I sent my Zeniths to Ron LaDaw for a rebuilt, and the 022 distributor that was giving me trouble to Glenn Ring. Probably will be about 2 weeks before I have replacement/rebuilt parts back in hand.

In the meantime I did some work on the ride height and a rough toe-in alignment; we're good enough now to get to my friend's shop when ready. I still have a few electrical gremlins, and I have to do a bench test on my oil pressure sender to see why it is going off the scale when my engine builds pressure (I really don't think I'm making that much oil PSI, but we'll find out), and I need to get a spare tire, torque the rear axle nuts, and clean up the hubcaps. I still have a few interior issues to deal with as well but we're close to being a driving car. End of January - beginning of February I think is realistic. Only about 7 years behind schedule...

Now its vacation time, and I finished the motor last night. Hopefully will be going in either Friday or Saturday.

I'm in the home stretch. Wiring is pretty much done other than an issue with my fog lights -- the switch illuminates but I'm not getting power to the lights. I'll have to trace that out. I need to swap out the combination gauge with this one, and hook it up:

I'm also going to add this outside temperature gauge. The factory would have swapped cut a hole to the right of the glove box, moved the clock to that hole, and replaced the clock with the temperature gauge. I like the clock where it is, so I'll put the temperature gauge to the right of the glove box. My car, I'll do what I like! Easy enough to swap later if I change my mind.

Still need to install the new starter motor I got (I was installing the previous one and the stupid terminal broke off the solenoid as I was tightening down the cable!). Need to put some gas in the tank and check for leaks in my lines, but I've replaced all the rubber bits from the gas tank to the back of the car, so feeling pretty good about that. Need to hook up the clutch cable, throttle linkage, and heater stuff. The seats need to go in the car, and I have some issues with the fit of the rear garnish rails to the firewall upholstery pad, but that can wait. I will need to do a rough alignment of the car. But otherwise, we're very, very close. Excitement is building.

View imageThen I finished buttoning up the gas tank. I hooked up the fuel cock. The vent hose required from the tank to the pipe in the fender well appears to be a larger diameter than regular fuel hose. Is that true? I couldn't easily get regular fuel hose on either the pipe or the tank vent nipple.

My other question regards the overflow hose...I'm not sure how it gets mounted to the body. See pictures.

Tomorrow I hope to finish the fuel system. Then, aside from odds and ends, it's time to get the motor back in this car... I am going to go through the valve train as I kinda left it at that point, but otherwise, we're getting pretty close here.

Looking back, at the end of March I thought I'd be tackling brakes in April. Reality was I started in May. I quickly found out that my who-knows-how-many years old dual master cylinder was toast. No pressure through that thing was ever going to be possible. I ordered a new early Porsche 911 dual master. However, installing it somehow waited until July. Things got busy again and I had to force myself back to the project.

After getting that on, at the beginning of July I started bleeding brakes. The fronts were easy enough, but I wasn't getting any fluid to the rears. Wouldn't you know that the only brake part I didn't replace or rebuild was the tunnel hard line. It was blocked; rusted or full of crud, I don't know, but from the appearance of it it was the latter. Everyone urged me to replace it rather than try to blow it out/fix it, which I dreaded. The center brake line is pretty much inaccessible because it runs through the tunnel. And you really want it running through the same channel/tabs that the old one runs through to isolate it from other stuff in there. Someone suggested pulling the new line through with a coupling tied to the old line. This was a GREAT idea and made that project only take about 30-45 minutes. Also, I used my motive pressure bleeder to deal with the brakes. I used that and ran about 2 cans of brake fluid through, then used a friend to do traditional bleeding. Pedal is pretty firm now. I am sure after driving around the first couple of times, it will be time to bleed again, but its in pretty good shape now.

Last weekend I started debugging the wiring. I had the dash gauges and headlights hooked up already, but had never fired them up. I put my variable DC power supply on instead of the battery, set it to 6.8V, and fired it up with a low limit on the amperage. Ooh, volts dropping fast, amps rising. I've got a dead short.

OK removing fuses, I isolated the problem to be somewhere in the rear of the car. All lights up front except my fog lights are working. Turn signals work, and that old-time thermo-mechanical switch sure sounds cool. Probably have some not-so-hot grounds that need checking...there were some light-intensity variations between left and right for various bulbs.

View image
After some suggestions on the main talk board, people suggested making sure I had wired everything up right at the rear before assuming I had a wire insulation problem causing the short. Yeah, that was a good thing to verify...I had one of my license plate lights wiring reversed. Caused my own short...but at least it was easy to fix. Very soon I had all tail lights working as well. I put the voltage regulator back in place too. I re-heat-shinked lots of spade connectors and other places with crumbling insulation / old covering.

Next, I put away the explosion of tools all over my garage. Took about 1.5 hours. Usually I'm pretty good about cleaning up when I finish for the day, but as I have been working at night and going until I'm really too tired to go anymore, the tools have just kept coming out but not going away. It was really getting out of hand and I'm glad I got around to that.

Tomorrow I'm going to try to get the surface coating of flash rust cleaned off the rotors and get the brake system filled. I spent last Thursday night changing the front rotors and pads on my '87 911 because I'm going to a DE event in two weeks...I've got plenty of recent practice with brakes so time to get the ones on the 356 in working order. Also going to try to finish the under dash business, which means installing the radio mostly, and finishing up the linkages on the windshield wipers. If I have time I'll finish hooking up the wiring block and move on to getting the gas tank installed.

I also seem to have developed a leak at the nose cone / shaft seal area of the transmission after I hooked up the shift linkage. I had a slight weeping leak at the transmission side plates/covers but this is quite a bit worse. When the transmission was out I replaced that seal on the hockey stick/rod...maybe I did a poor job. Ideas? I figure easier to fix it right now since the engine is still out.

As I see it, the following will remain after that:

1. On my C motor, I need to check the valve clearances, and then get carbs on it and run it up on a test stand. I rebuilt this motor about 6 years ago after buying a long block from Florida.

2. Get voltage regulator installed

3. Install motor

4. Install seats

5. Get car on the ground and check/adjust ride height. It was looking a bit Baja even in the front when it came home.

6. Drive it? Late April or early May is a real possibility if I keep moving.

I moved for awhile to the interior, installing the pedal cluster, dash gauges, and test-fitting the steering wheel. I have a Wooden steering wheel as well made by Luisi that I may install; the plastic on the rim of the original wheel is badly deteriorated and I'm considering sending it out to be re-molded. In the meantime, I moved back outside the car.

I reassembled the pop-out quarter windows, which was a challenge...getting the rubber seal around the glass and then getting that inside the chrome window frame was a bit of a bear, as I had been warned. Getting the other seals in place and then getting that screwed into position was only a little bit easier. I've also done about 75% of the doors, window frames, and door glass, but I'm waiting on an additional vent window seal for the Passenger door to arrive, and I kind of messed up the order of operations (missed the outside chrome trim strip on the Driver's side) and had to back up.

I've had fun re-engaging with the Porsche 356 Registry (www.porsche356registry.org) and 356talk, who have provided good and timely advice and answers to some questions I've had on how things need to fit together. There is quite a bit of information on details of reassembly in a thread I started there, so I'm going to cross-post that here for reference.

You can read the information there for more detail. If I'm good at it, I will post more entries here as I finish reassembly in parallel with updates and questions there. Sometimes, work, family, etc. intervenes and I only have so much free time. Regardless, I still think a late Spring or Summer-time completion date is feasible. A little later than I originally thought in October, but then again, I knew that my original estimate was probably wrong. They all have been before...

I have also updated the gallery of photos of the car quite a bit. I'm taking as many pictures of things as I can while I reassemble so others can see progress and maybe help themselves if they have questions about details. You can view the image gallery here.

356Talk suggested that after getting sound deadening and bumpers on the car, the next most important things to get done were the pedal cluster, brake master cylinder, and brake hard lines. So that's what I tackled yesterday. Problems started immediately; I noted that where I had welded in the pedal bracket support from underneath the floor pan was ever so slightly off from where it needed to be. The pedal cluster wouldn't seat properly. Cursing, I swore I tested this before I welded it in.

So....out comes the cutting wheel and the pneumatic chisel. Off comes the pedal board support on the driver's side, and from underneath, off comes the pedal cluster support bracket. Do some hammering to make everything nice and flat again, then do some grinding to get rid of old welding metal. Position everything up nicely, and MAN was it close before. I didn't even have to re-drill holes in the pan where the bracket pokes through. BUT, it did need to get done. Fire up the MIG, and tack the pieces back into place. Cover with some POR-type paint, and then shoot it with some rubberized undercoating that is a pretty good match for the Wurth stuff that I used everywhere. Total time elapsed: like 3 hours. What a waste.

Anyway, when that was done, I got the pedal cluster bolted up, and got the gas pedal installed on that, and hooked up the linkage through the tunnel. Then I hooked up the brake master cylinder from the front; amazing how much easier that is when there is no gas tank in the way. Lots of access. I'm going to reuse the master cylinder that was on the car when I disassembled originally. It is a dual-master cylinder conversion, using the original reservoir with a "T" fitting and two hoses that are long enough to act as additional capacity/reservoir space before they go into the MC. Those parts are probably about 20 years old (rough estimate), but seem to be working fine.

I hooked up the hard lines (left and right front; long line through the tunnel) to the master cylinder this morning, and then thought about what to do next. Want to reduce parts count! I decided to deal with all the hood latches. While hunting the cables down, I noticed that (a) I appear to be missing one, with knob, and (b) the one I do have appears to have gotten broken and is too short. Oh well, more things to add to the shopping list. It never ends.

I gave up on that and decided to do the gas flap latch instead. Similar but different. Here, I had ordered a replacement cable and release latch, because my original one was kind of in bad shape. After unscrewing the original latch, I fixed the new one in place and adjusted it (a little bit of bending, a little bit of height adjustment) until when the lid closes it is flush with the body. I had a moment of panic when I realized I had latched it the first time without the cable attached from inside the cabin; how was I going to get this thing open?!? Relief quickly set in when I realized I could reach through the filler neck opening and push the latch with my fingers to get it to release. Another stupid error avoided.

I installed the cable and had fun opening and shutting the flap for awhile. A working piece of the car! Finally.

Next, I decided it would look really complete if I put the mirror on. That was easy enough, but I'm not too happy with the base gasket that comes with this reproduction mirror. It's a bit too big and leaves a slight gap on the sides. Just looks kinda bad, but maybe I'll get used to it.

I'm going to try and work on the car a couple hours every night until I get bored. Got to make at least 5 hours of progress a week. That's how to keep the project moving and make sure it gets completed. Katy was clearly happy today and yesterday that I was working on the car. It's been too long.

I also went to a car show/pot luck picnic at Ted Hoffman's house today, which was filled with interesting cars. Old Fords, Mercurys, Pontiacs, a Studebaker, Buicks, probably about 10 Porsches from 356 up through 997. Lots of fun. It is really great of him to hold that get together every year, and I think this year was bigger than ever. I've got cars running in my veins pretty strongly right now!

Looks pretty good in my garage...

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.