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Restoration Journal of a 1958 Porsche 356A Cabriolet
Saturday, June 11, 2005
New Look
I got a wild hair last night for a new look on the site. What do you think? It's the same content, just a little cleaner and simpler (I like simple).
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Friday, June 10, 2005
Progress Update
I look at the car and think "man, I'm never going to finish." I look back through the blog and find that I really have accomplished alot in the last 18 months. If you were an ant looking up from below, you would think it was a new car.
The interior is now clean and painted with the wiring harness installed and ready for interior installation. All of the structural work is complete with the exception of rebuilding the passenger door and the front nose skin. Brakes are complete, engine is complete, tires and suspension are complete with the exception of installing shocks. It's actually starting to look like a car!
I really wanted to get to a point of painting by the end of the summer however I've been told that I should make sure that everything fits well before I do so. This would include installing seats, dash hardware, bumper hardware, rocker and bumper decos, and the engine. Everything except the engine will come back off before I send it to paint. With this in mind, we may be looking at another six months before the paint work takes place.
I received 2 used bumpers from GG Tyler last week but I am still in need of bumper brackets and over riders. I have a replacement nose skin coming in from WW Autowerks this week as well. Once the passenger door is installed and the new nose skin installed, I'll get started on the body work.
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"...I'never going to finish." Don't worry, and keep picking at it. If you're like me, you get discouraged looking at it, but once you're actually doing the work it is so much fun and time really flies. At the end you'll have a spectacular car that will turn heads every time you take her out. KTF!
--#106728, 59 Coupe
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Friday, June 10, 2005
Upgraded Master Cylinder
I installed all of the components to my new dual cylinder master cylinder. As I mentioned before, the components requires were no extensive. I bought the master cylinder and reservoir from California Import Parts and the tubing and gromments I bought at Theresa's store.
I mounted the reservoir on the left side of trunk just forward of the gas tank leaving enough room in the event that the tank ever need to be removed. I fabricated a bracket to held the reservoir from an left over floor pan ledge material. I used 1/2" clear tubing and drilled two holes just left of the gear box access cover and installed grommets to protect the tubing from the holes. For added security, I installed hose clamps at both ends of the tubing and then tie-wrapped the tubing to the ridged brake tubing.
It looks clean and functional. Just too bad it will be a while before I find out how well it works. More photos here.
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Friday, June 10, 2005
Door Repairs
I took a week of vacation the week prior to Memorial Day expecting to get a considerable amount of work completed prior to the heat of the Texas summer. Unfortunately, I didn't get as much accomplished as I expected. Between the early heat and the non-stop customer calls and urgent emails, I spent maybe two full days on the car during the week.
My biggest accomplishment was the repair of the drivers side door. I would image that I spent a total of 24 hours this week on this one door. The first step was installing the door on the hinges and aligning the striker plate. It takes some time to get the right combination of the right number of hinge spaces, hinge alignment, and striker plate alignment. Once the door opened and closed relatively easily and had a relatively good door gap, I started on the lower 4" and bottom. With the door on the car, I aligned and scribed a line on the door where the lower skin would be installed. I flanged the door and spot welded the skin to the door with spot welds every 3/4"-1".
The door bottom was more difficult. I had to remove the door again from the hinges and clean the inside structure of the door. The bottom attaches to the skin with a rolled edge which I spot welded every 4" or so. The door was installed back on the door and I spent several hours trying to the get the right alignment of the bottom of the door edge to the rocker panel. Once I had this alignment, I spot welded the inner door structure to the door bottom. It will still take a little filler to make all of this perfect but will be less than 0.030"
 
These doors were in terrible shape and I've heard that most people would have started with better doors. The primary reason I reused them was the fact that these are the original doors with the original SN stamped inside. I have even found that the front to rear door gap is pretty good and will take very little filler to finish off.
A couple of things I learned. Never take the doors off by unbolting the hinges. Leave the hinges in place and pull the hinge pins. Proper door gap is 3mm which is about 0.118" This will be consistent for the doors as well as the hood and deck lid.
More photos of the door repairs can be found here. I have found that there are no real publications to tell you how to do this. I posted a couple of messages on the 356 Registry Talk List and found a couple of guys who have done this before and offered plenty of help.
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Lesson learned: Install the window channels as guides to get the elevation of the door bottom correct. These channels bolt to both the top and bottom of the doors so their fit is important. See http://www.bubba-dog.com/blog/2007_02_01_archive.html
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