Jerry Feather

Hi Dean. It would be great if you were located out here and close to where I am. I think it would be more than fun to get to know you in person and get to work on some projects together. Where exactly are you considering relocating "out west?"

Jerry Feather

Vonov

Roger that, Jerry. Thanks for clarifying! I'll keep my fingers crossed for him, in hopes that he never has a country song like "Private Andrew Malone" written about him.
(For those who don't listen to country music, the song is about a guy who buys an old Chevy in an ad in the newspaper, and finds from a note in the glovebox, that the car (he discovers it's a vintage Corvette with next to no mileage) belonged to a soldier who never made it home from Vietnam.)

Jerry Feather

That's right; or even worse a movie made about him like in "Johnny Comes Home Again."

Jerry Feather

karl ruiter

Excellent. This car needs someone who knows enough to follow the rules that must be followed and bend the rules that can be bent.

Leon Speed

Since it's and GTS and S4, shouldn't it be GTß4?

AirtekHVAC

Wow... I like it!

Tom in Austin

Congrats Jerry, you have really been on the road this year with various 928 endeavors!

I think it's interesting that first we had the 'Certificate of Destruction' car being resurrected (let's call that "trial by fire" ;-) and now this one potentially getting a new lease on life. There were only 406 GTSs, so it makes sense that these unfortunates at the far end of the bell curve will eventually get the love and solider on!

SteveG

I'm still not sure it is a GTS, isn't the transmission from an S4, I mean technically? BUT I'm glad for this turn in the saga of the this car. Whatever it is under the fenders, it has taken a turn for the better and I may benefit if it gets the GTS wheel liners produced. Good for everyone I think.

dcrasta

Wow great save.. Hope to follow the updates on this vehicle.

Jerry Feather

Actually, Steve, I am told by James/Potsie that the five-speed conversion was done with a transmission out of an 85 (S3?). My seller thought it was out of a91 GT having something to do with the PSD, but James tells me that the PSD didn't work, so he took it out and sold it, but that he is certain that the 85 5-speed has LSD. We will see.

I knew a guy a while back that had built a rock crawling machine out of a jeep that was still road worthy and licensed. It was licensed as the jeep that it had started out as, but the only thing left of the Jeep was a piece of the body, the cowl/firewall, as I recall, that had the VIN on it.

In the case of my GTS4, in spite of the graft of the S4 front clip, the GTS VIN still shows up in the "window" at the inner edge of the right front fender. I wonder how the VIN might have been preserved if the repair had been done to the front with original factory parts and as shown in the structural repair manual; and I wonder if the factory parts for the front structure all had seperate part numbers for the different models from S4 on, or if they are universal.

Jerry Feather

Tom in Austin

Is there any difference between S4 and GTS front clip? I would have thought rear fenders and bumper cover were only differences in the body panels.

cfc928gt

Jerry, congrats on picking up this GTS4, as others have said, it's in good hands. I hope your daughter realizes how lucky she's going to be someday.

As to the previous owner buying a '91 GT from Denver, that would have been Phil Robinsons' car. Black on black with sport seats. The dealer told him it was going to need a bunch of work ($$$$) so he sold it instead.

SteveG

For good and bad, dealers are responsible for a good part of the market in these cars. They don't service them, they charge a ton on generic items like valve cover sealing washers and owners who don't or can't turn a wrench sell. This may not be news to anyone, here . . .

Jerry Feather

Speaking of front seats, if you have looked at this car in the Registry you will see that the front seats are not the original comfort seats it came with, but they are not the kind of seats we usually think of as sport seats either. What I think they are maybe are the kind of sport seats that you would have received in the 928 if ordered specially in about 84 or 85.

I don't particularly care for these; and when I drove the car from in front of the storage unit out to where I was going to load the car in my trailer I felt like I was sitting in a bucket. They give real meaning to the phrase "bucket seats."

I talked with Doug Corson this morning and we are going to try to cover a set of sport seats that I have had for a while that are not covered. That is not the ones I recently got from Mark A. We are going to cover these Sport seats in gray with black highlights including the welt cords. We are also going to incorporate some redesign that I have in mind. Then later as I progress I can change some more of the black leather to gray so the seats wont look out of place, if they do. I will cover the door panel inserts with gray, make one of my new design armrest boxes in gray, redo the back seats in gray with black highlights, do the flush center console in gray and maybe do the Pod in gray.

I'll post some pictures of the seat project as we progress.

Jerry Feather

Jerry Feather

Tom, there is a whole lot more included in the "front clip' than just the body panels. What I understand they did to repair the damnage to the front of this car is completely remove the panels AND the under body/frame structure by drilling out all of the spot welds. This apparently involved removing structure that extended under the front of the drivers and passengers foot wells. There was some suggestion previously that the reason the car has new carpets in front is because in the course of welding on the replacement 88 S4 front frame stuff they set the carpets on fire. That wouldn't surprise me a bit.

The point is that much more than just the front fenders and hood were donated from the S4 in this reconstruction. I am pretty anxious to get under this car andd see what I can tell about the quality of the work they did in the graft.

However, I suspect there is also no difference in the under framework in front (or back, for that matter) from the S4 to the GTS, including all of them and everything inbetween.

Jerry Feather