72 3.0 CS 2240344 Restoration

Scott that is a great start ... the body looks quite good on the outside, just those little items on the passenger rear quarter. you going to shave those side markers off / getting rid of the holes on the sides? looks better without the side markers.
 
rsporsche said:
Scott that is a great start ... the body looks quite good on the outside, just those little items on the passenger rear quarter. you going to shave those side markers off / getting rid of the holes on the sides? looks better without the side markers.
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Yep. Side markers, and front left side antenna will be gone. Wheel arches rolled
 
Breiti said:
Did you close the side marker holes?
Just will bring that up on that early point.

Breiti
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Those will be done as part of the overall body work.

The photos don't show some of the issues.

Key things that will need to be addressed are:

Rockers. The outer rocker pieces been removed on the right side (I did that months ago), and the surface rust on the middle rocker has been addressed. We need to do the same on the left side.

Front floor pans. The passenger side floor pan and a portion of the trans tunnel need to be replaced from the seat cross member forward.

Package tray speaker holes. The PO provided a replacement panel salvaged from a car that was scrapped, so they need to use that to patch the giant rough speaker holes in the package tray.

Side markers. The front and rear side marker holes will be filled.

Antenna hole. This will be filled. In today's digital world, there is really no reason for a radio. I'll put one in, but any music will probably be played from my phone through the stereo.

Right rear mid quarter. You can see in the photos that there is some minor panel damage on the right rear quarter, forward of the wheel well, and a dent above that just below the rear side window.

Many ripples along the doors. There are a number of small door dings, right along the "character line" that runs down the sides of the car. Those will be worked out, and smoothed.

It looks like there's a bit of work to do on the lower rear area below the bumper.

And I'll have them roll the wheel arches for the larger wheels.

So still quite a lot to do, but starting from a good place.
 
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That’s not so bad Scott. Always something. The line across the doors etc was the trickiest part for me. It was gone in the PO’s body work. I took care to make sure it was prominent. It is as you say a character line.
 
OK, with a little help from the Forum, I got the strut nuts off, and disassembled the front hubs. Interesting that the rotor only comes off by disassembling the bearing.. The E-12 and later cars have a rotor that comes off leaving the hub intact.

The strut tube nuts are my next challenge. Nothing big enough in my shop for those. Going to try putting them in a bench vise and then rotating the strut tube.

Also started disassembling the half shaft CV joints. Oh my! those are STIFF!!!. I cut loose the boots and soaked the CV joints in kerosene. Then used a soft brush to start getting the old caked on grease out. They are gradually loosening up. What a gunky mess!!

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rsporsche said:
that is serious work Scott. good on you for taking it on.
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Yeah, as Brent Spiner says in Independence Day, "this is the really icky part"...

But when it is all back together with spanking new hardware she'll be as good as new!

Kerosene and Brakleen are your friend!! (Don suggested i soak the CVs in gasoline, but I didn't think that was a great idea.....

One other comment. I have restored four cars, some literally from the brink of extinction, and from experience, I can say that car restoration is about 90% cleaning and painting, and about 10% assembly
 
I am thinking I will keep these CV joints together, and just keep cleaning them rather than risk removing the balls and getting them mixed up. They seem to be cleaning well, and I can just pull the shafts out, clean them and then mask and paint everything before greasing and reassembling them.

I must say there's a perverse satisfaction in starting from a seized up CV joint and after 15 mins of rinsing and brushing get it to mostly move freely. Visceral progress!!

I was originally going to take the easy way-out and just buy new ones from W-N ( a money vs time tradeoff), but they are currently unavailable. Good thing, since that motivated me to dive in and renovate them instead!
 
More cleaning progress. Got the axles out, got about 90 % of the gunk out of the CVs. One is much looser than the others...SO, more soaking and cleaning...
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So while the CV joints are marinating (getting a little freer after a little exercise and more marinating every day), I decided to tryout the bead blaster. Here is a pulley I got from Don, and the two rear subframe stabilizer brackets, before and after. I have since further cleaned up these pieces, but I was pleased with how well the blasting worked!!

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My experience as well. I think if you're going to be doing restoration and have a desktop-sized space (and a large air compressor, which is a necessity), picking up a blasting cabinet used off of marketplace for $100 plus $50 in blasting media let's you do a lot of stuff much more efficiently than paint stripping goo would. Pulleys, light corrosion, old paint, etc.
 
I actually had the room, and invested in a large blasting cabinet and an 80 gallon 2 stage compressor. These took me all of about 15 minutes.. No other way to do it, really. You could scrub and brush a dissolve all day long and never get all of the paint, gunk and rust off.

The work gets hampered by dust in the cabinet though, so tomorrow I am headed to Harbor freight to get a dust collector. That should also provide a bit of negative pressure to prevent the dust from sneaking out via every microscopic joint in the cabinet!

I recently set up a fairly large painting rack, and a portable spray booth, so soon I'll be spraying these and the half shafts with 2K primer and 2K epoxy paint
 
Very nice, very nice. I agree on the dust in the cabinet - I found that caulking up some of the seams helped a lot, and installing a brighter LED than those things often come with was also a nice and cheap upgrade. If you have the painting rack and spray booth, may want to consider adding an Eastwood powder coating gun and their powder coating oven (essentially a slightly larger-than-usual toaster oven) to the mix. You can fit anything up to the size of the coolant reservoir (but don't put that in there!, just meant as a size range!) in the oven. The results are likewise quite fast - something like those pulleys can be blasted in 5-10 minutes, powder coated in under 5 and then bake for 30 minutes and you have a very professional-looking pulley with a durable exterior. I found a cheap large wooden rolling cabinet someone was essentially giving away and stuck the cabinet on one end of it and the oven on the other so I have a rolling little blasting/coating station. I do it outside so as to cut down on all the dust since I don't have the spray booth.
 
ScottAndrews said:
I actually had the room, and invested in a large blasting cabinet and an 80 gallon 2 stage compressor. These took me all of about 15 minutes.. No other way to do it, really. You could scrub and brush a dissolve all day long and never get all of the paint, gunk and rust off.

The work gets hampered by dust in the cabinet though, so tomorrow I am headed to Harbor freight to get a dust collector. That should also provide a bit of negative pressure to prevent the dust from sneaking out via every microscopic joint in the cabinet!

I recently set up a fairly large painting rack, and a portable spray booth, so soon I'll be spraying these and the half shafts with 2K primer and 2K epoxy paint
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Yep, dust collector makes a big difference. Using 60 gal Craftsman tank. I also added a brighter light inside the cabinet. Does amazing work really. So a great addition to any shop.
 
e9Leveque said:
If you have the painting rack and spray booth, may want to consider adding an Eastwood powder coating gun and their powder coating oven (essentially a slightly larger-than-usual toaster oven) to the mix. You can fit anything up to the size of the coolant reservoir (but don't put that in there!, just meant as a size range!) in the oven.
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I have the Eastwood powder coating setup. Need an oven. I may do this with the pedal box and pedals...
 
Oven works great and then for about $150 can pick up infrared light to do larger items / have to do in sections moving the light along the object but it works fine. That’s how I did my valve cover - 3 separate sections of 30 minutes
 
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