Porsche Enthusiasts Club Forum

Then, out with the welder (had some help here!):







Real Porsche metal going back on and a really strong welding job - This won't need to be done again for quite a while!

Getting buttoned up...

(I only took photos of one side, as they both had exactly the same treatment!)




Then, grinding the welds down, a little bit of filler here and there...lots of zinc primer and anti-rust black paint, then a coat of polyurethane based over-paintable anti stone-chip on the outside, as well as lots and lots of wax injection into the sill cavity.




Not too shabby a job I thought (for an amateur) ...

Great work Rhett - nice to see another local S - I'm in Sudbury, Suffolk are you close by? Perhaps we should have a mini meet!! The engine work and sills look great!

Out of interest, do you have any spares left from the donor 944S? I am missing the intake tube from the airbox, the bit that joins the left hand side of the airbox and goes to the nose panel.

^^^ Hi Hallsy, now that is spooky, 'cos I too live in Sudbury - small world eh? As a matter of fact I do have the air box from the donor car, I will check to see if the intake tube is still attached and let you know.

Now, as I had put so much work into the car up to this point, I simply could not leave the rear suspension looking all tatty, rusty and generally well past its sell by date:




Added to that the fuel hard lines were not at their best and really needed to be sorted. So I decided to go the whole way and drop the entire rear suspension for a total refurb...the phrase 'while I am in there' was really starting to bite!

I researched the fuel line issue extensively as I didn't really want to spend the fortune that Porsche would require to purchase new OEM parts. I came to several conclusions:

The fittings were not easily obtainable, the pressure in the feed line was not too excessive for state-of-the-art hydraulic compression fittings and there was no reason why the return feed had to be 8mm (although the feed did need to be 10mm). So armed with those findings I bought a roll of 10mm Kunifer pipe and some bending tools as well as various high-pressure fittings. Then fabricated complete new hard lines and also replaced all the rubber fuel pipes with new original Porsche parts (both ends of the fuel run, as I didn't really want an under-the-bonnet fire! ). The fuel pump was removed and cleaned, the filter replaced, and all the pipe clamps replaced.

Sounds easy...it wasn't...Kunifer pipe is a 'pig' to work with, but I was not going to use plain copper. I salvaged the ends that join to the rubber hoses and attached them to the compression fittings I had fitted to the ends of the Kunifer pipe. This worked a real treat, and I can report that I have had no leaks whatsoever - result!

While the rear torsion bar axle and trailing arm assembly was off the car, I took the opportunity to extensively clean the chassis, repair any small rusty patches I found, finish the sills repair at the floorpan, repaint the entire underside with heavy-duty black enamel and refinish the heatshields, etc. I was a cleaning fool!

With Winter approaching I decided to buy a small DIY electroplating set and set about re-plating as many suspension and other fittings as I could, as well as repainting everything else.







As you can see, I also refurbed and repainted the trailing arms and rear calipers. New pipes were also fabricated for the trailing arm brake lines, the long line from the front to the rear and a couple of smaller pipes at the front too.

Several months passed as I refurbed the suspension parts, then (when the weather was better) I started to rebuild the back end:

New rear shocks were fitted
New rear shoes for the handbrake were fitted
A good pair of very low mileage rear axle shafts were sourced (Pie Performance) and fitted (they still had the original part number label on!)
The transaxle oil was drained and replaced (Swepco)
Flexible brake pipes replaced with stainless steel ones
Stainless steel exhaust rear section fitted

What was nice was being able to work on the suspension without getting my hands dirty...a rare treat! Anyway, here are a few shots of the work as it progressed:




Simply compare the above shots to the earlier ones - I think these are an improvement!





I realised that the car had not looked like this since it rolled out of the production facility at Neckarsulm, Germany.

A few more shots...(I hope you are not getting bored with this photo fest!)..







So, the rear was coming along nicely, but other stuff needed attention too, so I:

Repaired the sunroof mechanism – it's now fully operational
Fitted a remote control central locking system, with rear hatch release too
Replaced the rear hatch pins and struts
Replaced the hatch rubber seal and all three wiper blades
Fitted some higher output headlamp bulbs

Spent an age bleeding the brakes (I am sure other owners know what that is like), but found using a Gunson Eezibleed kit really helped.

Wow.

Great, thorough work.

+1!!!

Thats some tidy work and hats off for restoring the car. Can't wait to see the next instalment.

Amazed at your hard work, especially in such a short space of time. You must have lots of free time! I generally get about 2 Sundays a month for overhauling my 924, plus keeping the other 2 on the road.

Also +1 for Gunson Eezibleed. Only took me an hour to bleed the 944 this way, and it's a one man job.

Wow, the updates keep coming!! Looks great! Are you going to give the front suspension/brakes the same overhaul?

Just how expensive are the OE fuel lines from OPC? This is something I need to look at on mine next time I have the car up in the air.

When I fitted the engine I did do quite a bit of work to the front suspension with lots of new bits, etc. But, I didn't do the refurb work to the same depth as I didn't have the plating kit at that time. Next year I intend to redo the front with a real S2/Turbo bumper, etc. At that time I will probably revisit the front suspension fittings, etc.

I think as far as the pipes are concerned it was going to cost about £300 or so (can't recall exactly), so I decided to do it myself - a glutton for punishment (or just tight! )

Just to let you know (as stated at the start)..this was a long restoration project. This work took place over about 2.5 years with the car standing for almost a year before I really got started on the engine work, etc. Lots of evenings in the garage also helped!

Anyway, I was now crossing quite a few things off the 'to do' list, but the interior was still looking a bit sad and tired. So, that was the next thing that needed a bit of TLC and effort. Therefore, everything came out, seats, carpets, dashboard..the works.

I used the black carpets from the donor car after lots of cleaning, fitted the donor dashboard as this was also fully black with hardly a mark and only tiny cracks around the vents (anyone who has done this knows all about the crosshead screws in the windscreen pillars that just rust-in-place.. ).

I already had a full set of fully electric Porsche script seats that I had in an earlier 944S, so they went in, along with the matching door cards. I stripped out all the dash plastics and painted them silver, fitted silver speedo dials and alloy rings and topped it all with a nice Momo steering wheel. A couple of door step trims were also added, then as the wheel horn push was looking a bit tatty, I fabricated a custom horn push with a Porsche badge too..







I think this is a nice place to be driving in...

It was time to finally get it back on the road (end of April this year), so after double-checking all sorts of stuff I booked an MOT. Here are some shots of the completed car undergoing the test:







The MOT tester was rather impressed and couldn't find fault with anything mechanical at all. However, it nearly failed on emissions as it appeared to be running just a bit too rich. But the tester was not going to let that cause a failure, so we spent some time adjusting the AFM grubscrew and letting the engine rev. He knew the car had been standing and had a lot of work done on the engine, so understood that it probably just needed to 'clear its throat' a bit!

Anyway, did the emission check again and it came in spot on, in fact really quite low, so we double-checked and it was fine...result!