Stephen,
I have a similar problem on my car....under coating everywhere. What are you using for removal.....something mechanical or chemical?

Thx,

The underseal on my car was quite think and had hardened. I used a selection of paint scrapers but I think the best was a thinner flexible putty knife type just like this.

Click to view attachment

Wow!
You are very diligent with that putty knife! Nice job!
I found that an old wood working chisel works nicely too. I like the extra weight when scraping through the material. I used this approach when removing the tar from the floor boards.

I never finished off my GT style front grill because at the time I wasn't quite sure how to do it. I'm currently waiting on some panels from Restoration Design so I can get the back of the car back together so in the meantime...

I decided to make up another frame to sandwich the grill in place.


The three pieces together.


Now that was complete I could set about fitting the front valance.


The tabs on the valance were moulded in the wrong position so I cut them off and made some brackets. These would also give me some play to get everything lined up well.


Old bumper used to make sure everything fitted together and lined up.


With that complete it was time to paint the grill and put it in a safe place until it was time to assemble the car.

Nice Looking Grill

Since the last update I've been discovering more rot. I knew there was a bit but as usual it was a little worse than I imagined. Isn't it always. Most of it had been there a long while and had been disguised with filler and painted over. This time I was doing it properly.

First was the front trunk seal channel another notorious area.

This is the bottom left corner above the headlight.






Looks a little odd finished but it matches the other side perfectly.

This was totally hidden under high build and paint. Almost the entire length was heavily pitted.


Just surface rust fortunately - cleaned up and treated before being recovered.


New channel fabricated and tacked in.


Finished - nice new metal.

Next job was on the the windscreen aperture. I wasn't looking forward to this one and I was going to need to buy a Shrinker/Stretcher. As per usual spent a bit of time researching how I was going to make this part. When the Shrinker/Stretcher arrived I couldn't wait to have a go. Initially I used it to put a slight bend in the long trunk channel above and in seconds I had the perfect bend.

So now to make a replacement part for this. You can't beat jumping in at the deep end


This was my first attempt and I was rather pleased with the result.


Nice and clean underneath fortunately.


Ready to stick in on


Getting there.


Finished :cheers:


Really happy with how that turned out. The other corner needs some attention so that will receive the same treatment.

I'm off the see the media blasters and painter tomorrow to discuss my requirements and dates. I'm hoping to have the car painted in the beginning of the new year. Still lots to do though before that happens.

Sorry to hear about "more rot" but it sure looks like you know what you are doing. Keep up the good work it will be worth it.

Time for another update. Nothing very interesting though I'm afraid just more body repairs.

I wasn't very happy with the aperture repair, it was close but not perfect and after a few days of it bugging me I had to revisit it. The main problem was a narrowing of the aperture at the bottom of the A post. Once the screen was fitted it would probably have been fine but I knew if I could modify it to be just 2mm deeper it would be spot on. I didn't capture all of the work but below shows the patch that straightened everything out. With that done I could sleep again



During the aperture repair I only removed enough paint to get the job done. Having now needing to make repairs to the scuttle panel I went ahead and removed the rest of the paint. It did take long to find a big dent in the scuttle stuffed with filler. The metal was stretched and there was no way I was going to be able to flatten it out so I decided to cut out a large piece and drop in some fresh metal.

The last piece of the bonnet gutter to repair was again another time consuming job. I've spent days now just making small repair pieces

Trying to cut out the rot - Lots of seam sealer on the underside.


All the offending metal cut out and a coat of weld-thru primer applied.


One of the two repair pieces in place before welding.


Piece one finished and more primer applied


Last piece in and almost complete.

With the oil cooler shroud taking place of the spare wheel well I sourced a collapsible spare tyre and set about mounting it upright.



After a few cardboard prototypes I made this bracket to attach the spare.


Welded in place it uses the original spare wheel hold down to attach the wheel and leave about half an inch gap under the tyre.


Spare in place.


If I was going for more of a race style GT replica I'd have called this complete, but I had in my mind to utilise the original floor board to make two storage compartments. As well as the oil cooler the fuel pump is also going there so I like the idea of a cleaner storage area above. I'd seen this done before on a GT replica at the Nurburgring, just my approach would be a bit different.

Again after a few ideas I settled with a support bar for the top of the oil cooler shroud and a couple of brackets.


Brackets welded in. The hole in the top are filled with grommets, giving the board something to rest on.


Oil Shroud support bar painted and in place. The two open grommets allow for pegs on the base of the board to slot in place and stop it from moving about.


Floor board in place. Eventually this will be recovered in Perlon as per the original.


With the oil cooler shroud in place the wiring loom will now run across the top of the shroud. The tyre board is short enough not to interfere with it but I wanted a solution to tie the loom in place. Copying the style of all of the wiring loom metal tabs welded on the body I made these to both hold the top of the shroud in place and bend around around loom.

With that done it was time to install another flare, this time however I took a slightly different approach.

Here's the flare attached to the car with screws, I'd previously trimmed off most of the original arch on the wing. This time instead of drawing around it and trimming the original wing I was going to cut this wing with the flare in place leaving tabs where the screws were.



You can just about see where I've left a piece of metal near the screw.


All cut show a few of the tabs.


I could now place a few spot welds here and there and cut the tabs off when I got to that part.



The resulting fit was much better than the other side and I'll be using this approach on the rears.




With that flare attached and finished the front of the car was done. With that I put the front bumper and valance back on to test fit again and I also cut the front bumper for more airflow.



Now I need to find someone to re chrome the front bumper and potentially weld up the holes in it too.

I've now started on the rear again now and will post another update in a few days when that starts to take shape.

Well I'm certainly impressed! Looks great!
I did some of this stuff on my 356 many rears ago so I have an appreciation for this work and the time it takes.

Thanks Jim.

I just want to mention again that I cross post this thread on another forum in the UK (DDK). Most of the members there are 911 owners and for them I tend to state the obvious that almost everyone here knows.

I really like the cooler/spare/frunk-board! Nicely executed

I really like what you did in the trunk. Great build.

Very nice job. It will be a nice one fixed right.

Thanks for taking the time to document your GT build.

Bob B

Thanks all, I appreciate the comments. This really is turning into a labour of love now but I'm still enjoying every moment. Racing against time now as I'm hoping to get to paint very early in the new year.

The list is getting shorter finally and I seem to actually be crossing more off of it than adding!

Following.

Great work!

Very well executed. I like the way you handled the cooler, spare and board too.

Does anyone else feel like a massive underachiever here after reading this thread??? I spend about a year just doing a motor swap from a 1.7 to big 4.

Looks great.

I know but as long as it still happens...that's the main thing,to me part of the ownership is working on these little cars,besides I bought a car ready to convert,my days of fixing rusty cars is basically over.
The OP has amazing skill and I really take my hat off to people with the bodywork skill he has ....well done.
Following this one with interest .

Your attention to detail is exemplary!

I do hope my thread serves as an inspiration to others to have a go. Prior to starting work on the car my welding experience was limited to a one day course and almost every other skill I've picked up along the way.

I've always learnt from diving head on into projects. Yeah I've made mistakes and have certainly wasted money along the way, but I've learnt from them and progressed.

There's many free learning resources out there on the internet, I personally have found YouTube to be invaluable to my learning.

From the look of your work, I figured you had a welding and fabrication background.

Stephen's build is inspiring to me. I have some skills, but not those kinds of skills. I can't wait to see the finished product. It's like reading a good book, and you want to go read the last few pages to see how the story turns out.

My car needs the exact same repair on both sides. Hope that I can find someone locally with half your talent to tackle it for me!

I have long wanted too do something similar in my trunk where I already have a vertically mounted tire. Thanks for the ideas and inspiration. Started working on it today.

Go for it Jim. I'm pleased it's inspired you. Looking forward to what you come up with.

I just started into welding/fabing. I find that working with 22 gauge steel and MIG is an interesting and versatile medium. It is time consuming!! Patience and meticulous prep!! It is definitely a go slow to go fast sort of an endeavor.

If you have that kind of mind set it is not hard, quite satisfying and actually somewhat forgiving. Thank god for grinders!!

Using a Hobart 140, gas, and the usual assortment of small body hammers, dollies, pliers, vices etc.

It helps to be learning on a POS Datsun 510 race car. Mistakes are just part of the patina!

Update time...

The floor wasn't in the best condition and as usual the further I dug the worse it got. The passenger rear corner was the worse and due to the accident was slightly crumpled. Initially I planned to cut this part out and repair but heaving pitting due to water ingress pushed me to replace half of the floor. So a new panel was ordered from Restoration Design.

Here's part of the floor showing some of the pitting.


This is the support piece that goes over the cross member that supports the gearbox I needed to remove this so set about drilling the sixty plus spot welds. I think you can guess what I found underneath it.


Yep, more rust!


Cutting out the floor piece by piece.


Restoration Design have produced some of their replacement panels from a thicker gauge steel. I think I get the reasoning behind this but it's obvious some definition in the part is missing and butt welding the pieces together isn't easy when you only want part of the panel.

Here's the replacement trunk floor panel. I've seen many 914's restored with trunk floors that look like this but I wanted to put the manufacturing access holes back in.



Here they are hiding under rather a lot of seam sealer.


Well preserved though!


After cutting out the cutout too I could then use that as a template


New hole


Both finished ready to be hidden under another load of seam sealer

Here's the new floor in place. As you can see I didn't use all of the new panel - I don't see the point in cutting out original metal that is solid. However due to the thickness of the new panel I had to cut off the middle section as the bends didn't match up to the ones on the car.



Problem! During the process of cutting out the center rusty section I found more rust in the top half! I don't know how I missed it but yet again there it was disguised by thick paint.


After calming down I came up with a plan after seeing the old bottom half of the trunk floor I'd already cut out. What if that fitted??


The rescued panel trimmed and cleaned up


Offering it up!


A perfect fit!


Welded in place. You can also see I put the hole and captive nut back for the additional spare tyre hold down on the cross member.

New support plate fabricated, slightly longer than standard.


Rosette welds for the rear towing eye and bumper support.


Completed including support plates for the rear sway bar mounting brackets underneath.


Whilst putting all of this together I got the back of the car reassembled too. I'll cover that at a later date as like many things I can't finish that until I complete another task.

So next time it's on to THE HELL HOLE!! As you can guess it's worse that I imagined

Wow....you made that look easy as pie.
What did it take you? An afternoon's work?
Nice reimagineering on the rescued panel.
Most people don't have any idea how much time a repair like this costs....
But it's mostly labor, so if you can DIY, you save bundles.

An afternoon! I could have done it twice in that time

Lots of labour, in reality it was probably about four solid days including my mistakes that I don't show on here A lot of time was spent lining up the rear panel and rear quarter that I haven't included in this thread yet.

Wow! just wow!
I Liked "An afternoon! I could have done it twice that time"
Slow tedious stuff.
Keep the updates coming, progress is a good thing and nice to see!

Thanks Jim - I was please with how all that turned out. She's starting to look like a car again. And more excitingly the flared car I've always dreamed of!

I’m impressed with your attention to detail. It’s worth it in the end. Great job!

Thanks very much. I've just had a look though your photo album. Wow - now that's impressive work.

Very well done, the first cut is the scariest....

Originally I was going to keep my 914 7K Tachometer and use a Tach Adaptor to convert the signal to display correctly. However something caught my eye on Instagram a few months ago and I decided I go for something a bit different.

I contacted the guy on Instagram, username classicautoclock. Waldek lives in Poland but used to work at North Hollywood Speedometer, so he knows his stuff. Turnaround was just a few weeks and I'm very happy with the results. Also the price was very good.

If you need your gauges rebuilt or modified, Waldek is worth having a chat with.

Here's my original Tacho


Here it is now.

Very cool tach!!!

I like that tach! Cool idea.
Keep up the good work!

Fantastic !!! I did my body work in a similar fashion, sections at a time without an entire bare metal strip. But mine without the chassis reinforcement or -6 upgrades (yet ). Your car looks amazing that is what I want mine to become someday

Into to the Hole!

The hell hole of course. I think at this stage, more than anything, this was a test of patience and planning along with the skills I'd already learnt.

So what do I have to work with !


It didn't get any better when you got closer either

Pretty eh! Now we all know this could have been a lot worse as despite the heavy pitting in the metal there was only one very small hole in the ramp area and I think I made that whilst cleaning. At this stage I did ask for a bit of advice on how to proceed and armed with that information I set off.

First job was to tackle the area behind the original 4-cylinder engine mount that I'd removed months earlier. I gave up counting after drilling out the millionth spot weld but we got there in the end.

It looks all innocent and easy to cut out doesn't it! Such a f*&^%r!


Here you can see the strenghting, and in good condition too.


Skipping to the end - All buttoned up.

Next I wanted to tackle the firewall. I think most of the damage here was from soaking wet soundproofing, but it was probably a sprinkle of battery acid that broke the camel's back.



I decided I'd have a go at fabricating this part and after a bit of headscratching I came up with the idea of making it in three pieces.

Here's the fabricated repair being welding together.


And here it is in place ready to be tacked in.


And finished. I was quite happy with that.