"I done ghetto fixed it!"

If you've talked to me for any length of time, you've probably heard bike shop stories. And, you've probably heard about the time that a customer came in with a bike and a hammer and proudly declared that he "done ghetto fixed it!!". Say what you want, but he did the best he could in his situation, with his constraints. Now, 20 years later, I too have done ghetto fixed it!

You might recall, I had a rust hole in the driver's door sill. I cut away most of the bad metal, and cut the hole as neatly as I could...

Then, I cut and shaped a piece of stainless steel to fit the hole. At this point, a purist would think that I would weld the piece in place, but I don't own a welder, I don't intend on learning to weld, and I decided to get by as best I could.

The piece has been "welded" in place with epoxy, and I used epoxy to level things out...

 For the thinner vertical section, a mix of metal mesh, epoxy paste, and epoxy putty was used to fill things. In the end, a lot of the edges of the mesh was ground away, but by then, there was enough epoxy in place.

I sprayed it with flat black to see where I needed to make improvements. You're seeing the final result (after a couple of passes filling and sanding). It's not perfect by any stretch, but this area will be under a layer of vinyl wrap, a rubber pad, and the rubber door seal. I didn't see the point of making the shape perfect.

The passenger side is coming along similarly - sheet metal + epoxy, but there's more extensive damage leading to more extensive work. More details later...

Shapeways Redux

I received my completed parts from Shapeways. After ordering a couple of test pieces in different materials, I settled on a polished white plastic. The letters look great and very "real". 

I also ordered three pieces that would make up the mounting system for the main plastic panel. Printing the whole panel would have been extremely expensive, and too large for the print process, so I printed 3 thin pieces that were sized to fit the printing constraints, and matched the mounting points of the real Porsche reflector. The these pieces also served as a template for the precise holes needed to mount each letter.

After I glued the printed "template" to the back of the plastic panel, I drilled out each hole with a drill press. 

 The resulting fit was perfect - each letter fits exactly in place. The panel also makes a perfect holder for spraying the letters. I'm likely going to go with a steel/aluminum finish. More about that later...

Shapeways Here We Come

The rear reflector is a bit cracked and in dodgy condition, and a new one can be very expensive, so I'm going a different route. I've drawn up a design in ViaCAD and I'm using ShapeWays.com to "print" pieces to build a new rear logo. I started by downloading the Porsche font and creating 3D letters. I added pegs to the backs of the letters so that they would fit exactly into a plastic plate that I would also print. The idea was that I would print stainless steel letters, a large plastic slab to mount them on, and a stainless steel frame to finish off the edges. Unfortunately, the original thick design of the letters would have been about $800 to print in stainless, so I brought them down to 2mm. The plastic slab would have been about $500, so I reduced it to a very thin layer that serves mostly as a stencil for the letter holes and also for the mounting points onto the car.

My plan is to print the letters, the frame, and the mounting "stencils". Then, I'll make the main plastic plate in a more traditional way (ie. not 3D printing it). Then, I'll wrap the plastic plate in something like carbon fiber, glue on the stencils, mount the letters and the frame, and mount it on the car.

I've ordered a sample letter in a couple of different materials. More later...

Lower Back Pain

I've removed everything from the rear end. This means that I'm about 90% done with disassembly. I still need to remove the glass and a few odds and ends like windshield wipers, but I'm pretty close.

Once everything is off, there's a significant amount of cleaning and patching that I need to do. I now have a better view of things like the oil tank and the heat exchangers, but I'm trying to ignore their condition at this stage.

A word of warning...

I started this blog as a way of documenting what I was doing and to provide helpful tips to anyone who might want to do the same. Today, I have two helpful tips.

Helpful tip #1: If you're thinking about disassembling a perfectly good Porsche, DON'T DO IT! Get a wife, a girlfriend, both, a dog, whatever... I give the 1974 911 a low rating on maintainability. It's as if the designers assumed that the owners would never want to disassemble the car using common household tools (an, on one occasion, a butter knife). There are better things for you to be doing with your time and your butter knives.

But, if you don't agree with that first tip,

Helpful tip #2: If you know you're going to replace various rusty screws and bolts, you'll find a zen-like calm fall over you when you come to the realization that a cutting wheel is as acceptable as a screwdriver and far more effective.

The front is complete

After days of poking, prodding, prying, scraping, eating, praying, loving, and crying I have removed the driver's side fender. I've also removed everything else, but the fender was the painful part.

I think there was a healthy dose of schadenfreude at the Porsche factory in the 70s. Be assured that the longest screws (requiring the most turns) were also the ones that were in the most hard to reach locations, rust prone, coated with rubberized liners, and surrounded by jagged rusty corners. After I managed to unscrew everything, I still had to fight with 38 year old adhesive that was sealing the fender to the body, not to mention one spot weld and an attached fuel system.

Now that it's removed, you can see the washer fluid reservoir (currently attached to a pump that looks like it broke in the 80s), and the fuel overflow tank. I think I might remove these, clean everything up, and reattach with new hoses.

You can also see the ventilation system. I'm thinking of removing this, as it seems redundant in a California Targa car. The way that Porsche heating system is designed, it's more likely to pump carbon monoxide into the cabin than to increase my comfort. I still haven't decided, but I'm very tempted to remove it.

As a side note...

You might have noticed the addition of Google ads to the blog. This is so I can get marvelously, filthy rich off of the 50 page views I get every single week. I'll invite you all to my castle some day.

I also did it because I realized that I had no direct experience with the dashboards, analytics, etc. that come along with the Google ad platform. So, I figured "what the heck? I'll try it". Bear with me during my little experiment.