DougM

Funny, I just put the car on Uship.com to get transport bids and I noticed that Corona CA (the location of the car) is in the 92879 zip code. Good Karma

danglerb

I wonder who did the chop, John Moch is a local guy that did a LOT of Porsches including the "first" afaik 928 .

DougM

Spoke with the owner today, his son was the one in charge of listing and selling it. He purchased the car 20 years ago from a friend that had the conversion done in Costa Mesa. Anyone know who was doing the conversions there? I know Newport borders Costa Mesa so maybe it was them. He seems to remember his friend spending @$17k for the conversion.

DougM

Did some searching here and found a few names. Emailed one of them and got a response.

"There were two companies doing single post convertibles, VIP TOYS and a company out of Norwalk. Looks like the one from VIP Toys!. The givaway is the brake vent and high folding top. The guy who did your work work for me and went off to work with VIP Toys in Costa Mesa.

All my Convertibles were super low folding, double post to support the windshield, powewr and hydrolic top and the door post in rear was shorter" streamlined.

Hey, good luck.

I, have been toying with the idea to building a couple more, for myself and the wife.

If you need more help, you can contact me.

Roy Jimenez

Charley B

This was one of three soft tops at Sharktoberfest this year.

depami

That is way cool. Gotta be good karma!

Congrats and enjoy. Post buttloads of pics once you get it.

Spun

That cream one is sexy

I saw the black and red one as well at sharktoberfest. She will look good when your done, but she is going to be some work... Not that mine was not... I went through mine from back to front. Only thing I did not do was yank the engine and tranny, but I did do the top, front and pan on her...

Good luck on it and let me know if you need any shots of mine as you work yours over. The folks that did mine back in the early 90s (mine is an 89 S4, auto) did a solid job...
Emerald

Jerry Feather

I came across an old time car customizer who was frequently mentioned or featued in the Magazines like Rod and Custom and Custom Cars back in the 50s and 60s by the name of Jim Winfield. He is now located in or just south of Mojave, CA and still doing custom car work in a shop with a handful of young employees. I took him a 928 hatch because he needed and 928 rear window for one of his current projects and he told me at the time that back in the 80s he, in his company, had made 6 928 convertibles. Maybe this is one of his.

kiesan

Thank you DougM for keeping my honeydew list at its current (bloated) level. lol.

Hey did you sell the 308GTB? Please say yes!

leperboy

Richard Straman was doing a lot of conversions in Costa Mesa/Newport Beach in the 80s. he did high end stuff, like some Ferraris and MBs, and I know he did some 928s, too.

He also did some first-gen Honda CRXs and I would still love to get my hands on one of those.

Matt

DougM

Yes, the 308 is now in Denmark if I recall.

DougM

Took delivery of the car today. Looks better in the pictures than it does in person.....
First, need to source a driver side fog/park light lens. There was never a picture of that side when I purchased it so I didn't know it was broken.
When I realized it had over $4000 in work from Greg Brown at Precision I knew it was probably sorted. After I got the records, I realized that it did have the work done but it sat at his shop for almost 2 years???? I guess the owner was debating about spending the cars value on repairs???? Anyway, lots of fuel delivery items were addressed, recored radiator, rebuilt alternator....
Along with the broken front light, it also needs repair on the bumper cover in that area. Will address that later.
Going to ditch the wheels, they must be offsets for a 911. They stick out too much.
I am definitely going to go through all of the wiring and get it back to stock aside from the radio. I may even just swap the fuse panel with the spare I have from my parted car because the car appears to have 30 years of alarms, stereos and all other types of wiring in there with all types of splices.

Also interesting to note how much the cars flex after chopping off the top. The paint has serious cracking on the rear 1/4s just behind the door on each side. I wonder how you eliminate that.

Luckily, most of the other bit and parts it needs I have from my '79 I just parted. The car is also needs a good cleaning.

Maybe I will start a resurrection thread.....