Currently, the car is still at TransporterWerks, where it is getting additional color sanding (incredible looking paint but not a cheap process...), and the front and rear windshield glass is getting re-installed. Some additional undercoating will be added in places I missed years ago or where things were worked on subsequent to my own work, and then a final coat of black paint will be applied to the underbody. I broke down and got a set of red Koni shocks as well, which I'm going to have swapped out for the KYBs...those gas shocks have the front end jacked up like a rally car. I'm guessing that it will be another month or 6 weeks, and then I will have the car flat-bedded to my garage.

I'm getting pretty excited about getting back to work on the car myself. What remains is all mechanical and electrical work, and I have to finish up the C engine as well. I've got to start re-sorting all the parts boxes that are stacked up in my garage...while I kept everything fairly well sorted and ordered through the years, the boxes have now been through 2 moves and I don't know where everything is.

The car's interior has been finished, and it looks great! Now the 356 has been returned to TransporterWerks for the final portion of reassembly (bumper and door fitting, some trim details) that they are taking care of. Then I will have the car flat-bedded to my house and I can begin reassembly at my own pace, which clearly needs to accelerate from where it has been for the past several years if I ever want to finish the project.

I can see light at the end of the tunnel.

But it kept nagging me from the back of my head. "Pay attention to me! Fix me, you've come this far already!" Well finally I decided enough time had passed. Dee is a great guy, a great friend, and a good bodyman, but the reality had set in that he had no intention of getting to the 356 any time soon. My search for alternate bodymen to finish the tub began.

As I hinted, I have finished my MBA and I am now working full time as an investment banker at a small boutique investment bank in Research Triangle Park. The new job has kept me quite busy so many of my outside hobbies and interests have taken a back seat. However, once I decided to restart the project, I started doing additional research in the evenings after work. I decided I'd start in the Triangle and widen my search as required. Pretty soon I decided it would be worthwhile to check out a shop in downtown Raleigh called TransporterWerks. While the name indicates that their first love is VW buses and similar vehicles, they have done a growing collection of 914 and 356 restorations. When I visited, they had a number of projects going on, including a nice looking restoration of a mid-50s dark gray coupe. I had a good conversation with the owner, Sean Frasier, as well, which was important. He estimated that they could start working on the car fairly soon, and would work on it constantly until finished, which is all I can ask for at this point. I thought it over for a couple of days and then called him back to arrange delivery.

This morning I had the car flat-bedded from MillerSport to TransporterWerks. Dee was more than happy to see the car leave, because now I would stop nagging him about it. When it got to the shop, Sean and I spent about half an hour discussing what work has already been done, and evaluating where the car stands now. The problem areas are the ones which I have had the most trouble with: the nose, the passenger rear door/lockpost area, the way the trunk lid fits where the patch was put on the rear. But I'm opening my wallet at this point and getting it fixed. I'll take the car back (hopefully before another year has passed) painted and ready for assembly, and complete the rest of the project in my garage on my own time.

In other car news, I've spent the last two weekends getting my 1987 911 motor ready to get dropped out for a resealing treatment. The oil leaks have gotten too extreme, the heat stinks when you turn it on from oil dripping on the heat exchangers, and the puddles under the car after parking it anywhere are getting too noticeable. I'm happy to do some mechanical wrenching, it has been too long. The main issue I had getting ready for the 911 engine drop was undoing the oil line that leads to the oil cooler in the front fender; the nut on the fitting was so tight that even with two very long wrenches (one to turn, the other to counter-hold) I couldn't loosen it. I degreased th hell out of it and used lots of penetrant, but still no go. Eventually I had to resort to grinding a "slot" in the nut with a die grinder and then using an air chisel as an impact wrench. It worked, I think the line may still be usable as well, but it sure was frustrating.

I expect Sean will evaluate how to proceed on the 356 at the beginning of the coming week, and then we will talk. No promises this time, but I hope to have another entry explaining the plan of attack soon.

Let's rewind. My last entry from April showed that I had just put the nose on. That was a major milestone, and it definitely encouraged both me and Don Mills to get on with the remaining bodywork. That left finishing up the closing panels, the front fender braces, the fog light brackets, and the right side lockpost/fender repair. Oh yeah, and doing a better job of fixing up the old accident damage to the tail. Should I even have to mention that if you are ever looking at doing a car restoration project, looking at one with both front and rear crash damage as your first project is probably a bad idea? OK, no, I don't have to mention that.
Because I was busy with exams, Don worked on getting the right side rocker and fender repairs complete. We had roughly welded on the right side rocker before, but the gaps weren't good and it wasn't laying properly. We cut it off together, and he started over. Additionally, the lockpost area needed tons of work to build back/recreate the proper "stepped" area that is only visible when the door is open, but absolutely critical for proper appearance. Although the original was heavily coated in lead for shaping, metal was needed just the same. Don fabricated much of it by hand, as the reproduction panel didn't fit really well. The end result will need a bit of filler to smooth it out and finish it off, but I'm pretty pleased.
I also finished grinding the welds on the nose and finishing up the various brackets that fit inside the front fenders. There are a pair of brackets that are attached to the battery box sides, the bottom of the headlight buckets, and front fenders that provide both stiffening for the body as well as a mounting point for the horns. I installed those. I also installed the brackets that hold the horn grilles and foglight grilles/foglights. The one on the left fit well, but because of repairs to the right side foglamp area, the one on the right didn't fit perfectly and needed some finessing. It will all look OK in the end, I'm not worried.
Also, the tail underneath the trunk lid needed more repairs. Originally I didn't think this was going to be a real problem. There was some old filler where previous accident damage had been pulled out and fixed, and I thought that the height of the metal was reasonably good. However, when checking fit with the engine cover, I quickly determined that the area where the accident had occurred was still pushed in at least 1/8 of an inch, and needed work. Pulling out the damaged area was difficult, as the metal had become thin from the previous repair and the stud welder was just ripping the metal, causing us to have to apply lots of patches with the welder and generally just make a mess of the area. The decision was made to cut out the area of the highest damage. I did this, and then formed a patch for the area on the english wheel, a tool which I admit I am a neophyte with. The patch was decent, and I got rid of the worst of the bad metal, but filler and further work will be required in this area to have it look really good.

Now that the rough metalwork is complete, I'll be bringing the car back to MillerSport to work on the filler stages with Dee Lashley for a month or so. Hopefully after a month it will be ready for paint, which Dee will then do, and then in July or so I will bring it home for a few months of reassembly work before the 356 East Coast Holiday in September! Cross our fingers.

I'll give a report on the engine rebuild progress next time. As a teaser, the full flow filter assembly has been installed, and I've calculated my compression ratio, which will be in the neighborhood of 9.1:1 for longevity.

As usual, a pretty complete photo gallery is available, with highlights here to go with the text.
I suppose a description of what I did and what remains might be useful. After I got the nose back from Dee doing some additional metal work on it, I clamped the nose onto the car and proceeded to take detailed measurements from many points to insure both symmetry and height both horizontally and vertically. I also checked the alignment/fit of the bumper brackets and bumper through the nose, where the brackets attach to the battery box. Diagnosis: not perfect. It will be easier to slightly modify the angle/fit of the bracket mounts on the battery box sides rather than change the nose itself, because of where the cutouts are already positioned, and I will do this when I finish the nose. At this point I also left off the fog light brackets, and plan to install those next week. The replacement brackets, while good, will need some trimming and small modifications to fit well.
Satisfied with the fit, I began using the "peel and weld" technique to tack weld the nose onto the car. Beginning near the center, I used a thin cutting wheel to slice off the very edge of the replacement nose, through to the original car metal that lay underneath. I would then use clamps and additional assistance from my hand or a screwdriver to bring the car/nose panels flush, and place a tack weld every inch or so. I proceeded out to the edge and down the fender, and then proceeded the process on the opposite side. Getting the nose all tacked in like this insured that there would be minimal warping when the real welding began, as the nose would already be securely attached to the car.
After finishing the tack welds and making sure all the old metal was removed from the rear/inside, I removed all the remaining clamps and proceeded to begin the longest butt weld of my life. OK, not like I was running a continuous butt weld, but the whole seam of this weld must be like 6 feet long. To avoid heat input, I began at the center of the nose and simply welded 1 inch long lengths, alternating left to right out towards the fenders. I also pulsed the MIG gun, and cooled the welds with air occasionally. When doing this type of weld, it is important to begin your next weld just overlapping with the previous one so as to avoid pushing the wire through the gap between the panels and getting "whiskers" of welding wire protruding through the rear of your seam. Also, angling the MIG gun away from the weld pool and using a "pull" motion rather than a push motion minimizes heat input. The net result of using these techniques was minimal heating of the panels, and a very small heat-affected-zone (HAZ).

After completing all of the weld, I had time to begin grinding the weld down, but not much. Quite a bit of finishing work remains ahead; I am sure that there was enough heat from the weld so that the joint contracted/warped a bit and a small amount of filler will be required to make everything perfectly smooth. In any case, I think the result is quite good, utilized original rather than reproduction parts, and best of all, I did it myself. I wouldn't have believed I had the skill (or will!) to do that a couple of years ago.

Maybe the bodywork will get finished up relatively soon after all.

I opined that we needed to make sure we modeled everything after the original, good left side lockpost, and not rely on the reproduction part for dimensions. We cut off the replacement piece that had been painstakingly added, and proceeded to fit the passenger side rocker first. After removing the long flange along the sill area, and cutting off the overlap seam areas front and back, we clamped it into place to make a good fit with the door. Then, I took measurements on the passenger side for the location of critical areas of the lockpost: The bottom reinforcing stamped circle, the width of the lockpost at various heights, etc. We then determined where the replacement portion on the right side should fit. Some additional fabricating is required on the inside edge, where the rubber door seal will fit, because the reproduction part didn't have a big enough flange in this area. Also, we needed to add about a 1" section of fabricated metal between the original, top portion of the lockpost and the replacement section to make it all fit correctly. However, that done, it was looking pretty good. The fender side isn't that pretty, there are some ugly welds in there because of all the patches, but it will get smoothed over after some grinding, seam sealer, and undercoat. I'll take pictures of the whole thing next week, I forgot my camera.

After that little adventure, I proceeded towards finishing the left/driver's side rocker, filling in pinholes in the front and rear seams, and grinding a little on the plug welds I made in the sill area. Satisfied that with a skim coat of all-metal everything will be looking good, I moved my attention to the nose. The foglight brackets were extremely rusty on my replacement clip; one had perforation. I ordered a set of replacement brackets from Stoddard's last week. As luck would have it, because this is a relatively small simple piece, the replacement brackets are a perfect stamping. Grinding / removing the old brackets wasn't much fun though. I had to be careful to only remove the bracket material and not dig into the nose metal itself. About an hour later both old brackets were removed and I had wire brushed the area behind them, which was rusty...this area is a notorious mud trap. When I put the replacements back on, I'll fit the air space between the nose and the bracket with seam sealer to prevent grit and moisture from lodging in there and causing any more troubles in the future.

I brought the nose back to my house, and I plan on dropping it off with Dee for him to work on doing a bit more metal finishing for a couple of hours. As it is, the nose is in decent but not perfect shape. I would like it to be a bit better if possible, as that will mean less filler and a better overall appearance. If he has time to get to it this week, that means I would hope to be welding the nose onto the car about a week from now.

That's it for bodywork for last week, since we only worked a single day. On another note, the pistons and cylinders I ordered for the C engine came. I have seen these big bore pistons, from "AA Performance / AA Automotive Products" in San Francisco, CA go for anywhere between $400 and $600. I would estimate that the wholesale cost is between $325 and $350, so they are pretty cheap. From what I can tell, they are probably made in China. They come in a light blue box with a white and black checkerboard racing stripe on one half of the top. The cylinders are well made looking, with precision machining marks, and the exteriors painted semigloss black. The pistons don't look as nice, the domes are bumpy from the sand cast, and they have had little if any additional machining done to them. However, everything I've heard has said that this set of big bore pistons is relatively well balanced and has proved to have a good deal of longevity, so I think they are a good deal.

I now have all the parts required to finish assembling the "C" motor. Depending of course on how events unfold, I think I can have the basic bodywork (less finish filler work, etc) and the motor both finished by the end of April or the very beginning of May. That would be fortuitous, because by then my house renovation will be nearing completion and school will be winding down. I can't wait to be back in my own house! My new garage space is going to be a real treat after what I've been dealing with for the past year.

I'll have a complete review of the installation procedure when I get to it. Let me say though that right off, this piece of machinery looks top notch and of excellent quality.

The reproduction rockers need quite a few changes to fit properly, as many have told me in the past. First off, at the inside edge where it meets the longitudinal, there is a flange for spot-welding the rocker horizontally to the door-sill area. Originally this was done with spot-welds for three pieces of sheetmetal at a time: The inner longitudinal/sill on top, with the outer longitudinal in the middle, and the rocker on the bottom. Obviously this isn't being duplicated in the same way during the repair, even though the order of the panels has remained the same. I removed the horizontal flange, and I will be using the remaining vertical flange to attach the rocker to the outer longitudinal. Access for making plug welds on the horizontal flange would be near-impossible.
Another part that needs adjusting is the contour of the bends in the rocker where both front and rear meet the fender. There is a piece of wire in the rocker/fender with the metal skin rolled around it; I need to unroll the skin on the rockers, recontour the wire slightly, and then fold the metal back around the wire so that the radius of the rocker properly matches the radius of the fenders. It will be tedius. If there are little imperfections, I should be able to build up a bit of mig weld and then grind.

The portion of the rocker adjacent to the door also is only a rough approximation of the correct shape, and will require hammer/dolly and filler work.

Last, my door isn't in perfect shape. It's dinged up and dented. We worked on pulling out some of these dents, but need to do more. The rocker, which is now simply tacked in place with a few mig welds on both ends, is currently proud (sticking out) past the bottom of the door 1/16 or even 1/8" in places, and it should be flush. I need to fit the rocker in as far as I can, and then I will be forced to re-contour the door bottom to fit it better.

One thing to note, and it may be non-obvious to those who haven't attempted this kind of work before: actual welding time is minimal for many of these body repair/replacement pieces. The majority of the time is getting the reproduction parts fitting well.
Don was working on getting the replacement nose clip in better shape. A month or so ago I tacked the two pieces together where it had been cut down the center. Don was working on finishing this seam as well as working out some dents and other damage. The part isn't great, but it is original, and it is in much better shape than what it is replacing.

I hope people enjoy the pictures...I'm glad to be making progress on the body again. Both Don and I agree that it would be ideal to have the basic metalwork complete in a month. Probably totally unrealistic, but hey, everyone needs goals.

In the interim, he has been working on improving the old repair to the accident damage in the tail section, which was pulled out in rather poor fashion many years ago and then covered with a pretty thick layer of filler.

In the interim, I kept my motivation up by spending money (of course!) and rebuilding/cleaning/selling parts. As for selling: in the last three years I built up quite an inventory of parts I either needed or thought I would need for the car, including a set of high-compression forged pistons and cylinders, aluminum valve covers, extra cams/cam gears, rods, etc. I got good deals on eBay and I couldn't pass them up. You know the drill, if you have ever had a real taste of eBay. Well, I got together everything I knew I wasn't going to end up using and resold it. I cleaned everything up and made most of it better than it was before I purchased it, and I got my money back, sometimes a bit more. All very nice because I had some expensive purchases left for the C motor.

I got around to ordering most of the missing parts for completing the C motor overhaul, including a set of big bore pistons and cylinders, as well as a full flow oil pump cover from Precision Matters. Ron LaDow, the proprietor of Precision Matters, has always been very helpful with advice and answers for me throughout the 356 restoration, and I totally believe that his full flow oil filter is a great key to longevity for 356 motors. The original 356 motor only has a bypass oil filter design, which Ron's careful and scientific analysis has shown only filters a miniscule portion of oil. With bearing, crank, rod, etc. prices being what they are, metal and other foreign object contamination (and damage) is not what we need. Full flow oil filtration should solve this problem in most cases. While the pump cover is expensive ($495), it would more than pay for itself with any one expensive engine rebuild part. Piece of mind is worth a great deal as well. I'll have a review as it is installed and used.

The other thing I've done is rebuild my fuel pump. The one that came with the car didn't have any pumping action left in it. I ordered a rebuild kit a few months ago; they cost between $25-30 and included a new pump diaphram, filter, and screw set. Installation is pretty much as easy as splitting the pump housing, replacing the diaphram and filter, and screwing things back together with the proper springs in place. It is much more cost effective than a new fuel pump, which would cost on the order of $200.

I hope my next entry will include shots of the last stages of bodywork on the shell of my 356 coupe!

I need to call Don Mills this weekend and see if he is finished with the '40 Ford and is ready to start helping me finish the bodywork on my own car...he has promised me he is nearly done. Somehow I have my doubts. That said, I optimistically registered for the 2005 356 East Coast Holiday, to be held near South Boston, VA. It is a fairly short drive and I do plan on doing everything in my power to drive the coupe there under its own power.

I realized that the plastic cast starter housing I got from Energy-1 in California wasn't doing the trick. It simply had too much give in it and allowed the starter to move and flex, causing poor engagement with the flywheel. While it looked cool, I can't recommend purchasing it.
Chuck has an engine test stand rig that has the bell housing of a Type-IV VW transmission, which incidentally, Type-I and Porsche 356 engines can bolt right up to. So I borrowed it and brought it down to my work area. With a little help, I got the engine off my own engine stand and onto the test rig. At first, I just turned the engine over with the starter for 30 seconds or so. I left the coil disconnected from the cap so no spark was reaching the engine. This made sure that the oil pump was primed and the engine would have pressure when it finally came to life. It also gave me a chance to do a preliminary oil leak check, and I did find two: the oil pressure sender (I had used the wrong size crush washer, and it was easy to fix) and a little seepage from the bottom of the oil pump cover (which I haven't dealt with yet, but will require a little more work). Other than that, the engine looked dry as a bone.

Then I made sure that the distributor was near 0 degrees advanced when the engine was a TDC, and I poured a bit of gas down each Zenith carburetor throat. I took some rubber gas line and lead it from the engine to a can of gas a nice safe distance away from the rig. Finally I hooked up the coil wire, and I hit the starter button.

To my great relief, the engine started to catch almost immediately, and started up with a minimum of trouble. At first, there were a couple of very nice loud backfires through both the carbs and out the exhaust while the float bowls filled with fuel and everything settled down, but after a short while, it was running very nice and smoothly at idle! Seems I even got the idle mixture screws on the Zeniths in a decent approximate position.

There are two tiny gas seepage leaks at a pair of crush washers on the Zeniths that I saw that will need to be fixed, but otherwise, no gas leaks. I put the timing light on the engine and adjusted the distributor, which was already pretty advanced (20 degrees) at idle from my initial "eyeballing it," so I retarded the timing back to 2-3 degrees retarded at idle. The engine is running smoothly with no strange noises. I can't even put in words how happy I am that everything seems to be running smoothly, and no leaks left! Major accomplishment.

More pictures of the 1959 Normal rebuild are available here.

My crankshaft came back from Ollie's after being cut to 1st under on the main and rod journals, and then heat-treated. The thing looks like brand new, I'll get a picture up here soon. Not cheap. Cost to recondition 4 rods and cut and harden the crank, plus shipping, was $650. I'll reiterate what I discovered before: Don't rebuild a 356 motor if you are on a budget. The only major thing I need to get before I can assemble the "C" motor is a new set of pistons and cylinders, and I'm still making up my mind which set to go with.

The car hasn't seen any bodywork in a month. Don Mills has been busy with the Ford he is trying to finish, and the progress has been slower than he expected. One of these weeks, I'm sure. I'm getting tired of waiting though, and I want to go out to the shop and just start doing it myself. I can't wait much longer. If I need a little bit of extra filler because my welding isn't the most beautiful in the world, I'm more and more prepared to live with it!

Yesterday I drove out to Frank Gibson's shop and collected my rear bumper, which has been there for over a year. I kind of forgot about it. The bumper was damaged in the past and repaired somewhat badly; there was a pretty thick layer of filler on the top middle portion, and it still didn't look quite right. Probably part of the accident that damaged the rear of the car. In any case, I stripped off the old filler and Dee gave me some tips on metalworking with a pick hammer, and then a low crown hammer and dolly. It isn't beautiful, but it is better than it was, and will require less filler this time around. Additionally, one (and maybe another) of the captive nuts in the bumper that attach to the bumper brackets had become a "spinner." I.e. the captive nut was not being held captive, and spinning when the bolt that screwed into it was turned. The only way I was able to get it off originally was with an impact wrench, just relying on momentum. I cut open the bracket with the plasma cutter and removed the portion that holds the captive nut. Then I sand blasted this piece and repaired it. I'll weld it back in as soon as I get some more gas for my welder.

The whole backside of the bumper really needs to be sandblasted anyway...right now it is in epoxy primer, but it didn't get stripped/blasted very well when the car was done, so I see old paint and rust. Better do it now, while it is still relatively easy.