And refurbed front seats. Juan does nice work! Original cloth, repro vinyl, the problem with the seats was splitting all along the junction of the cloth inserts and the side bolsters. No longer a problem:

 

Seats look awesome. so does everything else!

 

Wow, that vinyl looks like a perfect match to the original!

 

It is amazingly close. I hesitate to post this since it'll make you wonder WhyTF William had the seats re-done (because of the cloth-vinyl separation mentioned above, and no way to repair it properly), but here's the old seatback cover draped over the new vinyl. The repro cork vinyl is a _really_ good match:

 

with the velour texture, there are many photos where the light reflection gives off an inaccurate color tone. there is no "pink" tone.

this is the closest photo to the true color, the seats in person look amazing.

 

This is kind of what I imagined. Thought to myself, if these guys are recovering these seats themselves in the garage or basement...this restoration/preservation just went from crazy...to absolutely insane.

Seats look great, too.

Brian.

 

They look beautiful! Can you please ask your expert how feasible it is to replace just the piping? My driver's seat has a small area (about 1") that is worn from the seat belt. Curious to know what would be involved in getting it fixed.

 

Close... But it would've went down in Rob's kitchen, on the marble countertop.

 

Granite. ATF and brake fluid would stain marble.

The last of the plating came back yesterday as well. Pretty sure I've run out of things to recondition, from here on out it's assembly time. Car got here October 24th, 88 days ago. Will be amused to see how long it takes to 'mantle'.

 

Better get Mark involved since he's the best 'mantler' in SoCal.
https://rennlist.com/forums/928-foru...a-mantler.html

 

Some questions from the peanut gallery:

1) Isn't the color of the calipers more of a bright silver? I am looking for the assembly line pics.

2) Would you like to relocate for the next job? TaubenBlau is waiting for when the red 86.5 is gone.

3) After all this work, I can't recall the decisions on the painted transmission and the short block.

4) Most people wait this long for the painter to "look" at the car. How did they finish so fast?

 

Everything looks fantastic!! and I can't believe how fast it's all getting done. hat's off to you guys, the car will be a show piece!

 

BC,
1. I too had questions about caliper color. Everything I saw from the car and during the cleaning process showed silver right down to the metal; it looked painted silver. I was completely convinced that silver is how my car came, but... Mark A. had an NOS caliper; Cad, Jim Doerr and a few others were unequivocal that they were gold Cad. So that is what we did since we could always paint them later, but the Cad had to be done with the batch for cost reasons.

2.Can't help you with the relocate, I'm afraid!

3.Trans for this car had been changed, our wild guess is to sell the originally optioned LSD for $$$. So we located a correct trans case and LSD, and will be rebuilding the trans into that correct case. The case is correct in bare aluminum so we don't have to worry about removing the paint from the current trans. We have the rebuilt torque tube ready to go as well.

Bottom end shows no reason to mess with anything, and the heads have already been rebuilt. Reseal and away we go.

4. Yes, half the painting question is who is right to do the job, the other half is when can they do the job. We decided on a painter and it just so happened that with the way they work that they were between major jobs right before Thanksgiving. If we missed our window, we would likely still be waiting. So Rob and I, with Anderson's help, cranked through the dismantle to deliver the body to the painter on their schedule.

In the end, that push really helped us as we were able to get all the parts going out for refurb: upper and lower control arms, brake booster, steering rack, all the parts out for Cad plating, paint or PC, got the seats the upholsterer, and many others. Between those refurbed parts and replacement parts sourced mostly through 928 Int'l, now we are just staging everything for reassembly.

Painters had told us the car would be done by Christmas, and frankly we didn't take that seriously. Car was delivered to my house on Christmas Eve, so much for assumptions!

In the end, both Rob and I should probably be on ADD medication, a protracted yr + project sounds about as appealing to me as an acute case of poison oak.

Thanks to all for the encouragement and input!

 

Doug, the short answer is any good upholstery pro can replace the piping. What Juan did for us is make the piping out of the same vinyl material and I assume that is how others would do it.

The rub is how the new material looks next to the old material which likely has a color fade with age. Lighter colors are probably harder, darker/black may be easier?

The piping can take a beating, fresh piping will really improve the look.

Hope that helps.

 

NOS early caliper from Mark's inventory, FWIW.



Clean '78 LSD-havin' transmission case, from Mark's inventory:



Short block is about this clean (still some crap in the crannies...), note the black-painted cast iron oil pump:



Old waterpump still on to protect the water passages from schmutz during hours of washing/cleaning/lathering/rinsing/repeating/: