Went to change a broken clutch cable, discovered car has cancer, bit emotional at this moment. Knew it was coming, didn't expect the scope Options

[davebrossi]

Hi All,

I prefer most often to lurk, but after a spin to a nearby autobody shop about filling in some rock chips on the rear fender flairs of the clown car netted me a 13,500 estimate, I've been a little on edge for rust. This morning I set out to change the clutch cable which had snapped last weekend. As I was getting myself situated I noticed some of the undercoating seemed more...flaky than usual.

I moved my finger towards it, brushed it and off it came! along with another small piece. I was now staring in disbelief at a mixture of pink body filler and carpet. OK! I told myself, this seems relatively minor, let's just clean the area, I can fix this, maybe not the best way, but I can!. That was five hours ago. As I worked I realized I needed to see where the damage was on the interior, so I removed the carpeting. Once again, I spied a familiar orange tinge... under the urethane installed at the factory. I started working with a chisel and hammer. What was a small hole was in fact a seam running along and right up to the driver's side right seat bracket. The concrete below glared at me menacingly.

The clown car (my 914-6) was the result of an venture from a forum member offering turnkey restoration of 914s. I have no interest in flaming or anything mean, so I will not say who, and that's not a challenge either, since frankly all of this was beneath urethane, and said individual cleaned, primered and properly painted surfaces all the way to the old urethane on the floor pans. but it is worth mentioning because rather than spiral down the inception styled road of 'oh god I'm doomed, DOOOOOMMMMED!' I sat back and thought about what they -had- restored and what I had to go back and work on. The interior of the door panels was rusty, I sanded, sealed with POR15, clear coat has a craze to it, but stable and looks fine. Small side sail bumps. Originally thought body filler, probably tin worm, but unlikely to fail while driving and drag me half out of the bottom of the car. Longitudinals, hell hole both extensively reviewed during restoration, both are clear. I don't see bubbles all over the car, and the 13500 was with a note saying "we don't serve yer kind round these parts try these guys since they do antiques" from a shop filled with classic american muscle cars and more of a 'get lost' message, which I understand because scope creep is real.

I want to believe this is one of those typical stories where I don't wind up with the Porsche 914 equivalent of "you have died of dysentery" on the Oregon Trail PC game, but I also have to face up to the fact that I will have to acquire new front and rear floor pans. Happily they can be ordered from Pelican without much fuss (the available weld in panels for the 914 is really REALLY a reason I love them in an odd sort of way.)

I know I have to invest in a welder as I lack the skills. I want to prepare the area as best as humanly possible because A.) I believe in being a good steward and B.) I'm afraid while I'm happy to pay for their services, I am cheap and would prefer to do the prep work myself.

Advice (maybe prayers?) is/are appreciated, but I will be searching threads and educating myself accordingly as I know I need to. in the meantime, here's some NSFW Porsche Floor pan gore;


the initial discovery and early cleaning



The point at which I realize I should probably look at the top end of things.



because regrettably I am a millenial, I wanted to show off my PPE for working with fiberglass and sanding.



The moment my heart sank, the colour drained out of my face, and I had to go have a little sit down. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/barf.gif)



This is the extent of the rot. You can see the garage floor clearly a menacing glare fixed on it's eyeball-less face :E! I wont blame the consumption of Hubert's lemonade, wait, no, yes I'll blame it for the rust after all!



The start of (and at which point I realized that the floor pans were toast on both sides) the surface rust on the other side.

I'll admit it was heartbreaking to discover. I wanted to give up and throw it all away, sell it and be done with it. But then again, new front and rear floor panels are made for a reason, and the last undiscovered country (Star Trek) both my father and I were starting into was body work in the last couple years. I'm hoping I'm not right thinking this will require the selling of one of both a kidney and a lung, frankly I have no idea, though (in a phrase I use talking with my employers often) I look forward to the opportunities it will afford me moving forward. Bonus points here in how my dad managed to cause the usual reaction that always happened when there was a setback and he had to tell mom one last time. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/chair.gif)

[davebrossi]

So! Today was play with dry ice day! Wheeee! Finding it was actually more challenging than one might think, but I eventually bought seven pounds of the stuff, and rushed home to get started.





Quick note on dry ice; works better if you're watering your Porsche slightly as while it's an arid pla...err.. car, in this instance water helps your success grow!

I've found since water to tar contact makes for a fast freeze and helps make the material more brittle I played a drinking game with the car. You, too, at home can play this game! You pretend to take a drink of water, then dribble it on and around the chunk of dry ice. You'll be sober the whole time, and everyone loves that! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/beer3.gif)

That said, above all else, keep your hands dry, so as a rule of thumb (unless you want to lose the tip of yours), if your hands are wet, use a stick to move the ice around. I wore gloves, so I still have my finger tips, though scraping bits of coating out did not keep the hands dry. Make sure to marinade your floor pans at least a minute or so before playing whack a mole, it seemed to work better for me. Also this served to interrupt the random teenage romance blossoming across the breezeway from the garage which I insisted on drowning out with hammering because I'm an evil shrew who hates anyone having any fun. Ever. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/bye1.gif)



So as you can see, I was correct in my suspicion that if everything seems to be going perfectly, you're not paying attention (one of Murphey's many axioms, oh how this came back to haunt me later!) and 'cracked' urethane means a 45 year old pinata filled with happy little rust candy waiting to be pummeled.



So here's where I put it all together regarding how to turn tar into tarlettes, but I spread the dry ice out to various points hoping to attack multiple areas and not at all because I accidentally swatted the block with the hammer. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smilie_pokal.gif)



As you can see those 'little elves' Porsche talked about in their promotional videos circa the 1960s were annoyingly consistent with beads of adhesive, but also that below the paint after the first two depressions in the pan, things are looking almost 'good' (loaded term there!) I hope those elves were at least inconvenienced at times like I've been here.... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/poke.gif)



Just forward of the cross member, this was the most corrosion damage seen on the passenger's side top to bottom, with at least one pinhole in the pan where it joined with the center 'tunnel.'



The corner where the cross member joins the 'tunnel' you can see appears to be a surface rust paradise where all the cool metal goes to... something... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/confused24.gif)



Here's the pinhole I was talking about, no deal killer, but hello concrete!



Reminds me a little of the stories of pioneers relying on buffalo chips being as a fuel source. Don't think I'll be trying that here....



YOUR WINNER! (That's a PC game Big Rigs joke) as I reached the end of the floor pan on the passenger's side relatively unscathed.



More of the area I can go back to, but I'm confident it's in good nick

By now I'd gotten almost completely to the bottom drudging up scraps of coating and beyond those first two depressions things were surprisingly healthy looking. I mean, go back with my 5000 watt A/C Inverter and deep cycle marine battery powered random orbital sander (thanks, scope creep (IMG:style_emoticons/default/headbang.gif) ) and I'd be good to go. With the job done here however I knew I wanted to switch over to the driver's side. Call it a feeling?



The problem here became apparent once I transplanted the ice over and got to working out emotional trauma on the coating near the driver's side footwell/ continued my evil scheme to deny young love next door (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ar15.gif) . There's a lot of rust there, like night and day difference between here and the passenger's side.



If you look closely (it's too dark to be dramatic) essentially everything the camera's imaging sensor picked up that isn't black, is deep rust. peeking below the car I noticed water dripping down now that I'd fractured the protective coating.



Looking at the metal here, the shallow depression portions of the pan are not completely eaten through, but a good whack with a bladed screw driver would likely go right through. Bugger...

I stopped because I had my answer more or less. So to recap;

Driver's side upper pan, on it's way to canonization as holy mother of holes. Passenger's upper pan, other than the pin hole, a bit of surface rust, but nothing scope creep sanding wont fix. Passenger's side lower pan, looks damned good, I'm pretty happy other than the first two depressed areas which need a good Prozac like sanding to lift their spirits. Driver's side lower pan; LV426 man, I say take off and nuke the whole site from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.

My concerns about pin prick rust in and around the center tunnel make me lean more towards replacement of both pans and jack points to be on the safe side, but that could be overkill. even though there is good metal on the passenger's side, it'd still a gamble, yeah?

Now for a stupid question (I always have many.) I don't suppose restoration design's metal is galvanized? I mean, part of me is hoping, but that's a whole lot of extra expense even if they've got the market cornered.

[bbrock]

Now for a stupid question (I always have many.) I don't suppose restoration design's metal is galvanized? I mean, part of me is hoping, but that's a whole lot of extra expense even if they've got the market cornered.

Even better. They are galvannealed. I just posted this pic on my build thread a couple days ago. A storm front came through the day I finished blasting my car and flash rust set in to the engine compartment, but look at those RD parts. They are the ones laughing at the rust. Really good stuff.

(IMG:http://www.914world.com/bbs2/uploads/post-20845-1537497511_thumb.jpg)