Let's Make a Radical Custom 928
 

I am going to customize one of my 928s. Actually it will involve two of them, one that is already pretty much stripped out, the way I acquired it, and the other possible one is one that is bent and has a salvage title. They are both S4s.

Some background----
Many years ago in my youth I was fascinated by cars and spent a lot of time reading car mags. I learned a lot from some of them and taught myself a lot of various customizing techniques, some of which I actually put into use, but not to any great extent. Nevertheless I developed the skills and have acquired the tools to do just about any of it at this point.

My most favorite custom car of all time is a 1934 Ford five window coupe that was chopped about 4 or 5 inches and sectioned 3 or 4 inches. It was however put back together looking very stock except for the new profile and came out JFB. Since then I have adopted what I call my Porsche Formula for something similar and that is a 3 inch chop with a 2 inch section. I actually accomplished the 3 inch chop in one of my 356s, but never got around to doing the sectioning. It was done in a rust bucket that I had acquired; and maybe someday I'll get back to it and finish it up--perhaps after this 928 project I now have in mind.

I did an online search about a chopped 928 and found only images of the photoshop ones done some time ago by Sterling and by RDK. The thing about those is that they both look so radical and cool mostly because of the out of proportion wheels and tires put in the images. That aspect of this project is not likely to be realized, but will come into effect somewhat by virtue of the 2 inch section; also probably by virtue of the 3 inch chop since that is going to entail shortening the rear of the car quite a bit.

I was going to keep this project under my hat until it was completed, mainly because of the very negative feedback I kind of expected about it, but when I reviewed the old 2008 thread I see that there is much more positive response than I thought there would be. Therefore I'm going to do this as a thread here. In addition I have planned to write a book about it as I go along and maybe self-publish that someday after it is finished.

At this point I pretty well have the whole thing designed including just about all of the cuts and modifications, but now I am kind of interested to see if anyone else has ever given any thought to any of this, in particular the top chop. Anyone?

My first thought about chopping the 928 was that It can't really be done, but I have solved that now and know that it can be. It isn't going to look too much like the photoshop ones shown before. I took a picture of my paper cut-and-tape version of this project and I'll try to load and post it shortly.

Sounds like fun, I look forward to seeing this take shape.

I've been fantasizing about taking a clapped out OB and making a "Rat Rod" out of it. With the front upper control arms (versus MAcPherson Struts) I've been imagining something that is open wheel in the front.

Ha ha me too! Damn I thought it was just me...

Good idea...I always thought 928s had way too much head room ..... :)

Do something along rbw. Subscribed.

This could be a really fun project. Good luck Jerry, make it happen.

Cut-and-tape picture
 

Here it is:

You are going to have to be my height to drive it :D

Have fun ! that is all that really matters. Myth Busters already did something similar they just got the body back on backwards....

My primary reason with going the Rat Rod route is I figure it's a great project to have while learning how to weld. :p

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...2aa6440f37.jpg

Here is one of Sterlings without the big wheels. Just lowered and chopped.

Thanks Sean. I really appreciate your encouragement. As to the height, I am only about 5'"6" at this time in my life, having shrunk about 2 inches, I recently discovered. However, my design process, as to cabin height is as follows:

The interior height will be reduced by 5 inches by virtue of the 3 inch chop and the 2 inch section. The sunroof will be eliminated so that will give back about 1 1/2 inches, The seat cushioning can be reduced a bit, perhaps about half inch. The seats, likely sport seats, might be lowered by eliminating the lift screws and motors, so I am thinking about an inch there, and then, if it comes to it I think the floor can be lowered about an inch. In total that can bring back almost 4 of the lost 5 inches.

Compare the shape of the window in the door with the one in my picture.

One of the processes I intend to use is one I taught myself called hammer welding. I do it with the use of an oxy-ace torch and a hammer and dolly. I got really good at it in the past. However I notice that these days that technique is almost never used. They seem to use the mig welder most of the time and a tig sometimes. I have both of those and will be trying the tig in particular with the hammer welding technique. I may also see what I can do with the mig; and I even anticipate buying a cheap 120 volt flux wire feed welder from HF and may see how that fits in with this sheet metal work.

This is really interesting.
I think you have a great idea... and the original lines of the car are actually greatly enhanced and improved by what you have in mind. I love it.
Do you have any other ideas as far as customization thus far? Interior? Paint colors? etc?
Thanks and good luck !!!!
Dan

There are basically two ways to chop a top, particularly with a car such as just about all modern cars, with sloping posts. One is to cut the material out for the chop and then bend the posts, top and bottom so that they will come together again at different angles. I think that that would be the process necessary to accomplish what the photoshop pictures seem to show.

The other way to do it is to cut the top in sections, 4 in our case, and then cut the material out of the posts enough to lower it 3 inches, then move the top sections down the posts and weld them back together. That results in creating gaps in the roof between the sections that are moved down because they also move out in opposing directions, and either forward or aft, depending, when they move down. There are two ways to deal with the top gaps. One is to fill them in with raw material cut and shaped to fit, or to fill the gaps with sections cut out of an extra roof, or another is to use the spare top and cut opposing sections out of it wide enough to fill the gaps. I was going to do the latter, one corner from the original car and another from the spare roof, but because of the curves at the apexes (apexi?) on the sides, front and back there will tend to be a very slight flaw at the joints, kind of like the inverse point at the top of a valentine heart; not that exaggerated, but still something to have to deal with. I think now that the best approach will be to fill the gaps from the spare roof, even though that will involve more welding.

In the case of our project It is looking like the top sections will each move outboard about 2 1/4 inches and the front will go forward about 5 inches and the back ones back about 2 1/4 inches when they move down the front edge of the B-posts. Then the real complexity with the chop is the C-posts which is the top of the rear quarter windows and the sides of the hatch.

When that part moves down 3 inches and it creates a gap about 9 inches long before the post can be reconnected and keep the original curvature and slope. That is where some real interesting design and fabrication work comes into play. I'll describe that later, but I pretty much have it figured out.

Not too much in the way of other customization since my "model" as I described above, is to have it look pretty much stock but with the double take effect of seeing it then looking again to see that it is a long way from stock.

I will use the rear bumper cover that I developed with the narrow license plate recess. I'll be incorporating the Boxster side mirrors that fit in the front corners of the door windows. The hatch is going to be pretty much different and I am thinking that it is going to have a small spoiler along the front edge of the window. Incidentally, the hatch window is not going to change, just the hatch itself.

I am going to need to design a lower induction for the engine to clear the hood which is coming down 2 inches. I'm going to keep the rear WW opening the same; just move it up in the body, and the front ones will loose only 1 inch of height.

The car is red now, so I plan to leave it red. I have bought 5 true red hides and one a very very light tan to do the interior with. I have been working on a redesign of the seat layout with the separate cushions as the 928 has, but putting them longways instead of cross ways. They will be in the contrasting lighter leather. I am going to fabricate the headliner in two sections of formed plastic that will incorporate an overhead center console where I will put a special compartment for the radar detector and I'll put the window switches up there along with one or two speakers, I think. I'll do a different version of the flush center console, but it will end up being much more than flush. More about that later when we get there.

The S4 I am starting with is an automatic, but I really hope to be able to afford to convert it to a five speed. Either of the other S4s I might use to finish this up are autos, so that's I why I'll need to whole conversion "kit."

Is that a real car or a Photoshopped picture?

Photoshop!

This is very interesting and fun besides. I am particularly interested in how you will modify the top to accommodate the wider effective spacing of the roof pillars. My guess is you will fabricate a jig/dolly to hold the 4 pieces of the top while you weld in new material to compensate for the spacing. That's probably not very clear, but it is in my mind's eye. I'm very interested also in your welding approach - I am pre-novice in MIG, and even less skilled in TIG, so it will be fun to watch what you do. Fun approach to 2016- thanks Jerry!

Also, go rad! I think those wheel well arches (as many have noted before) are way too dated...

The biggest impediment to doing the 3 inch chop when I first gave it some thought was in how to deal with the c-post next to the hatch. As mentioned above, when the top comes down 3 inches, if it were coming straight down it would require that the bottom end of it at the rear will need to move forward about 9 inches in order to come back together. Here is how that 9 inches is going to be dealt with:

First, when the rear quarters of the roof move down the B-post along its front edge they also are going to move aft about 2 1/4 inches. That takes up that much of the 9 inch gap at the rear.

Then, when the B-post is put together at its front edge, since it is kind of trapazoidal in shape the top and bottom of the chop cuts do not match and they are going to be different by and an inch and a quarter. That means that that much of the bottom of the B-post needs to be moved forward. In order for this to also translate to help in closing the rear gap the whole rear of the car, trans, drive train and all need to move forward. That means cutting the frame just forward of the rear cross member mounting point and across the inside of the car in the area of the rear seats (which are going to be eliminated anyway). However, since we want to kind of retain the proportions of the B-post, it appears that since we have to move the rear of the car anyway we will move it a full 2 inches thereby making the B-post a bit narrower, and then moving the top rear corner of the B-post and quarter window forward to match. That will give us another two inches of closure of the rear 9 inch gap. So, we now have about 4 3/4" more to take care of.

When we look at the rear of the quarter windows we see that they are actually at an angle to the car, about 40 or 45 degrees. When the top of the quarter windows moves down and outward (the C-post) that means that the rear corner of the windows must also be moved out. When they are cut free to move out, because they are at an angle they also move forward. This movement forward is about 2 inches. That 2 inches forward takes up another 2 inches of the original 9 inch rear gap.

The only thing left of the 9 inch gap is about 2 3/4 inches. When we look inside the rear hatch area at the rear floor we see a fairly broad flat panel there that is about 3 1/2 inches wide from front to back. We are going to take our last 2 3/4 inches out of that panel and then move the entire outer tail of the car, aft of the wheel wells, forward that amount. The object here is to be able to retain the spare tire well and the area for the fuel tank.

This is going to end up with the quarter windows significantly smaller than original, but I think they are going to be nicely proportioned to the overall new look of the car. It is also going to reduce the rear overhang by nearly 3 inches and that, coupled with the 2 inch sectioning is going to significantly reduce the big butt the 928 seems to be partly noted for.

There you have it. A lot of work for just a 3 inch chop.

Here's some inspiration for ya, Jer. Hollywood is onboard to make the 928 Summer movie!

http://www.corvetteonline.com/image/...loSUmmer-1.jpg

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...tte_Summer.jpg

Thanks Randy. I am sad to see that your taste is only in your mouth. (Just kidding, because I know you are too.)

You are pretty nearly correct, Martin.
What I did when I did my 356 chop was to clamp a system of posts inside the cabin where the top of the posts were just exactly 3 inches below the inside of the roof. Then when the quarters were cut out and off and the top of the posts cut and dressed the gaps were closed with clamps and bar stock to keep them lined up and the posts were tack welded back together with the body of each quarter section resting on the top of the post structure. Then each of the gaps can be filled with material from the spare roof which are also tack welded in and later finish welded.

If you chop the top, you can get the headroom back by dropping the floor pan. Rick Barry, the former pro basketball player had a Pantera that had dropped floor pans- it fit him well.

I cant wait to see the results. I plan to make either my green 79 or brown 78 my custom, but nothing as ambitious as this, mine will be more rat-rod styled.

Subscribed :jumper:

One of the things that I learned when I chopped my 356, or actually two things, were first that after I had hammer welded the sections and filler segments into place I could go back over the welds with the hammer and dolly and the torch and work the joints carefully so that the roof was almost completely smooth and as nearly true as an egg shell. Where I found that it would oil-can I could either shrink it with the torch and hammer and dolly or I could stretch it just with the hammer and dolly.

The other thing I learned is that my ability to do that was limited to how far under the roof I could reach with the dolly in my left hand and still work the welds. I was left with a substantial amount of the weld joints on the more central area of the roof that I could not reach; and they are still not done.

The lesson I learned from that is that I should have devised a way to keep all of the welds out around the perimeter of the roof where I could work the welds with both hands. That will lend itself well to the 928 roof with the sunroof since that pretty much will require a whole new section of roof that I will graft into the middle area; and I'll arrange it to be far enough outboard all around to be able to reach the welds. The replacement section of roof for the center will likely come from some donor car at the junk yard when I find one with a roof, or maybe even a trunk lid, that has the right curvature both ways.

Thanks Jim for your input. I actually already mentioned that possibility somewhere above in this much too wordy thread.

I probably should have waited until I get the space in my shop cleared out and I could block the car up and start cutting before I started this thread. Then, much of what I have been trying to describe could better be shown in pictures.

Right now I am recuperating from having slipped on some ice and fallen on my back breaking two or three ribs last tuesday evening. I find myself surfing my computer with no ability to do just about anything else right now. However, after my ribs getting worse for three days, today I feel some improvement and hope it will continue. In fact tomorrow I fully expect to be able to form some Spare tire covers and put together the final pieces of one of my GTS Wheel Well Liner kits to ship.

Then I will get onto the process of cleanup and reorganizing some space for this project.

Ah cabin fever...that explains it... :)

Thanks Jim. You could have gone all day without calling it what it is.

yes sometimes I can be brutally honest..... I really do admire your independent spirit and really encourage you to simply DO IT !!!!

Chop what cha got.

What about the exhaust pipe/s?

I think it's a great idea and look terrific and modern but may be best left in Photoshop.

For me the 928 windscreen and roofline are perfect.
It's the hatch that needs work.

My radical custom would be a Shooting Brake, a bit like this

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...00698e5084.jpg

[QUOTE=The Fixer; I think it's a great idea and look terrific and modern but may be best left in Photoshop.[/QUOTE]

This surprises me. I think it is a little like someone saying that the RS should have been left to the 911s.

Any photos around of your chopped 356? I too dream of a custom 928 so look forward to some progress photos of this as well.

Lower and wider, whats not to like?

I think these are the only pictures I have of that project. I took them some time ago to show someone the welding technique I had used. I'll likely be using the same or a later derivative of it on the 928 project. These don't show the overall look of the car with the 3 inch chop but they do show the method of cutting the top into quarters and moving them down the post similar to what I'll do with the 928. The first two also show how I had grafted VW headlight bucket openings to the front of the 356 fenders where the original openings had been destroyed by rust. The rust you see here is just surface rust from being stored without having been primed first. I think these also show how the metal can be very finely finished with the hammer and dolly and the use of heat so much so that very very little filler will be needed to finish.

When I cut the 356 top into quarters and moved them down the posts, that opened up the top sideways by 1 1/2 inch and longways by 6 inches. With the 928 that is going to be more like 4 1/2 and 7 1/2, respectively. I'll be moving down the 928 posts at A-post and B-post while with the 356 I moved down the A-post and the C-post, letting the B-post float, and then welded it back where it ended up. With the 928 the C-post is going to float and then I'll be bringing up the rear to close it up as I described before.

Jerry, go get 'em !
I have no doubt your design, and work will be something to behold.

Thanks MP. I appreciate your comments.

I think my title to this thread might be somewhat misleading, and was, I think, for Randy V. What Randy sees as radical is, in my opinion, more or less superficial customizing resulting in a radical appearance. For me I consider the chopping and sectioning processes as very radical but resulting in simply a different look and not so radical an appearance.

At this point, I think no one has ever chopped a 928 and that in itself is going to be quite radical, particularly with the need to shorten the car to make it work. Then, the idea to section the car is totally radical, since that too has never been done to a 928, much less any other Porsche that I am aware of. In fact these days one does not ever see sectioning being done in the custom car world just about at all.

I first became aware of the sectioning process when I first saw it having been done to the early shoebox Fords, the 49 to 51 series, and then to a few chevies of the same period. The latest I think I noticed it was in the Rod and Custom Dream Truck Project of the later 50s. Although not as apparent in that project I think they did a 4 or 5 inch section to it. I learned a lot from reading the series of articles about that project; and I bought the book a few years ago that is a reprint of most of it.

One of the tricks I am sure I learned from the Dream Truck Project, but oddly which is not now apparent in the reprint of articles, I will be utilizing in this effort, and I'll tell you more about it when we get there. It has to do with sectioning the doors. These days, just about every car I look at with the idea of any kind of custom work myself, I tend to visualize how it might be sectioned--chopped too, of course, but almost always sectioning. I have thought about sectioning 49 to 51 Mercs, Mustang fastbacks, even the 54 Chevy 4 door I recently acquired from one of my clients.

Anyway, when I can get past these broken ribs I think I will be getting with it.

Do it brother! Sounds like fun. If it comes out anything like Sterling's photo shopped pic, it should look awesome.

For reasons which are pretty obvious sectioning was seldom if ever done on uni-body cars. Also the term "Lead sled" described how much filler was needed on most such projects...
One of the car shows not too long ago brought together several old timer metal guys and they sectioned an old 50s Chevy 4 inches mostly because no one has seen such work....
Huge job I admire your skills and dedication to take of such a project...because I do understand what it entails.

longer front winshield too, with more rake. its way to 911, straight up. look at the aston martin vantage windshield ...........like that!

Mark, the slope of the WS is about 30 degrees up from horizontal at the middle and about 32 degrees at the A-posts. That is quite a bit away from straight up, but I understand what you are saying. The problem with reducing that angle any by laying the A-posts back some more is multifold. First, and most important is that doing so will likely require a whole new windshield being made for it, whereas just moving the top corners down the posts as they are will allow just cutting off the top 6 inches of the existing WS. Second, laying the A-posts back then requires much more work with the doors to match and that also eliminates the repeatability of the Boxster side mirror adaptation that I'll be developing to accomplish this chop. I could make the new mirror bases to fit a smaller angle, but I have already started that project to fit the current angle.

I am already faced with the need to form new side windows and rear quarter windows since I don't think the originals can be cut down since they are probably tempered rather than laminated. I don't want to have to form a new WS too. Besides, I still like the idea of doing these radical custom techniques and having the 928 still look kind of original.

Boxster Mirror Adaptation
 

Here is a picture of the early development of the Boxster Mirror to fit in the front bottom corner of the 928 side window in the door. I started this a long time ago, but could not figure out how to get the mirror apart. I finally devised a vice grip with a custom jaw welded onto it that worked, but only once since it was not very sturdy and bent out of shape by the time I got the mirror apart. I am doing it over much heavier so I can take the other one apart and reshape the base of it, then I can make molds to cast the new shapes in fiberglass.

One huge cosmetic change I would like to see on a 928 is the removal of popup lights and the addition of integrated/fixed headlights. I am thinking of something along the lines of the Ferrari 550.


Just a thought for you Jerry....

http://www.parts-specs.nl/photos/024...nello-1996.jpg

That would certainly modernize the look. For me, however, the upward-facing pop-ups are an iconic part of the 928. I think I'd keep 'em...

A customized 928 for Christmas? What colour do you prefer, blue, yellow or red?
Åke

http://suchen.mobile.de/fahrzeuge/de...1&pageNumber=4

http://suchen.mobile.de/fahrzeuge/de...ion=eyeCatcher

http://suchen.mobile.de/fahrzeuge/de...ion=eyeCatcher

Subscribed, Jerry! I have never given serious thought to chopping the top of a 928. Initial thoughts are that the most difficult chop would be by the first person to try it! :)

Something about the rear hatch was not working, for me. I edited your cut-n-paste by deleting the rear quarter window to see if it helped. (Did the same for the picture of Sterling's, even though you indicated it has different proportions.) I like it better with the window delete, but still feel maybe something more could be done there? Should it be straightened some?

And, along the radical lines, have you additionally considered a widebody kit, ala Strosek?

I respect your ambition!

Hey, Carlos, Thanks for cleaning some of the extra stuff out of my "photochop." When it comes to the quarter windows I am kind of like Jeff about the headlights--I think they are kind of iconic in respect to the design of the 928. (I am with him on the headlights also.) I have seen one or maybe two 928s with the rear quarter windows blanked out like you have done, and I don't really care for it. One of the things I like about a couple of the concepts for a later day 928 is how they have kept the shape of the B-post as a sail panel and kept something like the quarter windows with it.

My concept really goes back to what I have said about my most favorite of all custom cars--the 34 ford 5 window couple that was sectioned and chopped and put back together looking very stock otherwise. The 928 could be chopped and sectioned and then incorporate different headlights and tail lights, sloped windshield, all kinds of body and bumper kits, and could even be made to match up with Randy's Corvette, but most of that just isn't where I want to go with this project.

I'm going to delete the wing, even though it is still in the picture; and the rear hatch window will stay the same even though it has been shortened in the picture. I do think I will make a small change in the rear wheel arch simply so that it doesn't look so narrow between it and the back of the door. Thats where there is going to be about 2 1/2 inches taken out, so I might put back maybe 3/4 to 1 inch of body, at least in the area of the upper front corner of the arch.

But I do admire and appreciate your creative thoughts about this project. Even though I have set most of it in my mind, I think the actual process, when I get started, is going to be somewhat organic; so we will see just how much of outside suggestions might find their way into this car.

+1
The operative term here is iconic part of the 928.

I had at one point in the past counted how many pieces the 928 will be cut into to do both of these modifications and I recall coming up with about 26. However, I just did it again and now come up with 38 plus about 5 more including the gas tank, which will need to have the neck sectioned, and 3 others depending on whether or not I lower the floor and whether I move the battery box up to the rear passenger seat on the right. Of course these pieces will not all be apart at the same time, so it wont be like a big 40 piece puzzle to put back together. Too, this count does not include the pieces removed or the patch pieces put back in in places.

I'm kind of surprised that someone has not suggested that this ought not be done to a 928 without doing it in a jig. My thoughts about that are that the car is its own jig. I will likely be putting some bracing in it before various parts are cut away, but my experience is that even that is not likely to be particularly necessary.

My other thoughts about blanking the quarter windows out is that the ones I have seen (and it may be just one that I have seen more than once) are not done very well. They look like someone has grafted in a section of flat sheet metal bent around its perimeter to match all the curves. They kind of remind me of something like where someone has cut the back off of a car to make the front into a pickup and then just welded in a flat piece of sheet metal to close it up, rather than doing it with material formed to some curvature to make it look like it was intended to be that way.

I really like the way the quarter windows on the 928 curve around the rear corners. Mine will still do that, although they wont go as far toward the center of the car after they make the turn. The one most noticeable aspect of this project, or the top chop part of it, is going to be the extra width, thickness or heft that is going to be seen is the C-posts particularly along the sides of the hatch which are going to be widened about 2 1/4 inches on each side. I'm hoping that that is not going to be a big distraction from the overall look when we are done. I have to admit though that the look of that would go away or be largely minimized if the quarter windows were blanked.

I was hoping you wouldn't mind that :)

Agree on keeping as much of the iconic elements as possible, especially given the '34 Ford 5 Window Coupe inspiration.

Agree - those have done a good job of keeping that aspect of the "928" character.

I had forgotten about the '34 Ford 5 Window Coupe inspiration for this project, and was wondering what the goal was. Yes, stay focused on that goal!

I wish I would have known about the rear wing delete - it was a pain in the butt to keep that wing in the modified photo chop! Below, the wing is now deleted, and the window put back in. :)

Looking forward to how this develops!

I'm getting over some of the cabin fever now with some warmer weather showing up finally and with some improvement with my early December injury. However, the fall did seem to aggravate an old or congenital lower back injury/deformity that is now going to require some surgery in later April. In the meantime I will be working some on clearing the space for this project in my shop starting this weekend in anticipation of moving the 88 into place to begin setting it up for some cutting; and I am finishing up a couple of small projects that I have been working at from time to time this winter.

I did locate and purchase most of the pieces to convert this car to 5-speed, all but the torque tube. I have some feelers out for one and hope to find one suitable for shortening the 2 inches planned in this project.

Thanks Carlos, for the picture just above. That is pretty close to what I think this project is going to end up looking like.

Here is one radical custom 928 spotted in Stuttgart, Germany.
Åke
http://www.autogespot.com/porsche-st...iii/2015/10/23

+1,000

Look at cars like the Acura NSX and Ferrari Testarossa. They tried to update them by replacing the pop-up headlights an it ruined the look of the car.

You're welcome, Jerry. Glad to help with picturing the concept.

Since it is close, I will start cleaning it up a bit, but all I have is Microsoft Paint right now, so it will take a while. Here is a little bit of clean up - I will update it over time. (Edit: stopping at version 6!)

Version 6:

Just my $0.02 here.

I always loved the show “Overhaulin’” as Chip Foose is a Car Guy all the way through and right down to the heartbeat. Didn’t care for some of the projects but hugely admired the skills that brought the cars to completion.

My Overhaulin’/Custom 928 daydream is a car I call “Pascha.” Pascha is a bit like your imaginary friend from childhood – fondly remembered but never seen.

The finish is striped off of the car. All of the aluminum is polished like an old P-51 Mustang. Where the aluminum gives out and the steel begins, a beautiful, Pascha-like paint job in every Porsche color, ever starts. The color underneath does the Foose Fade. The colors on top have the small-square Pascha thing going. Every Porsche color ever is in there. They go from light to dark, front-to-back. They go from light to dark, top-to-bottom. The interior is a mix of Ferrari Daytona/caramel leather/Pascha all over the place. It’s gorgeous and turns heads everywhere.

A gentle and as-delivered mechanical refresh is completed. Even the catalysts work. No leaks. Starts every time. 19 mpg around town. 14 mpg at track days.

It does an average of 140 in the next year’s Silver State Challenge.

The Porsche Museum calls, asking about acquiring Pascha.

“Nope.” >

Good luck, Jerry!

I have a TT for you Jerry.

That's the second time this suggestion is made (or the first time, repeated) and It makes me wonder just what some of you think this project might turn out like. I am hoping this project will turn out at least one (or six) steps above what they did to that poor 928 aside from turning the body around. I guess time will tell.

Torque Tube issue is resolved!!! Thanks a bunch MJ!!!

:thumbup:

5 pages and no work has been done to the car? Time to pick up the tools and start to get dirty.

Got a link to your build thread, Imre? :)

Two more LS swaps nearing completion and this one hasn't got past paper..... Page 6 up ahead...

Yes I do. Have a couple on herd and another one on a site that allows picture posting without paying for a membership. Would have more here but I'm not willing to pay for a membership again.

Cool, would like to check 'em out- any project is a good project, 'specially with pics.. :thumbsup:

Build the car everybody has been waiting for, the successor.

As a couple of you know, Stan in particular, and Herman, I do not spend a lot of time doing clean-up in my shop. In fact Stan thought the place might very well self combust from all of the chips and dust that I had let accumulate when he was here two or three years ago. Anyway, Murphy's Law, corollary number 6, as I recall, says that when starting out to do something, something else must be done first.

In my case, I have been working in and around the space I need to open up for this project and eyeing the stuff that needs to be cleared out to open it up. The problem is that my mind has not come up with the alternate place to put everything. Some of it is accumulated prototyping stuff and some is 928 parts, like doors, and some is an airplane engine and engine mount for my Navion, and the rest is just stored materials waiting for various projects.

What I finally figured out is that all I need to do is clean up all the rest of the shop and then I will have some floor space to put the things that I need to get out of the way. I started that yesterday and cleaned out about a third of the machine shop, which is about 400 square feet, and bagged up three large trash bags of scrap material, metal chips and wood chips. That opens up about half that much floor space. I'll work on that some more over the next several days and then I think I will have a place to put some of the stuff that is in the way. Then I'll start doing the same with the rest of the shop, and it is about 1100 square feet. That is likely to take me to the time for my back surgery in late April, but by then I hope to have the 928 in place, jacked up, and leveled, ready to start marking and cutting. Maybe that problem is solved. I just have to work the solution in order to get there.

In the meantime I have been working on taking some measurements off the car I am starting with and have been trying a little different method for removing the windshield. It didn't work and in fact cracked the WS at the edge where I was working to release it, but using some heat. Too much heat put some tiny cracks at the edge and I think that will end up trashing this WS. I may still be able to use it as a test piece for cutting one down to the final size like I have seen on U-Tube.

I have also been working on one of the final trim pieces that the new car will need. I'll post pictures of that shortly when I get closer to finished with it.

I am making progress on clearing out the space I need for this project, and by now I have just enough clear space to fit the car. The only problem (actually three of them) is/are that the space is not in one piece, the space is so far only big enough for the car but no room yet to work around it, and the space is not in the right place.

I am encouraged to discover that a lot of the space I need to clear out is not covered by stuff that I need to save but rather stuff like scrap plastic and metal that will need to be recycled or discarded, so other than just getting rid of it, I don't have to find some place else to store it. A large batch of that is going to open up another fairly large space, but still in the wrong place. However, when I get enough of these clear spaces around then I can simply move the stuff out of my way to clear the work space I want for this project.

I might even get this space issue solved this week and coming weekend and then I can get some help to move the cars around to put the one I need in the shop. That's my goal.

Other progress is taking place on the project. The 5 speed conversion parts and gear box arrived and I have unloaded and stored in my other garage, and I bought the HF 110 volt flux wire welder this Sunday. I was going to hold off on that and maybe buy the 170 or 180 amp version, but they had this one on their sidewalk sale this weekend for $81 so I bought it. I'm anxious to see how much of this sheet metal welding I will be able to do with it.

Jerry you are cutting the car in pieces so the space need not all be in one place.....front clip here ,rear clip there, roof over there.... what is the problem :) No need to answer just joking , I admire your willingness to undertake such a huge project ! I do understand what sectioning is and what it entails.

go high Jerry ;)

Thanks, Tony. Been there and done that!

Here is a picture of the forms I have been working on a little bit along the way. These are for the custom grill bars that I'm going to put in this radical 928.

I finally realized that I cannot create the space in my shop that I need to put the car to start cutting by simply moving stuff around. That, aside from the other issues that have gotten in the way, have put this off some. I finally had the back surgery on June 1 and have other life issues to deal with, but now have a plan that I think will help open up the space.

I'm going to obtain a 20 foot shipping/storage container and set it outside the shop area where I can put the stuff I'm not working on out of my way. I need some dirt work before that can be done, and my skid loader guy is tied up with another job right now, but I hope to get to that in the next couple of weeks.

I have, however, actually started on this project, at least in respect to the lower induction that I will need when the sectioning is done. I have the progress on that in another thread, also waiting on me to refine my tig welding technique.

Murphy's Law, 6th Corr., is still in the way for now, but I hope to be cutting the body well before Xmas.

I know that most of you probably think that this project is long gone. However, it is actually the main one that I think about at night when I wake up thinking about one of my cases at the office and which I switch my brain to to get back on a positive note and go back to sleep.

I had a longer term plan to have my 20 foot shipping container delivered and then put much of the stuff that is in my way into it, but where it needs to go outside is still tied up. I suppose I should be spending my time trying to figure that out. Nevertheless I recently thought back to when I was growing up and using our detached one car garage to work on my projects and about every two or three months my Dad would say to me that I needed to "clean the garage out!" What I did then was simply haul just about all the accumulated stuff outside and then more carefully put it all back in a more orderly fashion. That always seemed to open up a lot of work space.

A week ago I went to an estate sale by one of my clients and bought a few things including several small shelving units that are about 1.5 by 3 feet and 42 inches tall. There are 8 of them. It occurred to me that most of the mess I have accumulated in my shop (much like when I was working in our garage growing up) is in about one layer, or in some places two, on the floor and on the flat surface of just about anything in the shop. In some cases the flat surface is a pulled out drawer that I have used to stack things on. Anyway I began to realize and notice that there is actually a lot of unused space volume under much of where the things are laying. Thus the 8 shelve units are now beginning to work for me in having flat surface shelves to put much and maybe most of it on and still leave me the top surface to both put more things and/or to have some work surface which has gotten kind of scarce.

I now have the machine shop pretty well cleared out and cleaned up utilizing 4 of the shelve units and I can actually walk in a straight line across the middle of that part of the shop. I'll finish that up in the next couple of days and then start on the bigger part of the shop where I hope to put the S4 to begin this project. I think I will be able to do much the same thing there with the remaining 4 shelf units and by putting some of the stuff up on the higher shelves I showed before where there is still a bit of space. Too, there is a lot of accumulated ABS scrap and prototype fabrications that will go back to the supplier to recycle.

I think it is going to work.

Looking forward to the progress and the end result. Keep dreaming and may your dream materialize and shine like no other.

I recently came across a photocopy of the original Car Craft magazine article that I had requested from the publisher several years ago. It is getting pretty well faded, but I think you can tell a lot about "my favorite custom" from the pictures. I also Googled "Ted Svendsen's '34 Ford" and found some more history about it and several more images.

I hadn't remembered exactly, but the article says it was sectioned 4 inches and chopped 3. You will recall that this article and car is what has inspired my imagination over these many years and which is kind of the theme of my current 928 project.

So you want to make a 2 seater 928 with a chopped roof?

I have been making progress with my clean out of the shop and although if I posted a picture now and one before I started you might not be able to tell the difference, I can myself see where significant space has opened up and where a lot more is about to. I have been working about 2 hours each evening on it and will continue this weekend and hope to really see the difference.

I have also been studying the under side of the 928 to decide just where to make the cuts for the 2 inch shortening of the car to help accommodate the 3 inch chop. I have pretty well figured out where the cuts need to be on the "top side," but in studying the under side of the car with a picture in another thread I find that where the cuts need to be will actually shorten the distance between the rear axles and the mounting point for the rear trailing arms.

At this point I am kind of deciding that rather than try to move the mounting points forward 2 inches, which might be done, but will be pretty complicated, it might be easier and better to simply shorten the trailing arms. I think I am going to do that. Although I kind of wish I had one of the Porsche Engineers who designed the Weissach suspension system in my pocket to figure out just what that might do to the handling and ride. Myself, I don't think it will be even noticable, but . . .

I'm still making progress, but not as quickly as I had hoped. That's usual for me anyway. One thing I found in uncovering some of the flat surfaces I had covered with accumulated stuff was a couple of unfinished projects that actually need to be finished to keep going with the clean up. One of them is a roll around kind of stand with a flat top and shelves that was intended to be used to put things in an engine overhaul project I had in mind about 8 or 10 years ago. The project didn't come to fruition and the stand got left upside down waiting for me to mount the wheels or casters, but then I put a large piece of plywood on it and used it as a work space for some other projects. Now, I also found the wheels and am putting them on it so I can turn it right side up and maybe even use it in this 928 project.

Anyway, as I view it now there is almost enough space opened up to put the car to start this project, but as before it is not quite in the right place. At least it is pretty much in one piece, which is great progress. There is still a mess between my new space and the garage door, but most of that mess is big stuff and will be fairly easily moved without needing more shelf space for much or any of it.

Then too, I have had to take a bit of time to do some Spare Tire Covers and Cowl Covers to ship. It all takes time and effort.

Too, I am now going back over all of my previous planning and calculations to finalize my cuts and fills for the chop to double check my plans. Based on this some of my previous numbers are changing a tiny bit. The most important number in all of it is the horizontal distance the C posts needs to move after the cut for the 3 inch chop is looking like 9.5 inches. I have been working with 9 inches, so the extra half inch still needs to be gathered up in the combination of cuts needed in this part of the project. Most of that will be determined most precisely by all the cuts leading up to the last one which is to move the tail panel. That last one may be as little as two inches, but as much as 3 inches. I think anywhere in that range can be accomplished.

Keep moving forward Jerry

I have a set of your cowl covers and rear tire cover. They are great pieces.

Thanks

Harvey

https://losangeles.craigslist.org/sf...328859587.html

I guess this shows that its not just the concept, but also the implementation details that count.

https://inlandempire.craigslist.org/...331018607.html

Tweeking the pasha concept

Looks like we each take our inspiration from different sources.

I'll just leave this thread here...

https://rennlist.com/forums/928-foru...wned-upon.html

I mentioned the blue car in the middle of my first post in this thread. I think the photochop on it was done by RDK. It was actually a big part of my inspiration to ultimately try something similar on one of my cars.

My original inspiration, as I said, was the chop and section of the 34 Ford I read about in my youth. Since then I have often mentally tried to do similar custom techniques to various cars I come in contact with even if just mentally. Then when I got into Porsche 928s one of my first thoughts was whether or not it could even be chopped, much less sectioned. My first thought was that it could not be done. Then I saw the blue car online and later began giving the idea more careful thought.

That is how I have gotten to the point I am now with my shop, my car, and with some of the peripheral aspects of the project, all as described in more detail in this thread, and the thread about the lower intake, that will be required when this car is sectioned.

I'm sure that this thread appears to be kind of dormant, and as a thread, it is; but I am still working on the peripheral aspect of the project as mentioned before. The major one right now is still the clean out of enough space to be able to move the car inside to set it up to start cutting. That is coming along pretty well, but not as fast as I had expected. I found that the shelving I was using to go vertical with all the horizontal stuff was not sufficient. I then finished up a couple of roll-around shelving units I had started a long time ago and that helped reduce one of the three or four areas of concern. Then I have now nearly completed another two large shelving units I am making out of some perforated angle I had been saving for something like this and when I can gather enough plywood I'll do the shelves on them and hopefully clear out the last area needed. Another area of concern will still need to be dealt with, but for now I think I will be able to work around it.

I have been working on another aspect of this project and that is part of the shortening of the car and drive train. I have gathered the tooling needed to fabricate a shorter drive shaft and am working on the design of that. I have made a request of my steel supplier to locate some hollow bar for the shaft(s) in a suitable alloy and will see what they can come up with. Then I think I have calculated all of the factors necessary to decide just how much to shorten the car and drive train, and I think I am going to settle on 2 inches. It has been kind a struggle between 2 and 2 1/2 inches, but I am pretty sure that 2 inches is going to win out.

So, at this point I have most of what will be required to build an engine, all of the items needed to convert the car to 5 speed, all the leather and seat cores and such to do the interior, and of course, the design of just about all of the metal work needed to build the car. Remaining will be a plan for the glass for the doors and rear quarter windows, but I think I will be able to cut the windshield myself; and the hatch window will remain the same.

So much for now. . . .

Do you have a sketch of what it will look like?

I have the space cleared finally with just a few things still floating around that will be pushed aside for the project. I find it amazing how so much stuff can accumulate when you are not watching and trying to stay ahead of it.

The next task is to fabricate a sort of carriage to put one 928 stripped out tub on to move it out of the way outside in front of the garage door. Then the Red rolling tub that is going to get the treatments will be moved inside. If it doesn't snow this weekend, or before the weekend, I'll get that done and can then get the car set up where the work can start.

The first task is going to be to remove the windshield.

Sounds like you are making some good progress sir.

Can't wait to see some more updates.

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...bc0e1435dd.jpg
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...67592d150f.jpg
Finally I have space in the shop and have figured out how to move the tubs around to get the right one inside. The red one I'm going to start cutting on was where the white tub is now. Then I moved it out of the way and devised a sort of carriage to move the white one out of the way. My son, Tim, came over and he and his wife and I got them moved.

Then I started on the red one. I first took the Windshield out, and broke it of course. Boy are those fragile when it comes to any flex. Next I'll jack it up and block it level so I can verify my angle and length of cut measurements. Then I'll remove the unnecessary structure out of the inside of the roof and then put in a temporary structure to hold it in place while it is cut apart. I have some drive train and all the running gear to remove also. When setting out to do something, something else must be done first.

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...f3099fc072.jpg
https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...8a62257097.jpg
Today I got it jacked up and level. or very nearly so. Front to back it is within about an eighth of an inch to level and just about dead on side to side, based on the view out the back an in comparison to my garage door.

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...91a25dbdff.jpg
https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...5ba213ec85.jpg
https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...16e7ba5449.jpg
Then I took a good look inside and decided that I need to begin some of the skutt work that is going to be needed along the way, but cleaning out some of the mess inside, including much of the foam and insulation. I felt that doing some of that now might help make some of our progress pictures look a bit more professional. I first dug much of it out and then used my wire wheel to clean it up a bit more. I'll get to the other side after I take a break.

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...5a221cff5e.jpg
While I was resting I decided to try to lay out the cut pattern on the B-Post that has kind of been bothering me. I finally got it laid out about the way I think it needs to be, but then I noticed that there is a bit of curvature to the B-Posts that is not very apparent in the photographs. So, I am going to have to do some more figuring about how best to cut the B-Posts.

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...4cacb80266.jpg
https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...ade1a842ae.jpg
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...3e83b0083b.jpg
I got the other side of the rear inside cleaned off but haven't run my wire wheel over it yet. Then I set to removing the sunroof structure. Boy, was that a chore. I really didn't know quite how it was installed and just what should be left of it, but finally got out what I think should be out. I'll be able to trim and lshape what is left of the structure surrounding the roof so that it will blend into a nicely formed headliner, of some sort.

My next step is to assemble some kind of guide post structure inside the car to provide places to rest the rooftop sections next to the cuts where they will otherwise not have anything to hold them in position for realignment in their new wider locations.

In the meantime I have figured out how to do this chop without shortening the car forward of the rear wheels. That is going to save a really big bunch of work. Basically I'm going to do it by changing the chop from a 3 inch parallel cut front to back to something more like 3 1/8 inches in front, 2 3/4 in the middle at the B-Post, and about 2 1/2 or slightly less at the rear at the C-Post. By calculation, that reduces the front-to-back gap at the C-Post from about 9 1/2 inches to closer to 8 inches. That lesser amount can be taken up with about 3 1/4 at the B-Post, 1 3/4 at the bottom corner of the quarter windows and then 3 inches shortening the tail of the car, but aft of the rear wheels. I don't think the difference will even be noticeable.

Ahh progress! Good luck Jerry.

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...4715b47d00.jpg

about 3/4 of the guidepost structure. Sthe shelves at the outer ends will have guide slats on them for the top of the door opening. Then I'll add longitudinal members to guide the front and back.
https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...bf27eff9e6.jpg

view of the structure from the front.
I have much of the guidepost structure put up inside the car to give me some resting places for the roof quarter sections when they are cut free, in addition to resting on the cut down tops of the A, B, and C posts.

I have worked up the angle measurements with some better measuring devices and on the actual car versus the pictures. One of the things I am learning is that the aft movement of the rear quarter sections, at the B-Posts, is going to be quite a bit greater that I have been figuring, and that is because I have not been accounting for the angle that the B-Popstys slope inward. The more they slope in the more they will move aft with the chop. What I think that means is that I am going to be back to an almost equal 3 inch chop all the way around and still without the need to cut the car in two in front of the rear wheels. I'm going to work on the measurements a bit more before starting any layouts and cuts.

Edit: Actually I finally figured out that I have been laying the B-Post cut pattern out incorrectly and that was giving rise to the erroneous aft movement of the rear roof quarter section. I got it correct, and the roof section will still move aft only 3 inches, as I have been planning on from the measurements off of the pictures.

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...a6794b6034.jpg

Front top of the structure.
https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...7f5b541718.jpg

Rear of the structure. Show a bracing I put down the to the floor or part of the frame.
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...4237965557.jpg

A broader overall view of the structure.
https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...99c6f12512.jpg

Side view of the car for later comparison.
https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...85f4eff81e.jpg

More side view, but more toward the rear.
I finished the guidepost structure. I was going to weld in some bracing, but the structure is pretty much in the way. Then, I decided that the 928 body is so rigid that a structure inside while the top is cut off is probably not needed.

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...775ddd79d4.jpg

First cut in the middle at the top of the windshield. Notice that when I made this cut the cut opened up almost an eighth of an inch from built in stress.
https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...15d5157359.jpg

left front roof corner in its nearly new position.
https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...e5e75111d2.jpg

Broader view.
https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...8f6013fd53.jpg

Different view.
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...4bceccfcae.jpg

Side view to begin to see the new look.
https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...cfa2718df3.jpg

View from the front.
https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...e435cadb85.jpg

Ovderall view for the new look.
Then I went out to Sears and bought a couple of metal cutting blades for my Craftsman Sawzall. Boy, is that thing a brute. I carefully marked some of the roof cuts and then cut the first corner out and trimmed it to fit back onto the shortened A-Post. The other two ends are resting on the guidepost structure; and they can be shimmed or the guides ground down as necessary to get the pieces in alignment before cutting patches to fit each of the resulting gaps.

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...fd36e548a6.jpg

Cutting the rear center with the Sawzall.
https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...c345d03b20.jpg

Top of the B-Post roughly cut free.
https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...befacf7d8e.jpg

B-Post cuts a little more refined.
https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...9cf57914f4.jpg

Rear section is approximate new position.
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...ae280d63f0.jpg

Alignment view.
https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...37b9442ef1.jpg

Alignment from the front.
https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...13e5256bea.jpg

New side view.
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...c99f430845.jpg

Side view of the rear quarter.
A little more cutting and trimming and I have the left rear quarter of the roof cut loose and mostly trimmed to fit in its new location. The cuts will need to be refined a bit and then the pieces lined up so I can start cutting patches to fill the gaps.

Then I need to cut the tail loose so it can be moved forward about 3 inches to help fill up the offset at the base of the C-Post. I also need to cut the base of the C-Posts off so they can move outward and forward to make the last C-Post gap correction.

Very exciting Jerry! You must have measured a thousand times prior to making all these cuts with such confidence! I re-read the entire thread - the whole concept you have going is great - I love the thought you have put into this!

Looking good Jerry. Very interesting project.

When I made the center cut at the back of the roof I noticed that as soon as I cut thru the left side of the cut jumped back about an eighth of an inch. I thought, some more built in stress, and then didn't think much more about it. Now as I study the pictures of what I have so far it occurs to me that I still have not removed the driveline, transmission, rear running gear, and suspension, and that must be over 500 pounds hanging there. No wonder the cut jumped offset.

Now before I make any further cuts I am going to have to remove all of that and then take some careful measurements and maybe even block up the rear of the car to hold its position better. The body is pretty stiff, but not that stiff, I guess.

Looking good sir

Today I'm going to work on getting the drive train and running gear out of the tub. Then I'll try to get to the cuts on the other side of the top chop.

One thing you should notice in all of these roof cuts there are three layers of metal to put back together. One way might be to simply weld two of them back together leaving ihe third member cut, but I think I'm going to figure out how to weld all three. That adds a certain level of complexity to the chop job. However the three layers of metal show clearly that there is a very sturdy built in roll cage in these cars. I think I need to retain that.

Another thing I just noticed in one of the pictures of the B-Post, "Lucas" has signed his name to the inside panel which I think is the top of the lock post. I'll bet he thought his signature would never be seen again.

+928!

Well, that didn't go too well. I had thought that I could remove several bolts and simply drop the drive train and running gear down with the Trans Jack and roll it all out from under the car. Not so. I loosened three of the large bolts holding the aluminum X-member and the trailing arm and then twisted two of them off trying to turn them out. Then I couldn't locate my large socket to try to take most of it all apart and remove it piece by piece, so that is where I left it.

I did refine some of my chop cuts to get a more exact fit; but now I think I'll simply put my trans jack under the trans and put enough pressure on it to hold it up rather than having the car body hold it up. That should take the pressure off that I think is distorting the body some when I am cutting the roof loose. I'll get to the broken bolts and removal of the drive train later when it is warmer and I might feel better about working on my back under the car.

Jerry, another amazing project ... we need to get you on Velocity alongside Chip Foose and those other guys :-)

Thanks, Tom. That is a wonderful thought, however unlikely.

A better idea is for you to get a group together and contact Chip Foose and explain to him and his producers how much I have done to benefit Humanity and to save the World. (We did survive December 21, 2012, didn't we!) Then they might take this over and finish it up in a couple of weeks, but only after I get it locked in to the direction I have in mind for it, since I have not seen them chop a car and certainly they have not sectioned one.

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...7d9c244321.jpg
https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...e59d700bd1.jpg
I find myself carefully refining my A-Post and B-Post cuts to get the C-Post gap to fall just where it needs to be. That doesn't appear to represent much progress, so no additional pictures of the roof cuts yet.

I also find myself thinking ahead to some of the additional cuts that will need to be made to move the tail of the car to help close the C-Post gaps and that leads me into further thinking about the wheel arches. Martin had suggested two years ago that the wheel arches are way too outdated, so in the process of thinking thru the cuts, both shortening and sectioning, I find myself thinking along the lines of doing the wheel arches like many more modern cars and that is in the shape of and concentric with the tires. Right now I am trying to figure out just how much larger than the tires the arches need to be to look right.

I have also laid out the cuts for the front of the quarter windows and for the 3 inch shortening of the tail of the car. See the pictures of those planned cuts.

I am really enjoying following your reasoning on the placement of the cuts. These details are rarely shown in descriptions of such radical body surgery, but they are really what it is all about. Excellent.

Thanks Martin.

I put a brace under the front of the car to take some of the weight of the overhang off the jack stands, but I think I have bit too much on it. I'm going to take it out and shorten it about an eighth of an inch and then put it back. Apparently there is not as much stress in the body from the overhanging weight in front as in the back. I put my trans jack under the rear previously and took a bunch of that overhanging weight off a couple of days ago.

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...a86a2710c1.jpg
For some reason the verbiage posted before I attached the picture, above.

Here is a picture of the set up for the tail of the C-Posts. I have put a 2 by 4 across in the window sills and blocked it and clamped it in place as a means of holding the tail where they need to be while I weld the A- and B-Posts together. With the tails fixed in place it will be easier to get the C-Post cuts aligned after I cut the tail of the car loose and then the rear corners of the C-Posts.

I am going to move the C-Post cut up the post about 2 inches because I find that there is an indentation under where the bottom cut will otherwise be and I think I need to preserve it. That's one thing about doing this one side at a time - - it helps to learn what to do correctly on the other side.

The two marks on the body at the rear of the quarter window opening is approximately where a section will be removed to move the C-Post rear corner outward and forward. That will be moving that corner up 2 inches and out 2 inches. The section to be cut out will be 2.8 inches wide.

Careful with that slippery slope....

Would changing the arch shape detract too much from the original goal (ala your favorite '34 coupe) of it still looking like a 928 until closer inspection? I dont like the idea of the more rounded/concentric wheel arch going higher into what will be a sectioned belt line. Seems a double-whammy. Maybe consider subtley and slightly lowering the top fender lip over the tire? That could be the Latin in me fighting to expreas itself however :D

Do you have a sketch of what you are trying to achieve here?

Some info on his inspiration is in post 79.

Jerry said this was close but may change dynamically (from post 58):

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...87a1809c50.jpg

Carlos, glad you brought that back, and the way the lines work in that image says yeah, leave the wheel arches alone!

Yes, Carlos. Those thoughts are also still on my mind and in particular in regard to the Wheel Arches. My alternate thought is that I might still keep the original openings, but maybe narrow them a bit at the front and back, and otherwise just move them up in the body as it is sectioned. However, I would, or will, still raise the front arches up into the upper part of the body but only by an inch rather than the full 2 inches of the section. The rear arches would or will keep their shape except for the narrowing front and back. That's all a ways off, so still plenty of time to go over it in my mind. However, some of it makes a difference in how I cut the quarter panels for the tail shortening of the car.

Martin, the phrase "brought that back" kind of struck me as odd, mainly because I have for a long time (months) been logged into Rennlist twice and in one of them I keep this thread up and scrolled down to this image and then leave it there so I can study it every day during or at the end of my usual surfs.

Now that you have removed yourself from my ability to blame you for the round arches, I guess I am back to probably plan B which is to leave them pretty much the same except for maybe shortening them front to back about 1 or 1 1/2 inchs total.

As to the differences in the image from what the end result is going to be, first is that we are no longer going to shorten the wheelbase of the car, so the space between the rear wheel arches and the back of the doors, except for about an inch, which I'll be explaining later, will be closer to the same. Also, the hatch area and tail of the car are going to be quite a bit different. One thing is that the hatch window will be farther forward into the hatch itself; and the other thing is that the tail of the car will not be quite as short as shown in the image.

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...03cca7b8cf.jpg
I cut out a chunk of the roof aft of the sunroof opening, which might seem like a loss of perfectly good roof. We are going to have to fill in the large opening in the roof left by the sunroof and by the expansion of the roof outwardly by the movement of the roof quarter sections, but why, you ask, take out any more roof than needed? There are two reasons. One is that the side cuts of the roof are right at the original apex of the roof, from front to back, and the metal forward of that line is actually sloping down toward the front. However since there is going to be an 8 inch gap right at the apex we need the roof aft of the new apex line to slope slightly upward to the new apex, rather than downward. The other reason is that when we get to grafting in some new donor roof skin we need to be able to reach the underside of the welds with our hammer and dolly technique to make the new hammer welds. With the dolly in my left hand I can't reach under the roof any farther than my bent elbow, so the weld line needs to be fairly close to the rear edge.

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...e463694355.jpg
https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...6dd8f37112.jpg
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In order to make the B-Post cuts as close or even closer to the ones on the driver's side on the other side I made patterns of the cuts and refined them so that the cuts should end up more precise. I'm going out shortly and make some of the remaining cuts to have all four quarter segments of the roof loose.

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...6197a304ad.jpg
I also have the cuts layed out for the rear corner of the C-Post. It will move forward about 2 inches and outboard about the same. I hope all the cuts work out like I plan.

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...618cd56e41.jpg
I did get the third of four roof sections cut loose and trimmed for its new location. Tomorrow i'll work on the fourth.

Random thought: As much as we complain about how small and stupid the sunroof is, you might think about an early 944 sunroof.

Big, manually operated, removable.

I think it would be a big improvement.

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...8a94bf8f2f.jpg
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I put in quite a bit of time on this project today and made some pretty good progress. I got the last quarter roof cut loose and fit, then I layed out some of the possible lines for the rear quarter panel cuts, these based on the idea of keeping the original wheel arches except for shortening them front to back some. Then I decided to cut the rear quarter window corner loose and move it to its new location and that turned out to be quite a chore.

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...3aa45e816a.jpg
https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...690eea7f5d.jpg
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For the quarter window corner movement I first cut out the piece of skin that is going to be eliminated, mainly to see what was inside, besides the bee hive. I found another third member in there which made the cutting out of the piece a little more complex and kind of butchery inside. That doesn't matter since I don't think I'll try to weld it back in.

Then I got the piece loose and cut it off at the upper end then began grinding on it to get it to fit where I want it to end up.

Before cutting this corner loose I had measured the horizontal distance that I need to take up and on the top edge it measured 5 inches but on the lower outboard top edge is measured only 4.5 inches. I haven't figured out why. Now, after moving the corner out and forward 2 inches, I find that there is only about an inch and a half to two inches of the C-Post gap to fill with moving the tail of the car. I can't figure that out either.

I was kind of counting on shortening the tail of the car 3 inches, mainly for the balance in looks with this other body work, but it looks like I will have to settle with 2 inches. Actually that will make that event a little more easily accomplished. Even the 2 inches is going to take some adjustment at the B-Posts to get the tail of the C-Posts to line up correctly.

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...48dc27c525.jpg
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One of the things I just figured out in regard to the sectioning of the car is that the vertical part of the car on the side aft of the door is quite a bit lower than I had thought. When a 2 inch section is taken out there that is going to result in about an inch of offset along the rear lower edge of the door. I was counting on that being only about a half inch, and I was going to use that half inch to narrow the rear wheel arches in front and then another half inch in back. Now I am looking at an inch each way, and I am not sure I want to go that much. Nevertheless, these pictures show where the cuts might be, but also based on the original idea of shortening the tail 3 inches. I'll have to do these over when I finally decide just how much the tail is going to get shortened.

That is not a bad idea, especially if I were somehow stuck on having a sunroof. But I am not; and I am pretty much counting on the inch and a half of head room that I am gaining by eliminating it.

"Chopped and channeled" looked so easy in the 50's.

Actually, Martin, the only aspect of this project that relates to "channeled" will be the floor if we decide to lower it. Since everything that surrounds the floor(s) is in reality some of the "frame" component of the unibody, by lowering the floor in respect to the frame we will actually be doing a sort of reverse channel. On the other hand, sectioning is not the same as channeling, except perhaps in the resulting appearance, in some cases.

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...f2a1504fec.jpg
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Today I took the first roof quarter section off, the left front one, and began doing some of the internal refining of it getting ready for welding and later trimming. Since we have to weld all three layers of metal in the posts I have to cut out the inside layer so that the middle one can be welded then I'll put a patch over the opening and weld it in place. That will be required on three more of the 6 posts. I'll have to do something similar to each side of all 4 roof patches. Then when I get to that part of it I'll have a bunch of welding to do inside laying on my back welding overhead. I wonder how that is going to go.

I also did a little work on the driver's side B-Post and find that I can move it around a little, actually refining its fit, and thereby regain some of the lost tail shortening. I think I am going to finalize the tail shortening on 2 1/2 inches which is a nice compromise between 3 inches and 2 or less. I moved that quarter of the roof back about an eighth of an inch and ground some on the gap to get it to fit better and to allow the tail of that piece to drop just enough to give me back the gap I now want. Moving it slightly actually made some of the joints close up some, but it opened one up a bit, but I think I'll be able to close it with weld filler rod.

Just how we deal with the inside of the roof segments pretty much depends on what we will be doing later with the headliner. I have had three different designs for that going thru my head and they all work with any one of the headliner ideas I have had so far. My first idea was to make some forms and then form some ABS plastic in two halves to fit the inner roof closely, but leaving a gap down the middle for a kind of overhead center console. I am still considering that approach, mainly because it will make the forms the smallest since the center OH console will be about the width of the third brake lite in the hatch window and blend in to that and then flow forward to the front where it would drop down slightly inside the windshied where there would be a small pocket to hide the radar detector just above the inside rear view mirror.

I have the insides of the roof segments pretty well figured out and you can see in one of the above pictures how I have trimmed around the inner edge. That approach lends itself well to the sides and front of the roof, but the rear edge at the front of the hatch seems to be a bit more complex. I haven't decided just how much of that extra metal to trim out to end up with a smoother surface back there. Left alone it is pretty irregular across the back, at least with the innermost of the three members; so I am thinking about just removing all or most of that third member.

My second thought about the headliner is similar, but just excluding the overhead console idea. For that one I am preserving the front overhead light and will be welding in the light recess from the donor roof for it since I cut thru the middle of the original one in making the center front roof cut.

My other thoughts about a headliner include making one with leather and spring wire bows to hold it in much like the old fashioned cars. I could even run the wires crossways or longways, whichever. The problem with that approach is in how to finish the outer edges all around. That tends to lead me back to the formed ABS plastic, at least around the edges and then snapped into place with the original door panel clips.

Overall, at this point I am leaning toward the formed ABS plastic without the overhead console and forming it in two pieces and glue them together in the middle before covering them with foam and leather. With that I think I will still clean up the rear inner edge leaving only two layers of metal, although I might weld in some additional metal for support, but smoother than what is in there now.

About the wheel arches, based on the good input from Martin and Carlos I have abandoned the idea of changing them to circular from their original shape.

My first thought about the wheel arches when designing the section aspect of this project was to leave them as they are, cutting them loose from the fenders in front and the quarter panels in back then sectioning the body and then put them back where they were. That is pretty much how you see them in the photo chop picture that Carlos has cleaned up for us and recently bumped by him. My second thought was to do that except for the front ones which I would shorten their height by one inch and put them back into the 2 inch lower upper body. That would give us a little more metal to work with in shaping the area of the fenders around but mostly above the arches.

After having studied that image of the project for many months I could not escape the feeling that after the car is sectioned the wheel arches just seem to stand out a bit too much. That is what kind of led me to thinking about the radiused arches.

Now I am thinking and planning to keep the arches much the same, but I think I will shorten them front to back by an inch or maybe even an inch and a half, half of that on the front and back of each one. With the front one an inch lower than original and being less wide will, I think, fit the overall design of this car very well.

Then, the rear arches will also be massaged quite a bit to widen them some, maybe about half of what the GTS rear arches are like, but not so pronounced. That shape will depend on just what it looks and feels like when we get to it and start hammering.

All this time I have been thinking about and wondering just how I am going to make forms for the headliner if I were to have it vacu-formed in ABS plastic. Then, after I posted what I did about it above, I began thinking more about just how such a form or half forms might be made. In that process I was thinking about how strong and firm it or they will need to be to withstand the pressure, and I was still thinking about the set-up time and cost for the process at my Plastic Guy's place, plus the wait time for them to get to it. Then it suddenly occurred to me that the same process, form making, can be utilized in mold making and then molding the headliner in fiberglass. In fact the mold can be made in fairly easy to handle segments for fitting in the car, can be much lighter, and then fastened together to lay-up the fiberglass. Duh!

I think the stock long, and squared wheel-arches make the car look archaic, even with aero-mirrors and nice rims installed. They just stick-out like a sore thumb, and especially with the stock 4x4 ride height.

Therefore, rounded arches which surrounds the tires would look much better, and modern, IMO.

Perhaps your new plan to shorten them will improve their looks.

I keep looking at the picture of the chopped and sectioned 928 and seeing what you are seeing also. Then I am thinking that shortening them a half inch might be about right. However that still seems like not quite enough. Then I go to an inch and a half and that is looking better. But, I find that when we get to the sectioning of the lower body the rear bottom corner of the doors is going to be moving aft a full inch, based on the relative location of the vertical part of the body in relation to the vertical line of the aft edge of the doors. So, I kind of hope to use that full inch for narrowing the arches; but by measuring the width of the arches at the bottom of the quarter panel they come out only 29 inches wide. With the tires being 25 to 25.5 inches in diameter that seems to leave only about an inch of space between the view of the tires and the arches.

Then, I still keep looking at the picture and realize that where I am measuring the width of the arches is well above the center of the tires, so the actual width of the arches at nearer the bottoms is much greater than 29 inches; and the side view looks like there is close to 3 inches of arch width front and back of the tire that can close. The result is that I think a full 2 inches of narrowing the arches will fit the move of the panel in front of the arches and work for the rear also and will save a lot of welding in front of the arches.

Some of that welding may have to come back in if I decide that the rear arches don't need to move up into the upper body the full 2 inch section, but rather, like in the front, maybe only 1 inch.

Well, to be fair, chopping the top on a 30s era car was a lot easier. The pillars were vertical, so chopping didn't involve anywhere near as much of the "jigsaw puzzle" issues that are going on here.

And even back then, as usual, doing it right took a lot more skill and effort than most people realize.
There's a reason that the "legends" from back then became legends in the first place.

I spent some time on the left rear roof quarter mostly on the inside of it cutting out some of the extra sheet metal that is going to be in the way of the headliner, and then I cut out where the patches will have to be to complete the joints in the gap filler patches.

I have inspected the donor roof and see that there is plenty of metal in it to do everything that it is going to give itself up for.

Then I made pretty near final fitting of the right rear quarter of the roof and will next take it and the right front off and clean them up on their undersides.

I also changed some of my markings for the quarter panels both incorporating the 2.5 inch shortening of the tail of the car, the changes to the wheel arches, and some of the sectioning.https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...658cb17bc4.jpg
https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...15604b2cc2.jpg
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https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...d4ba4fd44d.jpg

I took quite a bit of the third layer of sheet metal out of the rear of the roof, mainly because some of it came out with the sunroof material, but then to clean it up for better headroom, especially above the rear seats, which I now think will be retained, since we are not shortening the car thru the middle of where they are. I feel the need to put something back into the rear roof header where the hatch hangs, and I think I have a pretty good idea of what to put back in there. I have some 1 inch by half inch channel steel in about eighth or 3/16 thickness that I think I can mill to a nice profile to fit into what looks like a nice space for it and then bend it slightly to match the final curve of the roof in that area after the filler patch is welded in. Then I can trim out the rest of what is pretty much left over leaving a nice profile of material that will be as strong as needed across back there. I am also going to cut and form some sheet metal to weld in to fill in smoothly where I have cut out the inner corners as shown.https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...d54e02224b.jpg

One of the most popular cars of all time to chop the top is the 49 Mercury. Nothing "simple" about that roof-line:




https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...16e155f6de.jpg




https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...731ca2cf7d.jpg

That's Cobra's car! :)

The second one is just about perfect! I only wonder why the builder didn't french those taillights.

Keeping the rain gutters in tact is an interesting touch too.

Missed that!

Not a lot of apparent progress in the "big" areas, but I have been busy detailing the roof quarter panels getting them ready for the various patches and welding. Still quite a bit to do in those regards.

I propped up the donor roof and then found and remembered that it is actually complete. That means that it weighs probably over a hundred fifty pounds, so it is going to be a bear to move around. I may end up just cutting it up where it stands, but first it looks like I am going to have to take all of the sunroof and structure out of it https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...ec277a6556.jpg
https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...2da1ddfda8.jpg
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I began cutting the sunroof and its structure out of the donor roof, and it went a little better than when I took it all out of the subject car. By studying the pieces cut out before I was better able to tell where to cut this time because it was welded and where to simply pull it free where it was glued. Having it out has reduced the overall weight by probably over 50 pounds.

Now I think I will cut off much of what was left for me on all 6 posts, and that should make it very easy to handle while I measure, mark and cut the gap patches out of it. I hope to get to that tomorrow. along with working over and cleaning up the rest of the weld joints. Then, I can't think right now what it is that I think I need to do before I can do any welding.https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...399c496523.jpg
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I got all 6 posts cut off of the donor roof and then it became much easier to handle. I took it into the shop and began cutting some of the gap filler patches out of it. I got about one and a half of them done. I started with the one over the driver's door and first cut the bottom channel out of the Donor roof and then fitted it. Then I matched it back to its cut exactly and then marked and cut out the outer part of the patch.

Once these parts are cut out they have to be trimmed to fit as closely as possible and they have to have their curvature changed to match what is needed for the new roof.

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...cfafe01302.jpg
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It is a real chore to do this fitting of the patches and keep all four quarters of the roof in correct alignment.

I got to go out after supper and finish the passenger side roof patch. It fits real nice. I think I might adjust the curvature a little bit more, but it is not too far off.https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...e423b50c8d.jpg
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I have designed the front roof gap to take three pieces to patch it back together. The outer one, of course, will simply be the 4 inches wide to fill the gap in the skin, then the next one in will fill the gap in the top of the inner structure, finally the last one will be the one with the opening in it for the dome light. They are staggered so that I can work each of the welds without a layer of metal being in the way. I have the front of the donor roof laid out and will start cutting those patches maybe tomorrow.

Then the rear patch will be done in only one piece, but only after I figure out how I want to put some heavier structure back in there. The structure will likely be put back in from underneath after the patches are all in place waiting for the inside welding.

Another awesome project Jerry!
Makes me consider buying some stock in vice grips...

:D

At this point I find that the roof measures about a sixteenth of an inch taller on the passenger side from the other. I think it is in the B-Post cut. Before I progress I think I will refine that cut, and maybe the A-Post cut as well, to see if I can get the alignment correct. Also the tail of the C-Posts are not quite symmetrical in their locations, being off about an eighth of an inch. That will probably take care of itself when I get the B-Post on the passenger side correct. I don't think these corrections will affect the fit of the patch on the passenger roof, or at least not enough to matter.

I spent today's work time on this project working on the joints mostly on the passenger side to get the roof even on both sides. That came out pretty well and I think I have it very close to exact, or probably as close as I am going to get it. The problem with leaving too much of an error in any given place it that the errors tend to compound themselves as you work forward. It didn't seem to have any effect on the passenger side roof patch, so we are good to go there.

I also did some mill work on the piece of steel I want to put across the inside of the roof along the rear edge. I started with some 1 1/4 inch by 3/16 inch thick angle iron and milled one side of it down to about 5/8 inch. Then I made one edge of it thin enough to weld in spots. Now I need to figure out how to mill the back of the short edge at the correct angle to nest in the area it needs to fit. When I figure that out then I'll be able to start bending it to the correct curvature to fit. If it works out it will be welded in toward the end of the roof work. I think I'll also mill the other edge down to thin enough to weld to the sheet metal it will be laying up against.

One of the things you might be able to see in some of the pictures, (but I'll take some better ones later to show what I am talking about) is that the A and B-Posts do not line up exactly. The A-Posts are tapered some and although the outer lines are the same, some of the surfaces inside do not match. I'll have to cut some slots in them in various places to be able to bend then to match for welding, then weld up the slots. As to the B-Posts, some of the same applies, but based mostly on some slight curvature at the front top of the posts. I'll be doing the same, or similar there to get them to match for welding.

After I get the front and rear gap patches in place and clamped I'll then weld the A and B-Posts. With those pretty well fixed I'll finally be able to start welding in the patches. When I get that done I'll be able to cut the outer tail loose and move it forward the 2.5 inches I am planning. I think I'll leave the gap flexible so I can determine for sure that I can get the quarter window rear corners to fit.

Another thing you are going to notice about this project is that the car is not going to look a lot like the photo chop picture we have been going by since it shows the tail of the car shortened by 6 inches or maybe more. In our case we are going to have only 2.5 inches and even that is going to look like much less since the rear of the wheel arches are going to be moved forward an inch. In appearance the tail is still going to look kind of long. I hope that doesn't detract too much from the overall look. I'm afraid that it might end up looking something like the second 49 Merc shown above that is chopped the most. With its roof moved forward like that it makes the rear of that car look much like the tail of a comet - - it is way too long.

This work is really hard on my aging hands.https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...6e5e66e48b.jpg
https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...2aa1239444.jpg

Counterpoint: Jerry's Comet would be a really cool name for this beast

I agree 100% that the tail is WAY too long, as well as the side glass.

Most sport cars have their side-glass end right at the rear axle centerline.

Something else to consider is the humongous rear-hatch glass, and make it taper inward at the bottom to give it a 'big shoulders, little waist' look. I think that would really help make the rear of the 928 look sexier.

The rear quarter windows are going to be reduced substantially in size, and that will balance well with the lower door windows. However, I think that is also going to add to the resulting long look of the tail of the car. Where the tail-ends of the C-Posts fall is pretty much dictating where the rear of the car ends up. What we will see is what we will get. As to the hatch window, that and the hood are the two components of this project that will go unmolested. The hatch will change quite a bit, but not the glass. The hatch header panel is going to be about 6 inches narrower (from front to back) and the C-Post aspect of the hatch will be about 2 to 2 1/2 inches wider than original in order to fill the new space between the window and the new C-Post locations. the tail end of the hatch will also be about 2 to 2 1/2 inches farther aft from the outer rear corners of the hatch body. I'm real anxious to see how that is going to look.

We will be working on the hatch after the 6 roof posts are fixed in place and the outer welds are fully made; maybe even before the big hole in the roof is filled in.

I was going to work on the front roof gap patches, but got distracted with double checking my fitting and then began cleaning up some of the other cut edges where the paint must be removed before welding. That took a couple of hours, but it also helped to show that the pieces of roof can be taken off and put back where they belong which is a great advantage when the final assembly starts.

Maybe tomorrow I 'll get the front patches made and maybe even the rear center patch.

Then I think I have figured out how to set my mill up to mill the rear edge roof stiffener to the desired shape. I'll work on that some in the next day or two.

And it won't be chopped and channeled, it will be feathered!

This afternoon I got the front center outer patch cut and fit in place. I think it will make the top edge curve very nice and hopefully it will match the new edge of the window. I also have the two inner parts of that patch roughed out, but I'll have to wait until I clear out the inside and start welding on the insides of the joints and patches before I trim those to fit.

I also worked on the tail ends of the C-Posts to even them up with each other to help get ready for the cutting to shorten the tail of the car.

(edit): I see in the photos that the front roof patch is actually about a quarter of an inch wider, front to back, than the mating edges of the original roof. I have been pretty careful to preserve the edges of these two pieces of roof, in particular, since there needs to be as much original roof there as possible, so the conclusion is that the sunroof in the white car was not located in the same position as the one in our subject car. I wouldn't have expected that much variation is the cars as produced.https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...c3918cf5d2.jpg
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Here are a couple of pictures I promised which show the slight difference in the otherwise mating surfaces where the A- and B-Posts have been chopped. You have to look closely to see the displaced edges. I'll be cutting some slots longways near these in order to bend them into better alignment. https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...f56af866ff.jpg
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Here are two pictures of the side vies of what we have to this point. It pretty much looks like the previous view like this, but it is much closer to final here, and basically waiting on the start of welding.https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...79fac89915.jpg
https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...cb90597a57.jpg

Now I have the last of the roof patches cut and fit, this one in the center of the rear edge of the roof. Next I'll take some of the paint off this one and off the front center one and then cut the bend-slots in the A- and B-Posts and then start welding this weekend. I hope I have the correct torch for the welding and enough Acetylene gas to make some progress.https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...95b3f9a2e0.jpg
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Now that I have the donor roof reduced to basically a pile of scrap, it occurs to me that the long pieces of the C-Posts that are cut off might have the correct curvature, or close to it, to make something to weld into the rear roof inside, rather than the angle iron I have been trying to work up. I think I'll look into that later today and see what I can come up with. In any case I am abandoning the angle iron piece at this point. If something out of the C-Posts does not work out, I'll probably be using some of the blank sheet metal out of the donor roof and simply fab up something to weld into the rear roof edge to kind of complete its three-layer cross section, which is otherwise reduced to about two layers.

I cut a formed strip off of one of the C-Post left over from the donor top and find that the curvature fits the rear edge of the roof just about perfectly. I have it trimmed roughly to nest inside the rear edge of the roofhttps://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...fd1110fd4a.jpg
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and will do some further trimming and fitting of it to weld into the roof for the additional structure I desire.

I think I should make the patches that go in the rear corners inside the roof before I weld these puzzle pieces in place, rather than waiting and having to do it working upside down. Here is one of them so far, but when I got to this point and thought I should weld it in, I discovered that I don't have any welding rod. I guess I'll have to see if any of the regular hardware store carry it because I'm pretty sure the welding shops are closed today.https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...e62401968e.jpg

I found one of the welder supply houses open and bought about 3 pounds of rod in 1/16 and 3/32 diameter. Then after I got back home and set up to weld a bit I found that the Acetylene is only 5 pounds of pressure in the tank and that is not enough to maintain the correct flame for welding. So I went back to the Welding supply, but found that they were closed. They must have been open only until about 1 pm.

Then I ran across my buddy, Doug, and he said he had a large bottle of Acetylene that I could have and that he would bring it over this morning. I hope he does. He has been wanting to come by and see what I am doing with this 928 anyway.

So I spent some time making further refinements to my joints, mainly because I finally realized that when I raised the chop in the B-Post by a quarter of an inch in order to eliminate the need to shorten the wheelbase of the car, (and that worked, better than I had planned), that I could now lower it a tiny bit and gain back the full 3 inch shortening of the tail of the car. So I did, and the joints at the B-Posts came together very nice with even less of a need to cut slots to get them to match.

That didn't go exactly as planned. What Doug had was a large bottle of Argon/CO2, so he brought it anyway. It wont help me do any welding today, but I think I might be able to put it to use when I get to the point of trying my MIG or TIG welders on some aspects of this project. In the meantime I guess I'll work on the patch for the inside of the other rear roof corner and on the slots to get the A- and B-Post cuts to line up better.

One interesting thing I have found in making all these minute adjustments in the chop cuts is that the roof is not actually coming straight down. I find that in the front the roof came down 3 inches and in doing so it spread out only 3.75 inches, or 1 and 7/8 inch each side. Then in the middle (at the rear edge of the roof proper) it spread out 4.25 inches or 2 and 1/8 each side. That then means that the tail ends of the C-Posts are spread apart another half inch or just under 5 inches.

That is causing a move of the rear quarter window corners nearly 2.5 inches out and the same forward, since they are moving on a 45 degree angle to the axis of the car. My original plan was for a two inch move out and forward of those corners and about just under 3 inches coming out of the bottom edge of those corner pieces. Now I have nearly an additional half inch to take out of those locations to get the corners to fit. I'll wait on that until I weld the A- and B-Posts back together and then tuck the tail in 2.5 or hopefully 3 inches to get it all to line up.

The only drawback to his discovery is that the width of the resulting hatch sides is going to be bit greater than originally planned; and I still don't know just how that is going to look.

I think the difference is a result of taking the B-Post cuts so near the top rather than lower at the middle or bottom because those Posts have some curve to them while the windshield Posts are very straight.

I didn't get much done today, but I did make the other rear roof corner patch for inside.

Here is a picture of the rear quarter of the car at this point,mainly for reference. I hope to be cutting the tail of it free pretty soon.https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...a27276a994.jpg
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One thing I have been silently disappointed about was what appeared as a much less narrowing of the B-Post (the sail panel of our car) than I had originally expected from the pictures and preliminary calculations. When I got the B-Posts cut and lowered into their new position it has been appearing to me that the difference in the width at the cuts is only less than a half inch when I had been calculating that should be closer to an inch and a quarter. I had been kind of counting on the greater amount to help balance out the rest of the chop.

However, upon studying the pictures and then confirming on the car it finally occurred to me that I was viewing it incorrectly. Upon more careful evaluation I see that the front edge of the quarter windows are going to move forward closer to an inch rather than less than half inch. That amount will help balance out the look of the side view of the car when we are finished with the chop.https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...044eea3d60.jpg
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This is some crazy stuff....in a good way. How you are getting this stuff to all work out and "line up" with the curves, angles and patches is :bowdown: cant wait to see the end result!

As a side note, I have to say that I'm very impressed with the structural sturdiness of the roof and pillars.

It's been long known how strong the roof of the 928 is. IIRC, they had to make cuts in it for the Monster Truck Bigfoot to properly crush it in the second "Cannonball" movie.

Now I see exactly why it's as strong as it is.

And, of course, I'm very impressed with how Jerry is doing this. Way cool. I can't wait to see it finished.

Thanks Tony and Joe. I am anxious also, but trying not to get ahead of myself with it. Along that line I think the delay(s) in welding are trying to tell us something. That something is that at this point the vise grips are pretty well holding what we have so far and there is not a great need to weld any of it permanently, just yet. The better plan is going to be to cut the tail loose and move it and finish up the alignment of the tail ends of the C-Posts before we do any welding, at least as to permanent placement of what we have so far. There may be a need for some very tiny adjustment at the B-Posts in particular, and even a 16th of an inch in the B-Posts can make a much bigger difference at the tail ends of the C-posts.

So I am going to cut the front edges of the quarter windows out and then cut the tail off and set it up for forward movement so we can fit the bottom corners. Then we will know just exactly how much the tail can be shortened in the process, and we may be able to set the shortness at the 3 inches desired and then work backwards to the B-Posts to get it all correct.

I was even going to rebuild the structure that is aligning the tail ends of the C-Posts so that it is not dependent on the window sills, but now I think we can simply take it out and then put it back when the tail is moved; and, I think I have all the cuts figured out for these movements.

I think I'll get off early today and get to make some progress on this project. I'm going to clean off the current marks and then lay out my new plan in black marks. Then I think I'll start cutting off the tail. There is going to be a lot of metal to cut in that part of this project, but it will get us back to fitting the C-Post tails to the quarter window corners and then we can start welding.

There is some welding we can do on the inside of the rear quarters of the roof in the meantime, and I may try to do that this afternoon also.

One of the additional considerations in regard to the tail of the car is that it actually tapers a bit from the rear of the doors to over the wheel arches. In the area of the shortening of the tail, just above the arches, I think there is about a quarter of an inch of total taper that will have to be adjusted for and I think I'll be able to do the adjustment simply with some force. I'm going to make a simple tool with a tube and some bar stock and a bolt and nut that I can use to push the sides of the tail apart to line up again with their new position.

Oops, I was in the wrong membership when I drafted this.

I layed out the new cutting and fitting lines on the rear quarter panels for moving the tail, and then I was able to cut the front edge of the left quarter window out so it can be trimmed to fit and moved to its new location just short of an inch forward.https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...95e61e2de2.jpg
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Jerry, is this the same car Your building?

Yes, one and the same.

We can begin to see the new size (I was going to say shape and size, but the shape does not really change) of the new quarter windows from this picture. I was hoping to narrow the size of the B-Post a bit more than this, but I guess we will have to live with what we now are going to have.

I am going to cut the tail off of the car to move it forward, hopefully this weekend. I'll be cutting it at the front of the several vertical lines shown and then overlapping (underlapping?) the skin aft of the cut and moving it inside to one of the other lines. I'll probably start with the line at 2 1/2 inches and then begin to work the window rear corner piece into its new position, gradually working it in and trying to see how much more I can tuck the tail in as I go.

I pretty much have the other cuts for the tail figured out, except for the kind of sideways stanchion inside the bottom rear of the rear fender which I'll need to cut loose in some way. I think it needs to be moved with the tail, but I'm not sure just where and how to cut it loose. I am hoping that I might be able to drill out the spot welds and move it intack to a forward location, but we will see when we get into it.https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...ccd0dd83b7.jpg

I cut the front edge of the right rear quarter window loose to move it also. I still hope to cut the tail loose this weekend.https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...b8012971cd.jpg
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A shortened car with 928 DNA. http://www.thepetrolstop.com/2014/01/dacon-828.html

Pretty cool chit Jerry.......Really!

Hi Paul. That's nice of you to say.

My plan to at least start cutting the tail off this weekend materialized, but not so much as I had expected. The delay was in finding the spot weld drill bits I had purchased some time ago in anticipation of the need on the project. Now I can't find them. I did find a pretty good substitute at HF today and have put one of them to use. They tend to loose their teeth in the process since they are not actually drill bits but rather small hole saws that cut a small ring around the weld spot.

I have one side of the welds cut out and some other cutting near it and will try to complete the other side in a while. Then I think I know just where to make the rest of the cuts to get the tail loose so I can do the final figuring for putting the tail back where we need it.https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...249107c9c5.jpg
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I have some more of it cut, but not loose yet. Tomorrow I think I'll plan and make the last four cuts, but I have to locate some registration blocks on it first and maybe weld back a previous cut I made by mistake. https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...95acfaa67d.jpg
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I learned a couple of things in this exercise. One is that most of the spot welds are not actually welds. They are just melted spots in the sheet metal but not welded to the metal underneath. The other thing is that the cars may be held together to a great extent by the tough undercoating.

What I'm going to do next is mark and make the next 4 cuts that should totally sever the tail from the car. However I think I'll find that I need to soften and then penetrate and peal the undercoating that is likely still holding it together. Maybe also make some final cuts of metal that I may have missed in the cutting process. I'll then pull the tail skin off to the rear and then do quite a bit of cleaning of the exposed surfaces and in particular the ones that will be involved in the reassembly.

One of the reasons to take it completely off is that before I can put it back on I will need to remove the two tail stanchions that have the spot welds that I have just drilled out. I think those stanchions are spot welded to the tail ends of the frame and will have to be moved forward with the tail skins.

The undercoating is tough to clean off, but when I heat it with my heat gun then it is much softer to peel off with a chisel.

Jerry, I was so inspired by your project that I decided to do some sectioning of my own. But as an autopsy pathologist I clearly do not have the surgeon's hands you are blessed with. My cuts were a total failure:

https://webfiles.uci.edu/redwards/pu...%203-25-18.jpg

Hi Rob. I can't tell from the picture just what you were trying to accomplish, and it might have been a failure, but it looks to me like all your cuts were totally successful. There are a lot of pieces of 928 there.

I made three more cuts at the tail of my project 928, but it is still intact. I need to do some welding on it before I make the final cuts because I made a couple of cuts right at one of the corners that don't need to be there and it will be very weak at those cuts when it becomes a separate piece. I also did some cleaning of the pieces cut loose so far to remove the rubber like undercoating. That stuff is really tough to remove. I have to soften it with my heat gun and then pry it off with a chisel.

Here are the other three cuts I made yesterday. I'm going to try this afternoon to cut it loose, and hope I am as successful as Rob . . . getting it loose that ishttps://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...3438377e36.jpg
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...13232affd6.jpg

Pictures didn't show up at first in the previous post.

I made what I thought were the last cuts to separate the tail of the car, but found that it is still fastened by something back in the corners. At first I thought is may simply be the undercoating, but upon further forcing of the issue I found where the metal is bending and now think that there is a flange at the tail of the frame that is not completely severed. I'll try to figure out where and how best to cut it and then Ihttps://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...f12ca5e4fd.jpg
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should have the tail off.

Then I will have to move the two stanchions that are holding the very back of the tail to the frame. They need to be carefully removed and moved forward to where the tail is going to end up and then welded back.

My most recent measurements and calculations suggest that we will be able to shorten the tail as much as 3 inches pretty readily. I am kind of hoping for a full 3 and 1/2 inches; but only if that can be done without too much problem at the rear corners inside the baggage area. We will see.

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I finally got the tail cut off. I'll have two more small steps backwards before I can start putting it all back together, at least in respect to the top chop. I still need to cut the two stanchions at the rear corners of the frame loose so they can be moved forward to wherever the tail ends up. I also have some of the surfaces mostly cleaned up where we need to do the welding. The stanchions are spot welded on, but my little hole saw bits don't fit quite square, so they are not wanting to cut the spot welds very well. I am going to try again to find the other spot weld bits and hope if I find them they may work better.

Dang, that is brilliant. I'll never look at a coat hanger the same again.

As to the tail cut, what you can see in the pictures is that the frame of the 928 is both quite distinct, at least in this area, and is still intact. That means that the frame is not getting shortened with the tail. My plan has always been to shorten the tail of the car but to preserve the areas for the spare tire and for the fuel tank. The result is going to be that the frame sticks out further under the tail skin than before by as much as the tail skin is moved forward. That means that the bumper bar between the frame and the outer skin is not going to fit.

What I have been planning to do is to replace the aluminum bumper bar with a steel leaf spring. It will be much thinner than the aluminum bar, but it should be able to be mounted on the original bumper shocks and be formed to match the underside of the original poly bumper cover, even as sectioned. I haven't done any detailed design work with that, but it will have to wait until we know just how much space there is going to be for it.

Couldn't you 'just' trim off as much of the upper and lower horizontal portions of the rear bumper bar as necessary, yet still maintain the impact resistance of the 'U' channel? Or are the lateral edges of the rear bumper cover going to be so far forward that they would preclude this? Call me paranoid but I'd want something more than a leaf spring between my plastic gas tank and the texting teen plowing into me. Maybe a fuel cell? :)

To me Rob, that is pretty much a contradiction. When the horizontal portions to the leaf spring are trimmed away, even only mostly, since we need to gain at least 3 inches of clearance, that is going to leave much less protection than something similar in spring steel. In respect to the leaf spring, I think you have in mind something kind of like what might be in the rear of your Toyota pickup, while I am thinking Mack Truck or D-7 Cat. I am envisioning a leaf spring that is about 3/8 inch thick and about 3 inches wide in cross section and as wide as needed to span the inside of the bumper cover.

I got the two stanchions removed and cleaned up some and that put us in the position of putting the tail skin back on to see how it is going to fit and look.https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...cee12b4316.jpg
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Then I put the tail skin back on the car and set it preliminarily at the three inch marks. I had to do some cutting in a couple of places to get it to sit correctly, but it is looking really great at this point. I think the shortness of the tail is going to give the car some really nice proportions.

Right now at the three inch mark everything seems to be falling into place, but I am still hoping to fit the tail to the 3.5 inch mark.https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...6aab43cc72.jpg
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I am speechless, Jerry. That is some incredible work. I bet you are enjoying it, too! Thank you for giving us some glimpses into the evolving process!

Thanks, Carlos. I am happy to share the progress, particularly since I too can study the pictures as we go along and that helps me make decisions about what must be done next, and how to do it.

One of the things we need to plan for now is the sectioning, and we find that the tail light sockets are going to be somewhat of a problem in that stage of the project. I find that the sockets are actually pretty much wider, top to bottom, than they may need to be for the S4 style lights. I think that may be because the early lights took up a bit more space, top to bottom, than the later ones. Nevertheless, I think we need to allow for some extra space there in the sectioning since otherwise the section will come right out of the middle of the sockets.

To adjust for that I am going to cut the top of the rear corners of the frame out and use that space as part of the new tail light sockets. I'll cut the frame out down to about the top of where the rear bumper shocks will be and then kind of round it out to match the shape of the sheet metal around the sockets. With everything cut loose as it is now, now is a good time to accomplish that.

About the spot weld drill bits, the coat hanger idea reminded me of the thing I learned from my Grandad many years ago, when I was about 5, I think, and that was that if you need something you don't need to go to the store to try to find it, you can just make it for yourself. Then it occurred to me that I knew how to sharpen a drill bit, so I put one in my lathe and ground the end pretty flat, except for a tiny point in the middle and then took it out and ground the two flutes to a cutting angle. Although it was not as long as I would have liked, it worked just fine in drilling out the spot welds holding the stanchions to the sides of the frame.

About the wheel arches - - it has always kind of struck me that for the early cars, before the GTS, the rear wheel arches don't quite coordinate with the front ones. The front ones are pretty much convex above the arches but the rears are concave. After all the previous discussion about how to deal with them, none of it in the context of this difference, I have decided to make the rear ones a little more like the fronts, kind of like the factory did with the GTS, but not quite so much.

When we do the section, as I think I have mentioned before, the bottom rear corners of the doors and door openings will have to move aft about an inch. That whole part of the rear quarter panel, including the front half of the wheel arch, will move aft that much. Then, to cure my problem with the front edge of the arches (not the concavity), but the shape of the arches, I will move the front bottom of the arches forward just about the same inch that the whole half moves aft. That will soften the upper front corner of the arches. The rear of the arches, which are now cut out of the quarter panels, will move forward about a half inch. Then with the section the whole arch will stay the same with the upper part of the body moving down inside them, which looks more like the arches are moving up higher into the panels.

Then I will simply massage the sheet metal left to give the quarter panels the shape I have in mind. They should end up about a half inch wider than the originals, at the center and about an inch toward the rear where they will be kind of flared. That is where the quarter panel is going to show the shortening of the car we are working on now.

Wow. Seeing the back of the car all cut up makes me want to make some sort of comment about how "you worked your tail off".

I understand what you are saying about the rear bumper. I think a 3" x 3/8" chunk of spring steel spanning the back end would be more than adequate. It will add some weight though.

FWIW, a "spot weld" is nothing more than melted steel. It's not a real 'weld'. It's just using electrical resistance to heat up a very small area to a very high temp, melting it a bit and holding it in place until it cools and solidifies.

Last - have you given any thought to the interior? The headliner will be an interesting job, but what about the rear quarters, hatch trim, A pillar trim? And what about the doors? How are you planning on doing those?

Hi Joe. Thanks for your input. As to the spot welds, I disagree. How you describe them is in fact a weld since the metal melts and mixes together then cools. That is the definition of a weld.

As to the interior, I pretty much have that planned out in some detail. I have mentioned the headliner before and will be making a mold for a headliner shell probably before I even find and fill in the large opening in the roof, but after the many pieces are welded together.

As to the rear quarter panels, they will likely be sectioned from originals in much the same way that the outside is being cut apart and put back together, then I'll probably piece them together with fiberglass and epoxy.

As to the door panels I think the section will come out of them somewhere in the bottom segment that is under the carpet. That bottom area may end up being formed almost entirely in fiberglass to make the new contour.

I'm surprised that you didn't ask about the center console; but that has pretty well been planned out also. I'll be telling more about that later when we get to it.

Then, If I continue on the current course to retain the rear seats, I have a complete new design worked out and mostly up for those, a design that might lend itself to any given 928, in fact. More about that also when we get closer to it.

Well, you had commented on the spot welds earlier. My point was (and is) that there's no metal added to the weld. Spot welds are notoriously inconsistent. "Robot welding" has reduced this some, but not entirely.

I hadn't even thought about the center console or the seats. I was wondering more about the interior panels that fit on the outer 'perimeter' of the car.

And my question about the doors was more towards the doors themselves. With the roof chopped, the upper frames around the windows will also have to be chopped to match. Have you done any work on that yet?

Hi again Joe. My previous comment about the spot welds not being actual welds was based on the fact that although the metal of both sheets was melted in the process, none of the melted metal merged so they did not in fact weld. Welds don't have to have metal added to be welds, just same metal melting together

Of course the doors have to be chopped also, but that will have to come after the roof is completed. We can't very well chop the doors and try to fit the roof to them. It has to work the other way; and I'll be posting about that when we get there. Stay tuned. The Hatch will also be highly modified so as to utilize the original window but then fit it to the significantly wider, but shorter hatch body/frame.

This evening I got the left rear quarter window trimmed to closely fit its new spot. With a little bit of holding of alignment I think it can be welded in place and have the resulting lines look right.

I think I am going to be stuck, or at least stick myself at the 3 inches of shortening rather than try to stretch it to 3.5 inches. Aside from the nice fit at this point there are a couple of other minor factors that work well with 3 inches and the trouble to deal with them differently kind of outweighs the minor visual advantage of the additional half inch.https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...a50e1de3b5.jpg
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Jerry, you are amazing. I know what it's like to get deeply involved in a project like this. It's kind of thrilling, and challenging, truly rewarding. Thanks so much for sharing.
Dave

It looks like the new shape of the rear quarter windows is really coming into focus. I just hope that the sort of long slender look does not make the 928 look too much like the long tailed chopped 49 Merc.

Actually I think the quarter windows are getting reduced by maybe as much as half of their original surface area. When we get closer to having them finish shaped I think I'll take a picture of one of them with an original window laying over the new opening just to compare. Might be interesting. Nevertheless they seem to retain much of their iconic shape and style.

I spent some time cutting some of the rear frame corner tops off, but I need to pull the tail skin off to try to finish that up more carefully. Then I'll weld in some material to cuver up the resulting openings and then later blend it is with the tail light sockets in the tail skin.

Before pulling the tail off again I went ahead and cut the other quarter window rear corner off and then cut and ground on it to fit. I guess I cut is a little short, but even after I ground on it some more it is still too short. I guess I'll have to weld on a piece and the cut it again because the gap is a little too wide to try to fill with welding rod.

Edit: I guess I wasn't thinking - - - I just pulled the tail off to do the frame corners and clean some of the undercoating off of the inside of it for later shaping and welding, then it occurred to me when I was putting it back on that all I need to do to close the gap mistake I made is to put the tail back on a little tighter to close the gap. Then I may need to grind the piece on the other side to match, but then we can call it good.

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Very educational. Thanks for sharing the process and thinking.

I took the tail off and then cut the top of the two frame corners down for tail light socket clearance when we do the section. I'll have to weld in some material to close them up but that will have to wait for the section job since some of the fill-in will be the bottoms of the actual socketshttps://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...15b975fda0.jpg
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Happy Easter to all of you. I haven't gotten much done on the project yet today, but some. Now I have to fix Easter dinner for the family and my Son is coming over since his wife and child are at her folks out of town.

What I did today was make some more measurements and then fit the front edge of the LH rear quarter window. Now we can see the actual shape and size it is going to be in the end. I also determined that with the frame stanchion installed in its new location of the right side, 3 inches forward or its original place, it is going to interfere with the neck of the fuel tank. I haven't decided yet what to do about that.

One thought is that I could just eliminate the stanchion, or I could make a new smaller one, or I could modify the fuel tank. I'm not sure yet just how to modify the fuel tank; and we are going to have to modify it anyway since the section will require the neck of the tank to be sectioned 2 inches. I'm not even sure what it is made out of, but I have been thinking of plastic welding.

After Easter dinner yesterday I took my son Tim out to look at my progress on the Custom 928 and then I was showing and telling him about the problem with the neck on the fuel tank. While I was doing that I also noticed that with the tail of the car shortened 3 inches the right tail light socket is also protruding into the space for the fuel tank neck. That kind of complicates the solution to that problem.

My first thought was that that is going to pretty much focus our solution on modifying the neck of the tank. But, I was also showing and explaining to Tim about how I also need to move the opening for the fuel tank neck in the quarter panel back since the panel moved but the tank is not moving. In addition I discovered a couple of brackets spot welded up inside the quarter panel for mounting the fuel tank, and they would need to be moved also.

My next thought was that maybe the simplest solution would be to simply cut the entire neck of the fuel tank off and fabricate a different kind of filler neck, maybe out of some kind of flex tubing. But, after I thought about how I might do that fabrication, what I think is the final solution came to me and that is to simply fabricate an entire new fuel tank to solve all of it and minimize or eliminate the additional work needed at the quarter panel.

This whole thought process tells me that the tail was wagging the dog, or in this case the tank was wagging the car, so to say. Making a new tank turns it all around like I think it ought to be; and in the long run is probably going to be less work. I am already thinking about how to weld up a new fuel tank in 6061 aluminum and maybe even fab some kind of belly plate to protect it. We might even make one that holds more fuel for whatever that might be worth.

Hi Jerry,
Is there a ready made fuel tank or fuel cell that would fit, and maybe even be better than OEM?
Just an idea. Great project.
Thanks for sharing again,
Dave

Hi Dave. I have no idea about the availability of an aftermarket fuel tank or fuel cell that might work here. My thought is that a "tank" would likely be made to fit where and how the original one does and with it we would likely have the same problems. A "Cell" on the other hand might be something to investigate in hopes of finding something that would fit the space and have a filler neck that could be put just about anyplace.

Here's one from Amazon. Many others.

Dave

Well, yeh, but . . . .

I have been giving some thought to the design of the new fuel tank, but that aspect of this project will have to wait some.

At this point I think we need to remove just about all of what we have cut loose at this point and begin to refine our joints for welding. There is a slight kink in the line of the rear edge of the roof, and I need to figure out why. In all of the refitting I think we are going to end up with the tail of the car being tightened up a tiny amount, but not enough to really notice in the final look. At least we still have the flexibility to move it some as may be needed.

Also I think it will be interesting and maybe of some value later, to have a picture of the car with everything that we have cut loose being removed at the same time, since we haven't actually done that at any point up to now.

I started taking what we have apart some and focusing on the welding. In particular we need to weld in the patches we made for the insides of the rear roof sections. I got my oxy/ace torch going and welded one of them in, but I am not too happy with the result. The welds are ok, but not pretty, but the torch just makes way too much heat when welding inside like that.

What I decided to try next is to put one of the (now two) flux wire welders I have gotten from HF. One is 125 amp and the other is 90. The 90 says it is good for down to 22 gauge, but the 125 says only down to 18 gauge. I think I'll start with the 90 and see what I can accomplish. By looking online on U-Tube at some videos I find that one guy says these welders are not great since they are too hot for sheet metal on low but not hot enough for heavy metal on high. I think the trick in using them on sheet metal is to simply do a lot of tack welds and then fill in between the first tack welds with more tack welds. Several videos show that technique with some pretty good success. That keeps the welds from burning through and keeps the warpage to a minimum. I might even use this method with my hammer weld technique, since that is basically what I used to do with my torch.

I set up a couple of pieces of scrap that match and cleaned their edges up to try this flux wire welder. My first effort was very bad and I was using a low setting of wire feed. Then I set the feed up some and got a little better result, but still not what we are going to need. I guess I'll try to set up some more practice pieces and keep trying.https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...5fcef4232b.jpg



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Flux wire = without protective gas?

I did some sheet welding with this. My experience is that you have to tack weld inch or so and than weld in steps, weld a drop, let it cool a second, weld the next drop starting on the last drop that is still red hot. Gradually proceeding to the next tack. Each drop takes approx 1 - 2 seconds. Let it cool down and clean the powder off with wire brush.

Hi Jerry never seen good welds with fluxed mig wire. you my try having a dedicated 16 amp electric supply with a 16 amp socket helps ,a lot better than an standard plug and if using an extension lead 2.5 cable thats in the uk.cheers Peter.

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Thanks, Guys for the pointers. I had seen much of this on U-Tube and was hoping for similar results. After my last post I found that I had the welder set on max, but with a very slow wire feed. That was causing it to sputter and splatter all over. Then I reset it to minum and tried with a very slow wire feed, and didn't get too much better results. Finally, as I worked up my wire feed I found that at about 3.5 on the wire feed dial the sputter quieted down and the tack welds became very consistent, and without much or any splatter.

In these pictures the tack welds on the left in one of them shows the series of tack welds that I think are very successful and that I will expect to try later to tack in between and then in between again to make a continuous weld. Too, on the underside these welds are getting very good penetration.

With flux wire the flux in the wire core provides the protective gas. This welder is essentially a MIG welder without the gas provision.

Hi whats the penetration like on the reverse ,the only problem with gasles migs you get a lot of flux in the weld .Argon migs you get the benefit off cooler weld and no flux. On the other hand tig is much better for butt joints does not lay the weld on top like a mig,https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...f29479a29e.jpg
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The last of three pictures just above in my last post shows the underside of what I think are my best tack welds. The row of tacks on the right. The penetration is excellent.

The welds you are showing are in aluminum. I will probably be using TIG when I get to the doors and the front fenders in this project. I don't think TIG in steel butt welds will look quite like that. However, if I am unable to perfect this present method I'll probably be shifting to my TIG.

I seem to be making progress with this flux wire welding. I shifted from practice, after I think I got it tuned to what I am trying to do, and went to the inside patch of the rear section of roof. I tack welded that patch in and then cut another one and tack welded it in also. I think with the tacks as close as they are this will be sufficient welding for these inside patches. I think I don't need the extra welds and the additional pull that I seem to get with that much weld and heat in small places. I ground the welds down some to kind of smooth them out since even though I am now an expert flux wire welder, my joints are not as close as they might be and that causes the welds to come out looking kind of sloppy.

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Oops, it posted before I got the other two pictures attached:


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I set that piece of roof section aside and started to do some of the fill-in of the rear corners of the frames that we have cut down for clearance for the tail lights. The flux wire welder seems to work pretty good there also.https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...40a949460d.jpg
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JERRY why not abandon the current filler location and add racing type filler port wherever it would line up with tank neck? Maybe cut the current fill port out and move it back then patch the old location. just a thought...

My original thought was to do just that - - move the filling port aft in the rear outer skin so it stayed with the neck of the tank. My next thought was to maybe shorten the port some since moving it aft 3 full inches put the trailing edge far enough back that the curvature of it changed quite a bit. These thoughts were based pretty much on viewing the situation solely from the outside.

Then, as I tried to explain above in posts number 219 and 220, I found that the rear kind of sideways frame horn that I have been calling a stanchion, which needs to move forward with the outer skin, is going to be moving into the neck of the fuel tank. Then, I also discovered that the very tail panel of the rear outer skin we are moving has recesses in it for the tail light sockets in the rear bumper cover, and the one on the right is also going to be moving into the same space as the fuel tank filler neck.

Finally we have been anticipating the need to shorten the filler neck of the fuel tank by the same amount as the 2 inch section. So all of that adds up to several modifications as follows:

Section the fuel tank filler neck 2 inches;
Narrow the fuel tank neck in the rear to clear the frame stanchion, or design and fab a new stanchion;
Narrow the fuel tank filler neck to clear the tail light recess;
Move the two brackets in the top of the wheel well for mounting the fuel tank;
Move the filler port aft, then patch the hole; and
Modify the filler port so it matches the new curvature of the outer skin in the new location.

In place of that my current thought is to simply fab a new fuel tank that meets all of the criteria and utilizes the original filler port and lid where it has moved with the rear outer skin.

Late yesterday I put in two more patches in the frame corners, but I forgot to take my camera out to the shop with me. This evening I put basically the last two patches in leaving only one tiny triangle open that I can fill in pretty quickly, maybe tomorrow.https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...83b07f4c56.jpg
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It looks like we are going to be held up a little bit in this project since I have contracted a bursitis in my right elbow. I had transitioned to a short sleeve work shirt a couple of weeks ago and that resulted in a small cut on my elbow. Then I think it has gotten infected. It is very swollen, very red, and very painful. I have an appointment with a surgeon this morning and I suspect he will be draining it.

Sorry to hear, Jerry. Please get well soon.
Best wishes,
Dave

The elbow did hold me back some on this project. Friday and Saturday I didn't get to touch the car. Sunday, the swelling had gone down and the pain was under control so I did get a few things done. I welded in a couple of patches where they were going to be needed and cut the two slots at the top of the driver's B-Post so it can be correctly aligned.

This morning I have to see the Doc again. What he did the first time was put me on a strong antibiotic, and that seems to be helping. Today I'm not sure if he is going to see the need to drain the Bursa or not.

I think that before we start welding the roof pieces back together another thing we should do is design, locate and make some of the cuts for the later sectioning of the car as that relates to the post just behind the door, The structure of that post, inside, is called the lock post, and it needs to be carefully sectioned, preferably at or close to the lock itself, and we should do it while the area is pretty much opened up for access from the outside, so before we put the tail back in place. The cuts at that location are going to be very complicated in order to retain the lock area itself and the mounting point for the shoulder harness, and still allow for a minimum of offset between the top and bottom of the 2 inch cut-out section.

The elbow seems to be resolving itself fairly well. It has been drained twice of about 6 cc of infection fluid, but I think it is still producing some. I go back to the doc in 10 days and it will not surprise me to find that we probably need to cut it open to fully clean it out so it can heal.

Nevertheless, I am able to function and will get back to the chop job maybe even later today but for sure this weekend. Here is the list of tasks that we need to accomplish before we start welding the top pieces back together:

Cut slots in the A- and B-Posts so the profiles match;
Fabricate a patch for part of the other rear roof segment and weld it in;
Clean the paint off of the remaining weld surfaces; and
Design and cut the lock posts from the outside for the later section phase.

With all of that accomplished we will then be able to put the pieces all back together and verify their fit and then start welding them in place.

I think that not only was the elbow kind holding me back a bit, but so was dealing with the complexity of the section from inside the rear wheel wells giving me cause to pause. I put myself into it though on the drivers side and found that it is going to turn out to be not so complicated as I was worried about. I found the areas where the 2 inch section will be located at places where the drop is nearly vertical, or enough so that the metal can be massaged into place for welding, and I am avoiding cutting the structure inside the for the lock itself up or even cutting it loose. I get to the other side tomorrow.https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...295905e23a.jpg
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The passenger side went pretty quickly since I know how it needs to be laid out. First I used my heat gun to warm and soften the undercoating and then scraped much of it off with the sharp end of a chistel. Then I used my disc grinder with a wire brush on the end and cleaned the residue and the factory primer under it off. Then I could use my hand made 2 inch plastic guides and lay out the cut lines. Then I used another disc grinder with a cut-off wheel in it and made most of the cuts. After that I finished the ends of the cuts with an air powered reciprocating body saw. The pieces pretty much just fell out.Then I trued up some of the cut surfaces to get them very close to the 2-inch section needed. https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...102b291582.jpg
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This is where I'll leave these cuts until we get the roof done and start on the section section of this project.

This must seem like a very slow pace for this project, and if we were on one of the programs on Velocity with a 2 or 3 week deadline, we would be in a world of hurt. However this is the best I can muster at this stage of my life. Every little bit does count though.

When you count it up, in addition to having the roof pretty closely fit and nearly ready to start welding back together, we actually have nearly half ot the section cuts for the rear half of the car. With having to remove the tail skin for the top chop that is actually making some progress with the sectioning. I have the remainder of the rear section cuts pretty well designed, so when we get there that half of the car will go pretty quickly, quickly at least at our pace.

I finished up yesterday, before quitting early to fix dinner for the family who were coming over, with some of the longways cuts in the A- and B-Posts on the drivers side, but then before going to the A-Post on the other side I took the drivers rear quarter segment of the roof and made a pattern for the extra layer of metal needed inside. I'll cut that pattern out of metal this morning and try to weld it in; then I'll do the other A-Post.

At that point I think we will be able to make a final placement of the roof segments and patches for final alignment and fit and then start tack welding it together. I think I'll be welding the four roof segments together in place before I make the final cuts in the larger sheet metal to match the tail skin back to the car. Too, I have the front edge of the right rear quarter window yet to trim to fit in its new location. Still I think that getting the basic roof all welded into place is going to help finalize the fit of the remainder.

I have that patch tack welded crudely but firmly into place, so I decided to make a go at the middle patch that is going to be kind of complex but now is a better time to try to fabricate it for welding in later rather than trying to fit one in place laying on my back in the car. I made a mistake in it, but it is a lot of work to fabricate, so I think I'll just weld something over the mistake when I put it in.

Then I am about midway into trying to make a final location of the roof segments in anticipation of welding. I'm trying to measure everything for accuracy, but there are not too many locationsd where one can take measurements and be sure that they are the same on each side.

I did discover one interesting fact and that is that the metal structure inside the rear of the donpor roof is very different from the red car. I think they are both the S4s, but I don't remember which S4 the donor roof came off of.

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More fitting of the pieces and I finally got tired of fitting the rear corners of the quarter windows, so I got one where I think it ought to be and tack welded it in place. Then I got the one on the other side almost correct, but I measured the length of the resulting quarter windows and find that one is a quarter inch longer than the other. The length of the tail in its new location measured from the back of the door opening to the trailing edge is the same on both sides. Go figure.

I did end up pushing the tail in a little bit more and now we are ending up with it being 3 3/8 inch shorter than original. I don't think the difference is going to cause any particular problem.https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...afd1917762.jpg

I am deeply respectful of your vision and skills, but I think you're a madman.

Thanks, Shawn, I think. A couple of people have actually gotten past that in my lifetime.

Well, tacking that corner piece in was kind of getting ahead of myself. After I fit it I trimmed the one on the other side down to fit there and when I got it about right I found that there was nearly a half inch difference in their positions. The loose one was too small to try to make up the difference; so I just cut the weld tacks out and removed the one on the right. With quite a bit more measurements I think I can now refit the passenger side corner and get them to match much more closely. I feel a lot better about it now after thinking about it all night and much of today.


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Here is where about 3/8 of an inch of material needs to come out to fit correctly.

I spent much of the morning refitting the rear corners of the Quarter Windows and think I have them just about exactly the same now. Then I re-made the center patch for the rear center roof joint since there were too many errors in the first one. I have the new one pretty close now so that it will not be too much trouble to make final fitting adjustments and weld it in while I am upside down inside the car.

Now I think I can clamp all the roof segments in place and verify their fit and then start welding them in place. The biggest problem I have seen so far with these is that sometimes after doing some fitting and clamping, the rear edge of the roof has a kink in it and sometimes not. I think I'll start there and clamp it straight and tack weld it and then get the rest of the joints aligned to weld.

I tried to take a few images with my camera, but they didn't record for some reason. I'll take them again and post later.

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I got one picture of the passenger side quarter window corner in its new more nearly correct position. It is not welded in yet, and I may wait until quite a bit later to do so.

I did get the two rear roof segments tack welded together with their patch in the middle. First I had to grind it to fit since in its final configuration it needed to be about an eighth of an inch narrower. Then I tack welded it in place, then ground the welds a bit then hammered on the welds with a dolly underneath to put the metal back in its correct position. I'll fill in between the tack welds later a little bit at a time with the hammering in between to keep the warpage to a minimum or eliminated all together.

This morning I went out and put in an additional group of tack welds in the rear center roof patch and then went to the tops of the B-Posts to work on their fit before going to the front of the car to weld patches. There I find that the eighth of an inch I took off of each side of the rear center patch was a mistake. For some reason, even though I had the rear roof segments clamped pretty well into place they now turn out to be too short and the tops of the B-Posts do not fit. Now I have to either take the patch out and make another one, which I think I can do, or I need to cut one side of it open and splice in another narrow patch. I think I'll do the first one since I still have some to the donor roof available intact and I don't think it will matter if the new patch comes out of it slightly off-center.

OK, I cut the patch out and made a new one and tack welded it in place. Now the tops of the B-Posts seem to fit much better. Too, I think that even helped with the fit of the bottom of the C-Posts except that I pushed the rear roof pieces forward a bit and now may need to get another eighth of an inch of shortening of the tail for it all to fit.

One thing that I notice with the pitch of the roof portion of the rear roof segments is that it is now much too high. I think what has taken place is that with the welding of the patches on the inside aft of those segments the welds have pulled somewhat on the roof and pooched it up higher than it should be. What I think we are going to have to do is cut about 5 slots in the roof and pull the material back down and weld it back at the correct pitch, or perhaps simply cut much of it out and replace it with a larger section of roof from the junkyard donor car when that is discovered; or maybe even a combination of these two solutions.

This also kind of leads us in a different direction in respect to welding in some of the inside roof patches. With the rear roof segments welded together I think we can take them off the car and fit and weld in the inner roof patches on the bench rather than waiting until later and doing that welding inside overhead. We may even do the same with the fairly complex set of patches for the center of the front two segments. Than that will leave only the side patches to weld in overhead, since I think the whole roof will be much too cumbersome to handle on the bench, and I think those patches can be welded overhead perhaps from the outside rather than trying to figure out a way to position myself inside the car.

I found that I could handle the two rear segments of the roof while welded together and off of the car so I welded in the inner pieces of the rear roof edge.

Then after I put it back on the car I found that the top was warped a little, so I cut one of the outer seams open and squeezed it together and welded it back so the rear edge appears to have the correct curvaturehttps://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...d1fbca5e71.jpg
at least at the edge. The metal forward of the edge is still arched too much. I still think I can do some cuts in it and squeeze them together and weld them to take the extra curvature out, but I'll wait until I get to the big roof patch from a donor roof at the junkyard.

Then I welded the front patch in and one of the inside patches. The second inside patch turned out to be too small for the hole. so I grafted in another piece of metal and will take the front off and trim it to fit and weld in the last patch later. I think it is pretty handy to do these with the roof segments off the car.


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I tack welded tha last piece of patch under the front center roof patch, but I may want to weld it some more later. Then I put the front half of the roof on the car and welded the passenger A-Post back together. That too needs some more welding, but I think I am going to go back to my oxy/ace torch to finish it up and then do the other A-Post.


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Yesterday I welded the Drivers A-Post with my oxy/Ace torch and it seemed to go better, although since many of the welds are in awkward positions they are not very pretty. My camera is at the office so I'll have to post a picture later. Then I found that the front two halves welded together have kind of narrowed at there aft ends. What I did was make a sort of spreader bar with a piece of half inch conduit and a nut and bolt and then spread the ends apart to where I think they ought to be.

Later today I will start welding some more of the roof starting at the front of the side patches and working my way back. Actually before that I need to weld in some patch work to close some gaps that are now too wide to close with weld filler rod; and I have made a patch for under the left rear qtr window corner where I cut it off kind of poorly.

What I find with the welding is that the most handy version is the flux wire welder from HF, since it is purely one handed. However, with mine I found that something in the cheap plastic torch handle is broken and the trigger is wanting to fall out, and then is hard to get to function like it should. Next I think is the Oxy/Ace torch but it is two-handed with the torch in one hand and filler rod in the other. That is not too bad and is going to work for much of what I think I am going to weld. Finally I think the best welder is going to turn out to be the TIG, but it requires the torch in one hand, filler rod in the other and then a power control under one of my feet. When I get to welding inside the top and on top of the car the foot pedal is going to become a problem. It may be that the most good I get out of the TIG is with the aluminum.

I don't like the results of the oxy/ace welds so far, so I rigged up my MIG welder and tried it. First, I forgot to turn on the shielding gas, but it welded not too bad, then I turned the gas on and could hear it flowing, but it didn't seem like it was sending any to the torch. Then I found that a fitting where the gas goes into the welder is broken and leaking gas. Now I have to try to replace that. In any case I got the top pieces tack welded into place and will finalize the welds a little at a time as I go forward. AT least the pieces are in place very accurately and quite firm.

So, I removed some of the guide post structure so I can get to some of the inner welds and then I can start to work up the mold for the headliner shell. In the meantime I'll finish up the roof pieces by finally fitting the C-Post tail ends and getting the tail of the car in its final position and tack welded into place.


https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...f9bfb72c4b.jpg
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I know that some of that does not look very pretty, but when I grind the welds down and add some more it will end up looking pretty good. The only thing now is to figure out just how I am going to fill in the gaposis that has resulted at the front corner of the B-Post joints, and it is a bit worse on the other side.

I stewed all afternoon wondering where I might find the correct fitting for the MIG welder tomorrow, but then it occurred to me that I am a machinist and there is enough material in the broken piece to simply cut it off at the break, turn it down in the lathe and then re-thread it with the correct die, which I happen to have, and call it good. So I did and now I have the welder back in service.

I welded the two C-Post corners on at the rear and then had to cut one partly off again to get it to fit better. I'll weld it again next time. I have ground some of the previous welds down and will begin to fill in between them as I go.

Next I need to take the tail off again and do some major cutting on both the frame and on the tail itself before I can start to tack it into place. The last pieces of the chop will be the two front edges of the quarter windows since I will leave them out while I do some of the cutting inside to get the inside sheet metal to fit.

I find that I am having pretty good success with the MIG welder and it appears to work well without warping the metal, at least where I am working so far.

It looks like the tail is going to move forward about an additional 3/16 inch for the final fit. That is going to be just about right at 3 1/2 inches shorter than its original position.

I have also been researching the processes for cutting and welding the PU bumper covers when they are modified for both the chop and the section. I have some tools and material on order to try on some of that down the line.


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I continue to study this project and work on it as time will allow. Today I pushed the tail in a little further and then got the C-Posts to match very well. Rather than weld them together, which I really would like to do, I have to wait until I can do some further work on the tail and rear of the car where the tail will finally come to rest.

In my continued study I think I have determined that it will be best to get the tail to fit correctly then take it off and so some of the sectioning cuts on it and then let it rest until I finish the rest of the top. Then I think it will be best to put the tail back on only after I have done the sectioning of the whole car. The main reason is that there are a lot of complex cuts in the wheel wells and it will be a great advantage to be able to complete those while the tail is off and access is much better.

In the meantime I will finish up the main roof and put off creating the new hatch until much later. Actually I think the sectioning will even go much better with the tail off the car. There wont be so much to line up all at once and then I'll be able to do the final fitting of the tail by itself. Too, the top half of the car without the tail will be a little easier to handle in lowering it and raising it multiple times to get it to fit correctly.

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I worked on a couple of the roof welds today and then spent some time double checking the measurements. Here are a couple of pictures of how the rear corners are going to end up.

Then I decided to fit a rear bumper cover just to if we are going to have enough clearance for the tail lights and for whatever we end up with for a new bumper bar. I cut the cover across at both of the section lines and later I'll cut the bottom half up in order to narrow the license plate recess like ti had done some time ago to another cover. I was going to use the previous cover, but decided that I should make another one with fewer cuts and patches and using the method I have come up with for bonding PU plastic.

I got back to finishing up some of the openings left on the A-Posts,https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...9bc1cacd62.jpg
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and I am working on the same for the side roof patches. I cut one patch for the left A-Post and have it welded in and complete except for a couple of holes in the welds underneath. Then I have a patch for the right side almost ready to weld in.

The A-Posts are pretty well complete and weill need almost no filler to look like they were never severed.

Then I worked on the gap in the passenger side B-Post and have it nearly complete. I'll work on the drivers side later and then figure out how to set up to weld the side roof patches from underneath and upside down.


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I decided to section the rear corners of the tail panel while I have it still temporarily on the car and before I take it off for quite a while. While it is off I want to set it up outside and use it as a work form to do the sectioning of the rear bumper cover, so it needs to be sectioned and doing that while it is on the car is best.


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Aside from sectioning the other side of the tail panel, one of the things I need to do next is to remove the tail and then cut the top edge of the rear frame x-member down to where it is doubled and welded. Then I can mark the underside of the rear kind of box compartment where they will ultimately meet. I think we will find that the gap between the top of the frame and the bottom of the box is about 7/8 inch. That means that when we complete the tail sectioning we need to remove only 1 1/8 in of material out of the flat rear of that box compartment to accomplish our full 2 inch section.

I had kind of been planning to massage the soft body line along the side of the 928 out at its tail end just in front of where it meets the bumper cover. The reason is that the line does not flow thru and across the rear of the car very well since it has to take a dive to flow across the bumper cover under the tail lights. However, it looks like this sectioning there is going to in fact emphasize the body line some, so I guess we will have to live with it.

I have gone back to the flux wire welder. My MIG welder started to sputter too much and I was not too sure about how much penetration I was getting in some of the welds with it. I had given up on the flux wire welder that I started with that is 90 amp because the torch had broken and failed. I still have the 125 amp flux wire welder that I bought on clearance at HF so I thought I would put it into service even though it is rated for thin material only down to 18 gauge and I think the 928 is made of 20 or 22 gauge.

Anyway, I got the 125 welder set up and powered it up but it would not weld or run the wire. Then it occured to me that that is probably why it was returned and then sold on clearance for $37. So I first thought I would take the torch wire and feed tube off of it and put it onto the 90 amp welder, since they appear to be the same, but when I took the side covers off I found that it is much too complex to deal with. Then I started looking and feeling around inside of it and found a loose connection. When I put that back it now works just fine. So, I am going to use it for now since my next move will have to be the TIG welder and I don't want to start that since it takes three of my limbs to run it versus only one with the flux wire welder.

Thanks for staying tuned, Gunar. It appears that there is a lot of interest in this project since there are a lot of guys watching. There is not much feedback or input from the gang, but then there is probably not much anyone can say since this is pretty much unplowed ground. Except for cutting a 928 up to make a pick-up or convertible no one has ever taken on this kind of task, and not likely to ever be done again. I like to keep posting my progress because I think it is educational for the rest of you and it gives me something to study as we progress. It is a lot easier to study the pictures on this thread versus sitting out in the shop studying the car.

Jerry, I'm sure I am one of many who read every word and study every picture in this thread. You're right, there is not much I at least can contribute, but I am thoroughly enjoying being a spectator!

This is one of those things that if I were given 100 years I don't think I could have figured out how to do something like this or even where to start. I find the process fascinating, nice work so far.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I've tapered off on my replies to a certain degree because I didn't want to clutter up the thread (like with silly stuff about the definition of "welding").

But...

I can't believe the progress you are making. I've seen a couple 'chop & section' cars done in my time. They can take years. You commented a bit ago about how fast it would be on 'reality TV'. Those shows have very little to do with reality.

You commented on the 'lack of attractiveness' at a couple points. I disagree. The bare welds and gaps aren't an issue. They can and will be fixed. The true beauty of this project is how well it's fitting together. Paint and a smidge of bondo will address the minor cosmetic flaws. There would be no way to 'fix' it if with those it didn't fit right.

I have to admit that I thought that you were out of your mind when you first proposed this idea. I felt that, at most, you would chop up a shell and try to put it back together, fail miserably and give up (more a feeling about the complexity and difficulty of the entire project than a dig at you).

I'm still not convinced you are in your 'right mind', but I now believe (and have for a while) that this will see the road at some point, and that point isn't all that far away.

One of the reasons that I seem to be stepping out ahead of myself with the sectioning of parts of the tail is that I am really anxious to be able to do some work on the sectioning of the bumper covers, at least the one in the back. I have it sectioned across the apex and have most of what it will take to "weld" it back together, although PU is said to not be weldable, but rather more like brazing. That's kind of why I am anxious. Also I am just wanting to get a preliminary look at what it is going to look like in the end. Pardon the pun.

The little bit of sectioning I did at the rear corner as shown just above taught me that I probably need to devise a better method of gauging the cuts when the 2 inches are taken out. Marking for the cuts can be fairly accurate, but then cutting is not so much so and then the cut edges need to be ground on to be true and the end result needs to be almost exactly at 2 inches and possibly a tiny bit more which can be filled up with weld. What I have devised in my mind is a method of marking the areas where the cuts are being taken out of very vertical panels. I'm going to make a simple drill jig with two 1/8 inch holes in it 4 inches apart and lay that across the cut area and drill the body. Then when I make the cuts I will have another similar piece of metal with drill holes in it 2 inches apart that can be clecoed into the holes in the body when the cut is ground to its exact width and lowered. That way I will have a measurement of the exact width of the section cut out at critical locations, and I think it will also work as a means of holding the top and bottom of the car in position for welding. I'm going to work some of this up and use it on the other corner of the tail panel.

Thanks guys for your feedback and your continued interest in this project.

Here is kind of a lay-up of the quarter panel with the piece of wheel arch laid on in the position about where I plan for it to end up. It will be 2 inches up the panel and about a half inch flared at the top and an inch flared at the rear. It will also be moved forward about a half inch to kind of tighten it up around the rear tire. The metal below where the arch is now clamped will be gone.

The front of the arch, as you can see from the cut lines now drawn in that area, will be moved back about an inch, but I am going to change the arch at the bottom of the front to put it back to just about where it is now. The result will be to sort of close up the gap in the arch at the front top sort of corner.


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I'm moving my professional office right now so have been spending much of my time with that. What a mess.

I did get to tack weld the corner piece on more permanently and then laid out the lines and cut some of the for the other rear corner. I stopped at this point so I could work up the little ;pieces of aluminum to be drilled as cut gauges or alignment pieces and will set my mill up and drill the many holes in them with the precision needed. After this break I'll get to it.


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I made a bunch of the section guides and then put a couple of them into service on the right rear corner of the tail. I have it cut free now and have it held in rough place with two of the guides. Next I'll grind the cuts into the closest fit I can get and then weld it into place.


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As I described above a bit, I am shortening the rear wheel arches front to back a half inch in the back and the average of that in the front. Then I would kind of like to shorten the front arches also when we get to the sectioning of the fenders. But I have been concerned about where and what alloy to obtain to fill the gaps; and also about all the extra welding and that close to-boot. Then in making the vertical cuts in these two small tail corner sections, doing them at a slight angle so that the width of the cut, the Kerf as it were, gets filled up when the bottom moves up it occurs to me that we can do the same, but much moreso in shortening the front arches. If we make our vertical cuts at much more angle, the angle of the hypotenuse of a right triangle 2 inches tall and 1/2 inch wide, that converts some of the removed material in the section to fill the gap otherwise caused by narrowing the arches. You may have to be there, so we will take some pictures when we get to it.

(Edit): Well, after some further thought it occurs to me that this will work only in respect to the top half of the car, the part above the section, since the bottom does not go anywhere. And even then the angle will be based on one inch up and half inch in since we are going to shorten the front arches by an inch verticaly. We will still have to graft in some aluminum to narrow the bottoms of the front arches.

Of course, it goes without saying, but we are eliminating the rear side marker lites in this project and that is why there is the big offset in the section cut with these rear corners. We will be eliminating the front ones in like manner when we get to the fenders.

I didn't get a lot done on this project yesterday since I was trying to finish up my office move. I did get to lay out some strips of aluminum across the roof opening to use as a pattern to make a buck sort of think to use to try to find a donor roof at the junkyard, and to use to help make a mold for the headliner. I think I have the shape just about right. It is amazing how much difference a very small amount of change makes. Even as little as 1/8 inch shows up in the shape.https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...be16309570.jpg
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After I got home from shuffling stuff around at the new office space I spent the rest of the afternoon adjusting my metal strips to get the correct roof curvature, then I worked up some wood and made the pieces of the buck, or whatever it might be called, to use to find a roof with the correct shape for grafting into the big hole. The pieces worked up pretty well into the shape we need, and next I'll probably epoxy them together in place so I can carry it around. I think it will also be useful in working up the mold for the headliner without having the new roof welded in as I plan.

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I trimmed my roof pattern down some and then epoxied it together. When the epoxy sets I'll glue in some pieces to stiffen the corners and then I can put it into service trying to find the right donor roof.

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You can see that I have left some of the guide post structure in the car. I am going to use that as the base for the next phase of this endeavor and that is to make a mold for the headliner. I want to make it at this point while we can still work thru the large opening in the roof to a great extent. I am going to move the two two-by-fours outboard quite a bit from where they were originally and I have shortened them some already. Those, together with the two crossways pieces of 3/4 inch plywood, will be the base for fabricating the new mold. I'm going to make the mold in 4 pieces in the car and then fix them together outside the car to finish up across the center as the final mold. I have quite a bit of it figured out so far, but have not yet determined just how best to form the corners. That will probably come to me as we progress.

The roof pattern is now pretty much complete and setting up with some blocking in many of the corners; so I hope to have some time today away from the office to go try it out at one of the junk yards. Wish me luck.

Well, that was certainly an adventure. I took my roof pattern out to the junkyard and got permission to take it out in the yard and try it out on various car roofs to see if I could find one that will match the curvature close enough. I discovered several things. One is that not too may late model cars have a roof wide enough to accommodate our needs. Another is that most of the roofs are too flat. I did find one roof that was kind of close and might have even worked with some cutting and shrinking here and there, but then I found another on a 2003 Saturn that fits almost exactly. I have arranged to have it cut out/off and will pick it up tomorrow . It cost me $200 plus tax.

Here are some pictures of the pattern on the new roof. You can see that it fits very close except for one corner. That one corner is the result of my pattern having taken on a little bit of twist when I took it off the car to let the epoxy cure while it was standing on one end. However, when I pull it down on that corner it looks like it fits just fine.https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...60cf9668a7.jpg
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Yeah, watching this thread everyday, but too gobsmacked to say much. Except that when you started I thought 'Maybe I'll do some of that myself', since I have always felt the tail end of my convertible is too long. No longer thinking that. I'm no stranger to big projects, but this is way above and beyond.

^ This exactly. I had to work up the nerve to tackle basic stuff like timing belts and intake refreshes. I can't even imagine trying to do something like this.

I think I am finding that this piece of donor roof is actually a pure stroke of luck. I was pretty sure that I could eventually find something close and that I could cut and shrink it to get it to work, but this piece of Saturn roof fits so perfectly that I cannot quite believe it.

I picked it up this afternoon and hauled it home then cut the sides off of it at a point allowing about 3/4 inch on each side for final fittinghttps://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...4913bcfc26.jpg
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and then I had to take part of one and another of the inner structural braces out which was laying on the top in the rear. I may leave the other one in since it is helping to define the curvature across and will add some strength for later.

Just laying on the top now it looks like the curves on all four sides are exact and the crown, although maybe a quarter inch lower than my pattern, looks just about perfect. Talk about lucky!

Good eye, Jerry. A 2003 Saturn would not have been my first guess.....

Pfft. An 03 Saturn wouldn't have been my hundredth guess.

Glad you found something that worked. It looks really good there.

I didn't find it by make and model. I simply walked the rows of junk cars looking for a roof that appeared to have some promise, then trying my pattern on it. I didn't know it was a Saturn even and not the year until I paid them to cut the roof off. It was identified as something like 160078 in spot H-4.

I'm impressed buy what you have done so far, and I'm looking forward to seeing the finished car :thumbup:

And you are lucky with this roof!

Right. I understand that you simply looked for the 'right shape', testing your 'buck' to see what fit best.

However, you could have had a lot of fun with a 'Hey guys! Guess what car the roof that fits best came off of" game.

I started the structure for the headliner mold but only got two of the cross pieces screwed in place along with locating the longways two-by-fours. I found it was a real trick to locate and screw into place the two cross pieces working from one side at a time and trying to hold both ends of it up in position.


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Building this headliner mold is kind of like making a small very flat boat. I am first making a sort of keel, but in four pieces forming a rectangle. They have the shape of the underside of the roof. Then I'll add some formers outboard to them all around having the shape of the outer perimeter of the headliner; and then I'll make some similar forms to fill in the inside of the rectangle keel. All the shapes of the keels and formers will be formed to fit below the roof skin by 3/4 inch in the central part and about half that around the edges. The reason for the space is that after the form is made it will need to be skinned with about 1/4 inch thick strips of wood. Then the finished headliner will need to have space above it and between the roof skin of about 3/8 inch to allow for some jute insulation. Finally the headliner itself will be about 1/8 inch thick

I had some other stuff to do yesterday so all I got done was the two side pieces of the keel. I need to work over the base of this mold that is in the car and then do the front and back pieces of the keel, then start making the individual formers. There will be several of them, but they will be made in pairs so it may not take so long.

I made the two side pieces of the mold keel and then patterned, cut out and affixed the 5 formers on each one of them. I think I might need to add one more former on each side the help get the wood strips I'm covering them with to bent correctly.

Then I am kind of stumped about just how best to fasten the wood sgtrips to the formers to hold them while the epoxy sets. The last time I did this kind of thing I think I used my air stapler and then pulled the staples after they were set so that I didn't have to deal with the heads of the staples in the finish work with sanding and so forth. That is a lot of work and; and I may just staple them and work with the heads of the staples in the finishing.


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I cut the roof skin back some to eliminate much of what will not be needed and to make it easier to handle on and off the roof while I'l working on the headliner mold. Then I made a small step in the direction of developing the corners of the mold. I have been troubling about how best to do the corners since it is a little like building a ship in a bottle, but with the bottle painted black. In other words much of the corner development is kind of in the blind.

I think I am going to simply build the corners up in layers of plywood roughly cut to size and then simply sculpt the shape they need to be. I have the base for that laid up in both of the front corners now. I haven't quite figured out how best to do that for the rear corners at the B-Posts. Those have to mate up to the tops of the inside quarter panels, and there needs to be a jog in the headliner to overlap and mate to.


https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...b5d28f93b1.jpg

I have been busy with some other stuff, but should get back to this this afternoon or tomorrow. I have been troubling about how to actually do the corner sculpting of the headliner form, and think I have it kind of figured out. It is going to be a real mess with sawdust and bondo dust all over the place, but I think I can do it. I think what I am going to do is try to rough sculpt the corners in wood and then work up the final shape by covering a part with bondo then pushing it into place while the bondo it soft, but with wax paper over it so it doesn't stick to the car and then when it sets do the final shaping by hand. I'll probably put some guide material in place on the car so that I can see where to sculpt to leaving the space for the fiberglass. At least that is my thought process right now. More later.

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It doesn't look like much sculpting, but I have spent most of the day doing this. I started with the other corner, the drivers side, first then got it kind of close and used it as a pattern for the passenger side. These pictures are the passenger side showing first one effort, then the results of a second effort. Now I have to go back to the drivers side and do it over.

These efforts are just preliminary because I still don't know just how they need to be finished up to look right, At this point they are being made to just fit.

More sculpting and the drivers side is just about compete again. I only had to make over two of the previous layers of plywood to ge it closer to correct. Mow I have both of the front corners nearly complete, at least to the point of figuring out how best to reduce them is size about an eighth of an inch to allow for the layers of fiberglass.

Now I am also trying to figure out just how to do something similar on the rear corners at the top of the B-Posts. They are less complicated, but they mate up to the lower trim inside a bit differently.

When I finish the corners, or at least mostly, I'll work on the formers for the fronhttps://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...a836c2f88f.jpg
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nd back and then I think I'll put it all together with epoxy and start covering it with strips of wood to then finish in epoxy and maybe some bondo.

Here's the front two roughed in and matching pretty well. Then I get a good start on the rear corners.


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This is a slow and time consuming process, but one that will hopefully help speed things up later. One of the things that seems to kill various projects usually is the amount of items such as this that get put off until later while concentrating on the "fun" aspects of a project. I'm hoping to avoid that with this project. I may not get the headliner mold fully completed, but close enough that final fitting can be done fairly quickly and then the headliner shell pulled from it in time to complete the interior. Too, I may not properly do the final fitting until the roof is fully welded together and the cross brace removed.

I have the right rear corner pretty close and have started on the last one the one on the left rear. Then I find that the basic frame in the car is not quite centered in the rear, co I have that corrected and will have to grind a bit on the right rear corner and then finish out the left rear corner to fit. When these are rough finished and then reduced in size in places to allow for the firberglass clearance, I'll work up a method to make final fitting with bondo.

I think I can see the light at the end of the kind of sideways tunnel involving this headliner mold. I think the front, back and over the center will go pretty quickly, then I think I can set it aside and get back to the cutting and welding on the car.


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I have almost all the corner pieces ground to fit roughly and will next set them in epoxy. Then I'll cover the other formers with strips of wood also set in epoxy, then I can hand finish each side to a closer fit. I think that in order to get the finish to the point of having about 1/8 inch or less allowance for the fiberglass shell I am going to temporarily glue some kind of space markers on places in the car where the fit is critical then lay the mold up against the inside of the car with fresch bondo on those areas of the mold and wax paper in between and then when it sets I'll be able to rasp and sand the bondo down to the markers and have the correct clearances. That's what I'm going to try anyway.


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I got a good start on the front mold frame member and will do the same on the rear one tomorrow. Then I can start covering them when I have them all nesting together correctly.


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Jerry, what is your background that you know how to do this kind of work?

It really is amazing...

I hadn't actually thought about it in this way until a couple of days ago when I found myself putting the form into place and then rubbing it back and forth so I could see some red marks where it was in contact the paint inside, and then grinding wood off in those areas, and then It occurred to me that this is kind of a carry over from my gun smithing days. Back then I would use a similar technique to do what is called "inletting" a gun or the barreled action into the wood that was going to become its stock. There I would mark the metal with a black compound that I had made up and then put it into place and strike it lightly with a mallet then take it out and carve out the black marks. I haven't done any of that for about 30 years or so.

But that is only a small segment of the overall story, which I wont try to go into at this point. I think I explained it once or twice before on this forum, but I don't mean to be critical that you may not have read it. The short version is that over the many years I have taught myself to do all sorts of fabrication things by thinking, reading, listening, watching, and then doing, but not necessarily in that order and not necessarily all of them in respect to any given project. A key to success is having or having access to the tools and equipment needed to accomplish any given fabrication. I have most of them, and in some case I am three or four deep with any one of them, each set up in some different way to save me time in setup so I don't have to change blades or something each time I need to do something different.

The focus of fabrication is simply problem solving; and I have trained my brain to do that all the time, both in my shop and in my Law Practice.

Thanks for asking.

I have the keel for the back segment of the mold cut with slots for the ribs, but then I got anxious to see what covering some of this is wood strips was going to be like and started doing that on the front segment. I see that the curvature is not quite right, but I don't know if it is off too far to correct with bondo or not. I'll wait until the epoxy sets and them put it in place and see what it looks like.

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Well, that didn't work too well. The epoxy set up so I tried to put it into place to check the fit and I couldn't get it into position. Then I discovered that the tension put on it with each of the strips of wood covering it warped the keel about a full inch. I stripped all the wood off of it and will try again. I also modified a couple of the formers so that the curvature will be a little better. Now, when I do it again I'll likely clamp a 2 by 4 edgeways to the back of the keel so that it will hold straight against the spring pressure from the wood strips. A good lesson to learn.

I put the front segment back together and laid it up in epoxy. When that sets I'll try some srtips over part of it again with more bracing. Then I worked up the rear segment and worked it over a couple of times to get it close. Then I related the corners of the side and rear and find quite a difference, but actually only about a quarter inch. I have them ground down to match and can finalize both of those and maybe start with some strips of wood over them. Before I do that I still need to lay up the corners in Bondo to get them fitting closely. I guess I better step back and get that done. I also made a pattern of the roof curvature front to back to use for the formers across the center of the mold.


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I tried again with the front segment and covered it partly with some strips of Pine rather than Poplar, which is too expensive and a little more springly. I think the Pine will be just fine unless it proves too soft in the finishing process.


https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...42f2815900.jpg
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The glue set so I took the clamps off and ground it down a little then put it in place in the front. It actually fits better than I expected.


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Yesterday I laid up the other three segments in epoxy and let it cure overnight. I also did some more grinding on them to refine the fit. Today I'll test fit them again and then start the wood strip covering of them in the areas that will then need to be closely fit with Bondo. Maybe tomorrow I'll even be able to try some of that.

I am to the point of needing a larger very flat space to do the final assembly and finish of this mold, so I have brought into the shop an old door I have been saving for something like this. It is a solid core door, but not solid wood. I think it is some kind of composition because the darn thing weighs over a hundred pounds. I can barely move it.

I have been doing a lot of this work on a sort of make-shift bench consisting of two sawhorses with a stack of material laid across them. Then as I need some of the material for this project I have to pull some out and then restack the whole pile again to do the work bench over. With the door now I think I'll save out enough wood and then more permanently stack the rest to last longer into this project.

I'm going to need this better work bench later to work on the doors and the hatch, so now is a good time. I'll probably have my son come over to help me put it together.

Jerry, I just wanted to say the work you're doing on this project is thrilling to watch. I do have a question for you in setting up and building your forms. Having spent numerous years as a welder/fabricator, I am simply curious. Would it work to box in the corners, then cover the metal areas (plastic wrap, wax paper) then fill the in with an expanded foam (spray foam). From there you have an exact mold of the area. That can easily be fiber glassed to give it strength. I'm interested in your thoughts.

​​​​​​if this starts to clog up the post then by all means PM me.

Keep up the great work!!!!!

A few strips of wood glued onto the left segment and one more on the front. Today I'll test fit them and then try to figure out the exact shape of the corners which are still driving me nuts. I glued some extra pieces of wood on the front corner where it appeared to be too loose and now have ground most of that off again getting it close to fitting. The rear corners are still kind of a mystery in regard to their shape, but I hope with continued testing the shape will finally come into focus.

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I keep laying pieces up in epoxy and then I worked over my make-shift work bench. I think I have the corners figured out. The problem I have been having with the rear corners is that I discovered that the headliner is not very close to the inner sheetmetal at the tops of the B-Posts. I cut the top corner off of one of my spare inside quarter panels and find that there is quite a large space between the liner and the metal. I think with that realization I'll be able to get the rear corners finished shortly.


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Now I can lay out the four pieces of the mold on my new work space and see how the pieces are going to fit together and begin to envision filling in the center.


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Now that I am beginning to notice how heavy each of the four outer segments of this mold are getting I become concerned about how much the whole thing is going to weigh when it is all glued together and finished. I am wishing now that I had had the forethought to cut chunks of wood out of the pieces before I glued them into place. I suppose I could still use a hole saw and cut holes in various places to help some, and I might, but hindsight is 20/20.

Progress is movement in any direction. I'm making some progress with this mold, but it is sure taking time. I have covered the rear segment and am letting the epoxy set. I have fit the left side again and will need to put some more wood on it is the front since I ground off too much. I think the rear corners are taking shape pretty well.

As soon as I have all four segments closely fit I'll do the setting in Bondo to finalize their shape and them put some pieces of wood on the front and back to create the flair necessary in those locations.


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Jerry, how is this project coming? I had been following each step, looking forward to the finished project. I know your currently working on a new steering wheel, but I hope you haven't abandoned this one.

Hi Jim. Thanks for staying tuned. No, this one is not abandoned. Right now I am kind of limited in how much time I can spend in the shop due to family issues, and I think that is kind of why I have gotten back to the steering wheel, since I can can draw circles and fiddle with it much here in the house, where I am kind of stuck. This isn't the place to go into the issues, but they appear to be kind of temporary, so don't give up hope that I'll be back on the custom 928 in a while.

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...628b20e729.jpg
Like I mentioned, family matters, in part, kind of took me away from the Forum and this project, but not entirely. I did get a couple of little things nearly completed, but the darn headliner mold has kind of had me at a wall. I see that this thread has way too much devoted the the mold, but it is still not finished. I'll hope to get back to that as soon as I can and I can clean off the work space I was using for it. I think I have kind of figured out how to deal with the part(s) of it that were in part holding me up.

I did get to do a little bit on the car in the meantime, such as a bit of sectioning at the rear corners of the quarter panels and I have the rear bumper cover both sectioned and with the license plate recess narrowed like I did in the older thread where I was showing Tony what I thought he ought to do with his. I had to learn about welding the poly cover, but find that it not supposed to be weldable, but rather brazable, which is more like hot gluing it. I think it comes out fine and will be as strong or stronger that original.

Here are a few pictures or where it is now, given that the mold is just about exactly where it was nearly a year ago.

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GREAT to see you at it again,,,,,thanks for keeping this going, wish I was around there to watch you work and learn from your skills !!!!

I think I should have bought some shares in Vice Grips!

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Glad to see this thread back up!

The black stuff on the rear bumper cover is called Fiber Flex. It comes in short strips that are about a sixteenth of an inch thick, or a little more, and about a half inch wide. They are simply melted on the cover with a small kind of soldering iron. The actual joint is first made with a different filler that comes in a string about one eighth inch in diameter and it too is melted on, rather than into, the poly material the cover is made of. The joint itself is finished with the edges beveled to provide a groove for the filler. On the inside of the joint the same first rod filler is melted and smeered on with the iron, then I cut strips of fine stainless steel hardware cloth and melted that into the back of the joint. Then both sides of the joint are covered with the black stuff. I put a lot of black stuff on the outside because it is supposed to be sandable, although it is pretty flexible, and I wanted plenty on there so I can shape the cover with the correct curve at the joint. I'll be doing that when I am able to put the cover on and begin some finish body work.

Looking good Jerry! How many $100s of dollars of fiber-flex is that? You must have made the Polyvance sales person very happy that day! :)

Did you consider using the 3M flexible body repair adhesive? I have used it before with pretty good results, though a smaller project. Now my goto product will probably be West System G Flex, filled with the 402 or 410 filler. Super strong adhesion even to very low energy surfaces, Just gotta keep it out of the light. Perhaps a layer or two of glass on the inside.

Oddly enough, Rob, it isn't that much. I only bought a few packages of it and I still have most of it. I have done only about half of the inside of the seams/joints so far. The stuff isn't that expensive besides.

Hi Jerry,
i've followed this thread for a long time, and just found it again inside a V8 swap folder on my laptop.
It's a fantastic project. Do you have any recent updates?
od.



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God, they've built damn near every possible thing else they could build.
The above concept/shape/modern/aero fixed lamp, and blisteringly fast--
should have been the DNA of their flagship/s since ~1996 or maybe a year or so down to re-tool.

I put my hand on this car every time I am in the shop, but I haven't really worked on it since last August. I do intend to get back to this project, but it will be later this summer, depending on how busy I might get with the Belly Pan project. I don't actually expect much out of that, so I hope to get back to finishing up the headliner mold which is where pretty much left this one. If I can get that out of my way I'll make pretty rapid progress with the body work on the car.

We got a Tucan--but no update for the legendary V8.
Imagine if we had a 7~15 year pipeline V8 2 door Porsche's
like we have for 997's/991's. :rolleyes:

One of the original thoughts I had about this project is just how to finish it up. One thought was to do the body work planned and then just finish it out pretty much like other restoration projects as a daily driver; but another thought was to try to finish it out as a show car but still a daily driver. The later thought pretty much requires a lot of work under the car, and especially related to the work on the belly of the car related to the other work. I had a thought about the need to make a rotisserie for the belly work but had not given much attention to that. Then, a local older guy getting out the car business offered his rotisserie for sale. So, I bought it, and now have it loaded in my trailer while I figure out how to put it into use in this project. I'll probably not be using it until I have much of the main body work completed, but I expect to get back to that shortly.

I think about this project just about every day and more recently my thought is that I really need to finish it up while I still can at least to the point where maybe someone else could put the finishing touches on it even I have to hire that done is some stages. Anyway, my other projects that seem to have gotten in the way pretty much are maturing and although they will be taking some time I think I can start to clean the place up and begin to get back to this car.

That brings me to my most recent thought about it. Those have to do with the rear bumper cover. When I sectioned is several months ago one thought that was bugging me was that with it being a bit narrower the S4 taillights were going to look a little bit odd and perhaps ought to also be sectioned some to keep them in proportion so to say. Then I thought that that could not be done very effectively. More recently however I have been thinking back to my original thoughts about the 928 when it first came out and one of the things I though was that the treatment of the taillights was quite unique and quite iconic to the 928 design. I didn't have particular feeling about the change to the later S4 lights, but I do now.

So I have decided to incorporate the early taillight treatment into this rear bumper cover, but I think I have found that they will also lend themselves to being sectioned, perhaps about an inch, so that they will fit the overall theme of the car. Here is a picture of my current cut and tape "photoCHOP" of what I have in mind. I have even bought an early rear bumper cover to take the light openings out of to adapt to my now sectioned rear bumper cover.

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...35912ef842.jpg

I like that idea, Jerry! I sometimes lament that the early lights look a bit small compared to the later lights. However, in your project this may work out great, especially if you section them. It may be interesting to mock them up in stock form first, just to see how that may look.

In my mind, this would then need an early style front section as well.

You probably have also already seen this interesting adaptation/mockup: (Note: can't find where I got that picture from)
https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...3e9d2ddec8.png
https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...0076882ab9.png

Thanks Carlos. Those are kind of interesting lights being adapted to that GTS. I think there are just too many issues for me to consider something like that beside not caring much for them in a 928. As to the front bumper cover, I have given some thought to how the early one might be sectioned, but not in respect to my current project, just thinking about how it might be done, like maybe if I were doing this whole project with an OB. I have however spent a lot of time planning on just how to section the S4 front bumper cover and I think I can do it successfully. Not so with the early one. One thing is that the front lights are mounted in the bumper bar while the later ones are in separate units that can be moved a bit with the section. As to the early ones, since the bumper bar must be eliminated in favor of something new there would be no place to mount the lights. Too, the later lights start with a kind of similar sculpted recess as with the earlier taillights and my section action will actually enhance that a little bit.

Understood.

^^^^ This especially, I would say! ^^^^

If you can tie the late front and early rear light recesses together visually (my leaning would be with the early tail light shape as the guide), then that could work out very well.

Probably the only thing I don't like about the early front fog/driving lamp recesses are their squarish/"boxy" look towards the nose center as compared to the rest of the early 928 design.

I don't think there is anything special I can do to enhance the look of the front lights to kind of simulate the recesses in in the rear with the early lights, as modified, back there. However just doing what I think is needed to section the front bumper cover and retain the later front lights and their recesses will perhaps do that to some minor extent. Here is how that sectioning will go:

First I will cut the light recesses out of the bumper cover. The cuts will be right at the inboard edges of the recesses then over the top and under the bottom about an inch back from the edges and an inch or less around the outboard ends.
Next I will then section the bumper cover across the front the two inches needed and at the wheel arch (edit: actually at the front edges of the fenders) the same two inches needed with some piece work there to have the rear edges line up correctly with the rear edges since they are at an angle.
When the upper and lower pieces are glued or brazed back together as with the rear, with all of the black stuff, I will then fit the light recesses back into the cover by moving them to the rear until the top and bottom edges meet the angled outer surfaces of the cover in their new location which will then be cut off to match and the light recesses glued or brazed back in.

The only issue that I see is that I can't tell in my mind is just at what point the light recesses will meet the cover. I suspect that with the different slopes of the cover on top and bottom will cause the light recesses to move up or maybe down a bit to match at the same time. The recesses are also going to move outboard a little so there will be a gap between the inboard ends of the recesses both front to back and side to side. If the recesses move upward a little then I think filling the inboard gaps wiil in fact tend to simulate the rear light recesses a little bit more that in they move only straight back. Whatever it turns out to be is what we will be stuck with.

I really enjoy this thread, as Jerry's approach to improving the 928 is all about the body and interior, which I've always considered to be near perfection as Porsche made it.
However, it is difficult to not like the looks of a chopped 928. (Athough being over 6' tall, I am forced to think about headroom, whenever I see this idea.)
Since my artistic abilities are virtually non-existent, I've always been stuck trying to improve the mechanicals of these cars...making them compete with modern vehicles.
​​​​It's really great to see some else's approach to improving these cars!

Thanks, Greg for your thoughts and comments about this project. I really like the style and lines of the 928. My object here is to try to keep much of those yet restyle the car so that some of them are not as prominent. I have very often looked at various cars and imagined how they might be chopped and sectioned, but my penchant for that has been pretty much limited to the Porsches. My formula for the Porsche is a 3 inch chop and a two inch section. I plan for the car to still be a 928 but with the kind of double-take effect of someone saying "nice 928 but wait a minute, what has been done to it?"

Jerry, your ability to determine the section and re-assemble plans is amazing to me. I believe I followed your plan for the front, and have learned from it!

My thought was to alter the inboard shape of the late front fog/etc light openings to be less a semicircle and more a tapered rectangle as with the early rear light openings. The goal being to bring a consistency between the two, but I don't know if that would sacrifice too much "928-ness".

Afterwards I thought, this consistency could be done in the other direction - make the late tail light openings have semicircles at each end, to mimic the late front openings. Again, with the same risks.

I doubt I will get a chance soon, but I would like to mock up on the computer what I mean.

Thanks Carlos. I'll look forward to what you come up with

I have been wanting to get back to the metal working aspect of this project, but the thing that has been holding me back is the damn headliner mold. All of the work that I have put into it so far has me only about half way or less than that to getting it finished. Then there are still some remaining questions about just how to finish it up and whether or not it will even work. So, I have finally made a decision about the headliner. I am going to abandon the mold approach to it and I am going to develop the headliner in the classic manner with fabric or leather and simple wire ribs to hold it up to the roof. I will still have to devise the method of how to finish all the outer edges of it, but I think that will come into focus when I get to it.

This will allow me to get back to the metal work. I'll remove the wood structure from the inside and then I can finish up the inside welds. The next step will be to trim and weld in the new roof. When that is done I will be able to finish laying out the section cuts and get going on that aspect of this project.

I feel bad about this long delay in this project, but life pretty much got in the way and took me out of the shop for any major projects. My late wife had gone into Dementia and it finally took her from me. I think that was about 4 years ago now. That had me staying in the house for much of my extra time caring for her. Then I got deeply involved in the early belly pan project and then several smaller projects; but now I think my mind is in the right frame so I plan to get back to this Radical Custom 928.

Glad to hear this, Jerry!

Here's a radical idea you may want to consider for the headliner: that same Pascha pattern (diagonal weave - IIRC). It might be too heavy to be a practical headliner, but the great thing about headliners is they can be hidden gems that only reveal themselves when you take a closer look inside. My first thought was to make the wireframe into the Pascha pattern to begin with, but I don't know how that could be utilized.

Hi Carlos. That is certainly a thought provoking suggestion. I probably wont be looking into the diagonal or diamond Pasha, but I am now giving some thought into just how I might work the listings for the wires into a woven pasha pattern.

I think I have it close to figured out for the Pasha Headliner. I measured it kind of roughly and it is about 34 inches front to back and 44 inches across. It turns out that the Pasha pattern that I had previously derived for the seats, that I hope to weave into my version of Pasha, is very close to what will be needed for a headliner. Visually they are going to be difficult to tell from each other. There will need to be 6 crossways spokes or wires to hold it up so that translates to a pattern that is about 6 3/4 inches square. then I think I have figured out how to incorporate the listings for the wires. I'll need to sew them into each of the front to back strips of leather and there will be 72 of those. Each one will need 6 listings so that works out to 432 individual listings, and each one will need to be sewn individually and spaced very carefully. Then after each one is sewn with from 2 or 3 stitches to about 8, each one will then need to have the threads tied off on each end of the stitches After that the weaving should go pretty quickly.

The thing that is holding me back on any of the weaving for this project is the choice of leather, and that goes back to the color I had planned to paint the car when the body work is finished. My original plan was to paint the car Guards red since up to some time ago that was just about the brightest Red I could come up with. I had even found a nice bright red car in a car show some time ago and when I asked the guy what color it was he said Guards Red. Then I suggested that it looked a little bit brighter than that and he said the trick was to first paint the base coat in White and then about 3 coats of Red over that. It makes the red a little brighter.

So up until some time ago Guards Red was my color choice; that is until I found a car is a much brighter Red than that and bought it. It is my 911, but it is not a Porsche. I'll explain that much later when I reveal the name of the color.

The problem this has created for me is that when I was focusing on Guards Red I also bought 4 or 5 leather hides in a stark Red that is a very close match to the Porsche color. However, with my new color choice the red leather does not match close enough. Then too, I don't think I will ever be able to find a red leather bright enough to go with my new Red color. What I am thinking of doing is to go to a light tan color and trim it out some with a dark Red. I had also found a very light Tan leather hide on a clearance sale from my main supplier, but it is only one hide, and so far I have not been able to find any duplicates. It has two color names on it. One is Light Tan and the other is Antique White. It is so light that I think the Antique White name is the most accurate. When I get closer to doing some more weaving I'll either find some more in the Antique White or simply go with a very light Tan; and I think I am going to be doing some weaving in the next two or three months since I think I am going to have my left shoulder replaced. That will put me on light duty for several weeks I am sure.

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Here is a kind of preliminary glance at how the early tail lights might work up into the later S4 bumper cover. I bought a couple of the early lights on eBay and took one of them apart to see how it is made. It kind of looks like I might be better off to simply make new lights for this project rather than trying to section the original ones. I'm going to look into that and first will be to find some light sockets that I might be able to use and then I'll probably be working something up with LEDs for the bulbs.
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My original plan when I went to the early tail lights for this project, was to section the lights by one inch. Then I obtained the pair of early lights and took them apart and then drew a one inch section on one of them and found that that seems like a bit too much of a section leaving the lights looking too narrow from top to bottom. Then I look again at the picture I previously posted with about a one inch section and they look pretty good. Now I think the best way to determine how much to section them is kind of in the reverse. I want the early lights to fit the S4 bumper cover in close to the same space that the S4 lights take up and maybe a bit more towards the bottom. The early lights have the bottom of the recessed surround going down actually just past the kind of rear apex of the bumper cover, but I don't want that for the cover on this car.

What I think I am going to try is to cut the surround out of the early bumper cover and then cut it in two horizontally. I plan to place the top of the surround at about the same location as the top of the S4 lights then I'll locate the bottom of the surround at the lower location of the S4 light opening or perhaps about a half inch lower, but not at or below the rear apex. With the surround located where I like it that will then tell me just how much to section the lights and lenses.

Then I am trying to develop a method to section the lights which is going to involve trimming the four lenses out to the new size and then placing them into a completely new framework and then actually totally fabricating the light housings that they will mount to.

I think that the section is still going to come out to just about an inch.

Those early lights inside the S4 bumper nacelles look pretty cool!

Remind me how much the rear bumper is being sectioned - 2 inches? 3 inches? I think I recall 2 inches, to match the body sanctioning?

If you go by this it is a little less than 6 inches. Many of us guys have been telling women for years that this is six inches.:


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