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Restoration Journal of a 1958 Porsche 356A Cabriolet
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Fresh Air
Just to rub it in, it's January and 65 degrees here in in Houston without a cloud in the sky. It was a perfect day for a drive.
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Friday, January 11, 2008
Locked Myself Out of the Trunk
I started working on the trunk lock and latch mechanism. Since the paint job I have been satisfied with just the emergency latch holding the hood in place. I was in and out of the trunk often so it only made sense to go the easy route. Now that I was beyond all the trunk work it was time to install the lock mechanism.
The old latch assembly was pretty well beat up. I did the best I could to rebuild and straighten it before installing the lock post (with the spring on it) for the first time. With everything installed, it all appeared to be aligned before I closed the hood for the first time. Upon closing, it all sounded okay. When I pulled the latch handle; I heard nothing. I could feel the tension of the spring so I knew I didn't break the cable. Then the gut sinking feeling came over me - how the heck would I get this trunk open again?
After an hour of trying the emergency release hole, I was exhausted. I had to reach the latch with my hands and the only way to do this was to remove the tie rod covers - from the outside. I jacked the car up and decided that I could drill out the lower two screws on each cover. I could not reach the top two with my drill. Once the lower screws were out I could bend the covers up enough to reach my arms into the trunk.
Reaching the latch was not easy (especially with my short arms and big gut in the way). Eventually I was able to unscrew the lock post from the outside reaching in. Once I had the hood open again I found that the lock post was bent. I don't know why I didn't see this at the beginning.
I bought a new post from Stoddard and tried again. This time, I left the tie rod and steering box cover off just in case I locked the trunk closed again. Everything fit and worked well on the vary first try.
A couple tips I would suggest for this in the future.
1. Keep the tie rod and steering box access covers off when working on the latch mechanism
2. Cut slots into the screws with my drimmel tool at the opposite end of the head so that if I needed to take the covers off from the outside I could do so with a screw driver.
3. Before you ever need it (if you are not concourse concerned) open up the emergency access hole to about 1/2" and put a cover or plug in it. The original hole was not big enough to work with.
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