by John Glynn | Jun 4, 2013 | Classic Porsche Blog, Project Cars
Just had these preview pictures through from EB Motorsport of their all-new Deep 6 and 7R Fuchs reproduction wheels in polished finish.
The polished look has always seemed best to me on these rare rims, and EB wheels are designed and manufactured with exceptional attention to detail. Note how these wheels feature the safety bead missing from original Fuchs, and the correct detail around the valve stems, not seen on lesser reproductions.
The wheel centre and front face are machined from a single aluminium billet, with the forged rear barrel CNC-welded to the front section. I had a close look at these wheels in person last week. The finish is top notch and the curve of the spoke and rim edge is just perfect: these are really lovely products. Why risk your original wheels? Get a set of these on and mothball the originals.
EB has so far won two Masters Historic Series championships using their strong and lightweight reproduction Fuchs wheels without incident: this is despite some heavy impacts, including a direct hit from a spinning GT40 at last year’s Silverstone Classic! Suffice to say that the design and manufacture is excellent, as we have come to expect from this perfectionist Porsche parts manufacturer.
Price for either Deep 6 or 7R reproductions is £1850 per pair. That is ex-works from Yorkshire HQ, so plus VAT and carriage where applicable. Contact EB Motorsport for more details and to discuss options on finishing etc. Remember, these are proper, high-end reproductions: not cast to keep cost down. Cast wheels are much heavier and raise too many questions on strength and quality/porosity.
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by John Glynn | May 7, 2013 | Classic Porsche Blog, Project Cars
Just had a few pics through from the UK Fuchs distributor showing various classic 911 models owned by satisfied customers running the 18-inch Fuchs wheels.
This first one is from Brad in North America, running the RSR style on a 964. Fuchs make the wheels with offsets to suit the different 964 set up – looks lots better than the clunky Braid wheels often seen on other cars. DP showed a similar setup at Essen on their latest 964-based creation, albeit their wheels ran red centres.
This is Ian’s Carrera Cabriolet, running 18s with black centres. The car is fitted with a 3.6-litre engine so has the muscle to work those bigger wheels & tyres. Tyres are a big advantage to bigger wheels – more choice of rubber with bigger rims.
You’ve seen this before but I couldn’t resist another peek at the white 993 Coupe running 18″ Fuchs. This car is cool in white.
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by John Glynn | Apr 9, 2013 | Classic Porsche Blog, Porsche News, Project Cars
Had some nice feedback on my latest 924 Turbo maintenance piece: thanks for that. I finally heard back from Porsche GB on getting a build date for the car, so I sent off my £65 for a Letter of Origin. Should be enough to register it here once it’s MOTed.
While writing the cheque for Porsche Cars GB, it occurred to me that Italy must have a HPI system for its cars, so I googled that and found the Automobile Club d’Italia (ACI) website. It’s the only source of info for Italian cars, and looked great. If you speak Italian and have a Codice Fiscale (Social Security number), you can find out anything you want about a car for a modest fee.
Much as I love Italia, I have neither the language nor the residency to go all the way with ACI, but Google Translate helped me find a section of the site to check tax status on a car registered in Italy. My 1980 924 Turbo carries the reg prefix RA, which is Emilia-Ravenna district, but the tax site showed it as last registered in Sardinia. The ragu thickens.
Amongst the nondescript paper shrapnel pulled from the car, I did find a stack of business cards from a bodyshop in Cagliari, capital of Sardinia. I emailed them a few months back but heard nothing in return. It’s obvious that they painted it, many moons ago.
The paint is now shot to pieces, but at some stage it probably looked OK. This led me to searching 924 Turbos in Cagliari and finding more Italian 924s with these Fisher-Price indicators on the front wings. I’m probably taking them off mine when we paint it: wonder who at Porsche Italy thought they were the right way to go.
Anyway, Sardinia Car Tax Online says this car was registered 1/1/1980, so I am guessing there was no official production date put forward when it was registered there. I could try to register it using the paperwork I gleaned from the ACI site, but I’ll wait to see what £65 buys me from Porsche: I’ll be cross if they also say 1/1/1980.
At least I’m now sure that rust-free chassis is because it lived in the sun for ages. I know it’s nothing special to most people, but I really like this car.
by John Glynn | Apr 8, 2013 | Classic Porsche Blog, Project Cars
Just watched a terrific Storyville on BBC4. Entitled “From the Sea to the Land: Beyond Britain’s Coast on Film”, the programme gathered up 100 years of archive footage, to tell the story of 20th Century Britain’s relationship with the sea that surrounds it. With a thought-provoking soundtrack playing in accompaniment, it was spellbinding television.
The most impressive part for me was a shipyard section filmed in the 1960s, with amazing cinematography showing the scale of some of the vessels being built, when the UK still made the world’s greatest machinery. Deeply impressive on a multitude of levels.
The age of great British fabrication was briefly revisited on Saturday, when I finally managed to strap best mate Rob Campbell at Racing Restorations to his lathe for long enough to make a bush for my 924 Turbo’s steering rack. The 924 car failed its UK MOT on steering play, ascribed to a track rod but wound up being the bush in the end of the steering rack: those bumpy Italian back roads roads taking their toll.
I was happy to go and track down the part, but Robert insisted he could easily make it. Sorting this is the penultimate job before registration: all I need now is a set of tyres fitted, a retest on the MOT and official confirmation of date of construction, and it’s off to the DVLA with some paperwork.
In true OTT John & Rob style, the plastic bush I pulled out out of the Volkswagen steering rack – worth about 50p on a good day – was replaced with something that took rather more expense to manufacture. Robert turned it out of solid brass, giving me an hour’s entertainment and something good to blog about.
If you’ve ever seen brass being machined, you know it goes everywhere in splinters. But all metal is amazing to watch in transformation. Careful measuring throughout Operation Overkill meant the rack all went back together with no big dramas. I’ll get it back in the car sometime next week.
by John Glynn | Mar 20, 2013 | Classic Porsche Blog, Project Cars
I’ve been storing an original 3.2 Carrera Speedster hard top for a Dutch R Gruppe mate for a couple of years and he’s finally coming to collect it.
The email announcing his imminent arrival was accompanied by these pics of his latest build: Project 913.
913 is the codename for a 911 ST/930 hybrid with a bit of backdating, a lot of fabrication and many retro cool tricks in between. American Racing mags, slick red early-style interior, an air force blue colour scheme that could well become his trademark and something that should be a heap of fun to drive.
Sadly he’s not coming here in it any time soon. Could be time for another trip to Amsterdam: roll on summer!
by John Glynn | Mar 3, 2013 | Modified Porsche Hot Rods, Project Cars
Hot on the heels of a day spent with suspension experts from KW Suspension, came a chance encounter with the EXE-TC experts at Tuthill Porsche.
Graham Gleeson is the brains behind EXE-TC: the suspension engineering company that has underpinned Sebastien Loeb’s many world rally championships over the last few years.
EXE-TC and Tuthill are closely linked in classic Porsche chassis engineering, and development on these joint projects is always ongoing. The EB Motorsport RSR and the Janssens dog box car are two Tuthill-built competition 911s that have run EXE-TC gear in testing, but road cars are also used to get street-biased products working properly.
The car seen here is an Albert Blue amalgam of classic components, combined by Tuthills to build one man’s perfect Porsche. This is running an EXE-TC development subframe to reduce frame torsion at the front of the car.
Surprisingly, the alignment was set to toe out: I’ve never gone for toe out on an older 911 but the test drivers (two names you would certainly know) both say it works with this set up.
There are still some areas needing work here, so development continues. An interesting encounter with Graham, and nice to put a face to the name.
