by John Glynn | Dec 15, 2016 | Classic Porsche Blog, Race and Rally
My friend Simon Kelly has just had his Porsche 911 SC repainted by Tuthills in a cool Alméras Frères tribute livery. I managed to get a few pics of the finished item before jumping on the plane to Gran Canaria.
Almeras won the 1978 Monte Carlo Rally with an SC in the famous Blue and Gold ‘Gitanes’ cigarettes livery: probably the high point of the SC’s motorsport career. Tobacco advertising is a sensitive topic in Europe nowadays and many owners modify tribute livery branding slightly, to ensure their cars do not fall foul of any rules. Simon also tweaked the design of his decals a bit, to be sure the livery would not upset the wrong people.
“I wasn’t quite sure what I would do regarding the tobacco thing and, in the end, I had a last-minute wobble. I did some reading about it and it’s a grey area with governing bodies, regulators and the media all having a different take on what’s acceptable. I didn’t want the tobacco ban causing problems for the car, so for a quite life I used the French spelling of ‘gypsy’ instead of the Catalan.
“The decals were made by our mutual friend, Rick Cannell at Highgate House, and are a lovely job. Rick made them the same way as the originals would have been done, using layered vinyl and not the printed vinyl which is more common nowadays. Your photos remind me that I need to send Tuthills some new number plates I had made in the proper style!”
Regular readers may recognise Simon’s car as one I did a feature on back in the day, when it was painted grey and red. Built by Tuthills using one of EB Motorsport’s first Group 4 Almeras-style arch kits, Simon bought the car in 2011, selling an RSR replica and 968 Sport to buy this one instead.
The car has been a regular at the Below Zero Ice Driving camp in Sweden every winter and is heading back again for 2017, hence the font and rear guards and towing eyes, to drag it off the snow banks. I think this is going to look great on a white background – here’s to taking many more pics!
by John Glynn | Nov 11, 2016 | Classic Porsche Blog, Porsche News
My friend Guy Allen has released a new Porsche print. An atmospheric rendition of the SWB car in flight, it’s another great example of why Guy is one of the UK’s busiest illustrators.
Guy’s previous Porsche work is all over Ferdinand. I’ve commissioned him a few times for impactbumpers t-shirt artwork and we’ve also released prints of this work together. Those prints all sold out long ago, and I would not be surprised to see this one sell out just as quickly.
The SWB 911 has enjoyed a renaissance in recent years. Once ignored as the runt of the litter due to the twitchy handling and smaller engines, contemporary Porsche fans now rightly regard its Germanic purity and unique driving experience as a pivotal step in Porsche history. The SWB cars were the original lightweights and the thread of their lineage must be carefully picked through the model lines – some 911s follow the founding philosophy much closer than others.
My first proper experience of a SWB car came while I still lived in Ireland. A friend’s dad was a keen rally driver and also owned a garage. He had a SWB car in for some work and I would see that driving around quite a bit. It was LHD and may even have been something famous once upon a time, but I never got close enough for a proper look. Years later, when Jamie and I shot a well-known piece featuring two SWB 911s on our first trip to California (Short but Sweet: read it here), I remembered that early rally car and thought how well it would have slotted in with Bob Tilton and Chris Nielsen’s rally inspired R Gruppe machines. I should have bought a SWB project car then, but I missed that particular boat – they are now well out of my reach.
Experience the SWB cars in depth and you gain a unique understanding of the original 911 ethos, but race a SWB car hard and win with it, and you enter another dimension of 911 folklore. The UK saw a huge jump in SWB enthusiasm when the 73rd Goodwood Members’ Meeting featured the Aldington Trophy: a race for pre-’66 SWB 911s only. Mark Bates raced the EB Motorsport SWB 911 at Goodwood among a select group of its peers and spent most of the lap going sideways in some very close battles. Mark finished on the podium after a great hour of racing and people still talk to me about that mental race – a fine day in the SWB story.
Away from the circuits, SWB 911s make highly prized road cars, but finding original interior parts and trim is now perhaps the hardest part of a SWB restoration. There is plenty of choice as to who restores your SWB car but, with waiting lists as long as they are at the very best workshops, it might be quicker to learn the skills to restore it yourself! Plenty of Porsche fans are doing just that and, as a DIY diehard, I think that is brilliant.
Guy’s SWB Porsche print is produced on archive quality heavyweight paper. It is a limited edition of 200 large-format A2-sized prints (A2 is 420 x 594 mm). The prints are signed and numbered and you can take a closer look at them here.
by John Glynn | Apr 12, 2016 | Classic Porsche Blog, Project Cars
My 1980 Porsche 924 Turbo restoration has made great progress since I reset my work schedule and committed to spending the weekends working on my own projects rather than sitting behind a laptop. My bank account is slightly less happy about the restoration, but payback will come in due course.
I’ve now clocked up a couple of hundred hours on this car, and poked around most of it. While there is unsurprising evidence of parking dents and other traumas from its former life in Italy, underneath all that it’s a really great example, especially now I have reconditioned most of the moving parts fixed to the bodywork. Dropping all the mechanicals to do a full restoration is very tempting, but I must resist.
Retaining Porsche Patina in Detailed Restoration
Perhaps the most engaging part of the rebuild after the 924 Turbo’s bodywork was so nicely stripped, prepared and repainted by my old friend Rob Campbell at Racing Restorations has been deciding what to keep and what to ditch, in hope of retaining some patina and original character to compliment the delightful new paint.
For example, none of the locks matched, so I junked all of them, pulled the smoothest ignition barrel out of my stash of 924 & 944 parts and then bought a full set of VW tumblers and rebuilt and rekeyed every lock on the car to match. This led to stripping the latch mechanisms and locks, new door seals, new hatch seals – you know how it goes.
The dash was a mass of old alarm wiring and leftover radio installations so all that got junked. The black speedo trim ring was rusty for whatever reason, so I tossed that and stripped another speedo to find one in better condition. That led to stripping all the clocks and cleaning the dials and glass faces so they all look great now.
Porsche 924 Turbo Strip & Rebuild
Everywhere I look on the 924 Turbo now, I see bit that have been stripped and rebuilt. I stripped the electric window regulators including the motors and sorted all those out, bench testing them before refitting to the car. I haven’t done anything about the wiper motors yet but I bet it happens. Having all of the trim out of the inside meant I could clean it up properly and Dynamat quite a bit, so the doors now shut with that satisfying clunk and none of the rattles that used to soundtrack entry and exit.
Having junked so much stuff, I also found a few bits I wanted to keep. The Italian plates are back on the car, just because I love them. I riveted the rear plate together, which is not strictly correct but it means bits of it can’t get stolen! I tossed the LED-infested centre console gauge surround and bought another mint one in black, but kept the slightly crappy cigarette lighter from my old one, as a well-used cigarette lighter in an 1980s Porsche is just so Italian, darling.
I fitted a replacement glass hatch with a good condition spoiler (the original was utterly ruined) and polished all the original glass, refitting it in a mix of new and good used seals. I liked the Italian anti-theft alarm window sticker so I kept that. Under the driver’s seat carpet, I found a 200 Lira coin from 1978, so that is now the keyring. I kept the original dog-leg gearlever but replaced the shift boot and sent the ratty steering wheel off to be restitched – I hope they can retain the original leather. I have a nice three-spoke for the car if not. I ordered a full gear linkage rebuild kit from AutoAtlanta in the US, but that has not yet arrived.
I fitted new rear speakers (long story) and decided not to cut the original front door panels to fit another pair of speakers – the rather spartan black vinyl has survived this long without cutting and deserves to be left alone. I stuck a centre speaker back in the dash to add some noise up front. I decided not to change the cracked dash: you can get new ones but 924 owners are generally well used to cracked dashboards. The original rear view mirror is a non-dipping version and I’m slightly on the fence about keeping or saving. I have a pair of dipping ones with the glass mounts in my stash so I may change that.
Original seat belts are in good condition so still in place: they were likely never used in Sardinia! The car is quite low mileage anyway, so they are fine. Refitted the original roof aerial as, while it is not the shiniest thing ever, it is perfect for the 924. I fitted a new rubber trim to the rear bumper (just squeezed into the Polo in the massive tube it ships in from Porsche) and new seals on the door mirror, door handles and boot lock.
I rebuilt the front bumper light clusters: you’d be surprised how long that took. One indicator reflector was completely rusted out so I stripped the reflector off another one and plastic welded it back together (the fun of playing with £5 parts). I cleaned and refitted the Italian side repeaters as, while they are not very attractive, they are original to the car. Stripped the window switches, sorted them out. All very satisfying. I have been keeping things as tidy as possible, but you’ll see from the photos that it needs a lot of cleaning when it is eventually back together: I am quite looking forward to that.
Classic Porsche Build Quality in spades
So many hours later, with many more left to invest, I continue to have great respect for classic Porsche build quality with the 924. The way it’s built is inspiring to work on when you’re not in a rush; so much intricate detail signposts the hours of highly skilled labour it must have taken to build each one. The assembly is very like my old E28 BMWs and Mk 2 Golf GTis: plated screws and high quality metal clips everywhere. It is time consuming to make things better – stripping the fusebox and wiring out to clean up the corroded earth points behind for example – but once done, you get the feeling it will last forever.
I feel sure I will buy another 924 to work on once this one is sold and I have cleared out a few more cars. The Signal Green 1977 924 we saw at Essen a few years ago is still very strong in my memory – that’s the sort of old-school 924 I would like to do some miles in if Turbo prices have soared out of reach. Small but modern 1.4 engine transplant, little Turbo, careful gearbox build, classic trim.
by John Glynn | Feb 22, 2016 | Classic Porsche Blog, Project Cars
I’ve been pushing myself to keep the Porsche 924 Turbo post-paint rebuild progress going. Really I am working on stuff that doesn’t involve ordering the numerous replacement body seals this car is crying out for, but sooner or later I’m going to have to bite the £500 bullet.
In the meantime, I have been ordering cheaper stuff, like contact adhesive, bulldog clips and clamps to help re-stick some trim, including headlining and B-post interior vinyl (below), as well as the rear side panel coverings. I had hoped to just re-stick those and button up refitting the side windows, but of course taking the side panels off exposed cheap speakers, which have been hacked into the metalwork, so I have to sort those out first.
Really I have stripped a load more of the car along the way: doors, trunk and rear seats etc. I have two other complete interiors which I could use, but I’d like to keep as much of the original trim as possible in the 924, so I am trying to give it all a bit of a lift instead. The trunk/boot is completely stripped now for a good clean before that all goes back together. I have heat-gunned off some crappy sound deadening in the deep rear sides and that looks better. I will replace the failed sound deadening with Dynamat Extreme – I still have loads of that around from my hifi fitting days, so it will go to good use in the 924.
First port of call for the Dynamat was in the centre console. This was looking decidely tired with the dried up internal foam sound deadening falling apart and crumbling all over the carpet, so I heat-gunned that off and replaced it all with Dynamat, which will deaden any rattles with some foam glued on top. I had already ordered a bit of spray-on carpet dye, so I cleaned the console up and applied that, working it in by hand. I was pleased with the results:
Looks even better in person than in my iPhone pics. Only downside is it makes the carpet pile quite stiff, but that eases with a bit of a going-over with a vacuum cleaner. I dyed the gearshift carpet surround also and have ordered a new leather gaiter for the dog leg shifter. I also stripped the faces off all the clocks including the centre console auxiliary gauges and cleaned the glass inside – made a big difference to the look. The fascia for the clocks has three 1980s alarm LED holes drilled into it, so I have scrapped that and bought an undrilled one on eBay – £18 delivered. Waiting for that at the mo.
I had an old Toronto SQR48 head unit put aside to fit but a bench test showed the output stage is blown so no sound to the speakers. I’m torn between fitting a modern, clean-looking Bluetooth/iPod head unit or going back to eBay and looking for something more period. It is not a high quality hifi setup in this car, as I am leaving the flat door panels uncut, so I will probably stay with period.
I am also changing all the locks to get a single matching key sorted. The ignition switch created a problem as this steering column top set is a four-screw column switch setup and my other spares are both three-screws, so I couldn’t just bolt a complete new assembly in (different switches and wiring etc). Anyway, I worked through a Rennlist 924 lock change guide and went like a dream with cobalt drill bits. Downside is I now need a four-screw column shroud as the old one was missing a bit. Typical old Italian car thing – like the cigarette burns in various places around the driver’s seat.
What’s next? Well, the wheels are off, I stripped the crappy old tyres on Saturday and will have the new Bridgestone rubber fitted this week. I was going to refurb the wheels beforehand but decided against that for now as I want to get this MOT’d (safety inspected) soon. With the car up on axle stands, I have been thinking about dropping the front crossmember and suspension wishbones off for blasting and a repaint. All that surface corrosion on my nice clean 924 bothers me.
The steering wheel needs a re-trim (or at least a re-stitch), but then I have a Momo 924 boss and nice old 1983 Prototipo from my 911. Maybe they should go on. The doors are being rebuilt internally with stripped and regreased handles and window regulators. Really I could do with adding some sort of remote central locking, but I have to keep remembering I’ll be selling this car when it’s done, so the new owner after me can take it to whatever the next level is (I will probably still do the central locking).
I bought a new bonnet badge for it and need to order some body decals too – probably just the long ‘Porsche’ one under the rear lights. It looks good with just the simple silver lines as per the early press pics.
by John Glynn | Feb 22, 2016 | Classic Porsche Blog, Project Cars
As my small car collection lay mostly unused last year, I made “use it or lose it” my car motto for 2016. The little 1981 Porsche 924 Turbo has enjoyed a lot of attention so far this year (spent another full day on it yesterday), but this morning I finally pushed the 1976 911 Carrera 3.0 out of its corner and took a good look at it after a few years unused.
Porsche Paint Microblistering
I discovered some microblistering in the paint last year, caused by using a car cover (genuine Porsche Tequipment) in a relatively damp environment, so I expected to find a bit more on the other side closest to the wall. Turns out I underestimated the amount as that entire rear quarter panel is covered in tiny blisters – the car will definitely need a repaint. I am sort of OK with it as it will give Robert at Racing Restorations a chance to repair some other panel stuff I have never been happy with. It won’t happen this year, but I’ll have a budget for it in 2017.
The main aim at the minute is to fire the engine up and get it ready for an MOT sometime in April. Advice from Anthony at Tuthills is to pull the spark plugs out, crank the engine until the oil is up to pressure, then put the plugs back in and fire it up. I need a decent battery for that and my compact Odyssey PC680 battery is totally shot so I have a new one to fit. To fit the new unit, first I had to get the old one out.
Porsche 911 Battery in Smuggler’s Box (not RHD)
This little Odyssey lives in the smuggler’s box held secure in a tidy aluminium mount. I fitted this as a younger, more flexible person, so my 48 year-old self had a good curse at that idiot while trying to get this all out single-handedly. Whatever possessed me to stick it down here I do not know! Funny how it all changes in ten years. Anyway, half an hour later I had it out and in the boot of the Cayenne. I have a new Odyssey battery here so will stick it on the charger overnight and fit it later in the week.
A quick look at the battery showed my pretty aggressive boost charging of it last year to try and start the car had done the battery no favours: the centre is totally distorted. No big loss as it was not responding to a charger by then anyway, but it shows how little tolerance for misbehaviour these things have.
I do like the lightweight battery ethos in this lightweight 911, but am going to have to be more regimented about using a maintenance charger on it. Not leaving the car sitting around for years would probably also be a good idea. My nice bright damp-free new garage at home will help!
