exactly the same panels. WTF???

NineMeister

..... and what's more, at £4200 each, the quarter panels still don't fit properly to the door so have to be hand finished along the edge of the B-post to get the profile and gap perfect. We settle for perfect, so it's job done with the fabrication and on to paint next.

r911

re: genuine 2.7RS panels - the lightwt. thin sheet metal? or the regular panels?

NineMeister

The only ones available new from Porsche, same thickness as stock from what I saw but with the RS arch profile.

n8kruger

This is an incredible project. The car will be a bit like George Washington's original axe.

I wonder why you didn't acid dip the whole tub?

NineMeister

Fabrication complete (save for a few details on the underside which you can't get to on the jig) and panelled up ready to prepare for paint.

NineMeister

I did run the option by the customer at the time. His feelings were that he did not want to end up with a car that was so perfect he dare not use it, so we agreed to prepare the underside by hand and paint over the floor which, it has to be said, was in remarkable condition compared to the rest of the original upper body.

In the UK we would describe it as "Trigger's Broom", from the popular comedy "Only Fools & Horses" where one of the less bright characters Trigger has his "favourite" brush which has had 5 new heads and 3 new shafts but is still the same brush. I'm glad it's not quite that bad.....

NineMeister

Stage 1 of the paint. Clean out all the glue and fabrication dust from the interior and scotch-brite the panels ready for etch primer.