I’ll come right out and say it: upholstery and interior work isn’t really my forte. It takes me a fortnight to wrap anything in leather well enough that it doesn’t look like a prop for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Planning all those little triangle cuts you make to wrap around edges and avoid folds and creases – my brain just doesn’t seem capable of working in a way to predict them. That’s why, after much trial and error, I decided to send the Porsche Backdate Project’s interior off to be done professionally by an adult with an actual attention span.

So while that little failure still tasted of ash in my mouth, I tackled installing the headliner. This is the so-called toughest DIY job on a Porsche 911 coupe. Half that difficulty comes from the fact that said DIY restorer needs to remove the glass, the upper upholstery, the sunroof, the dash, etc. – pretty much the entire interior above the carpet. “Lucky” for me I bought a very trashed donor car with no interior anyway, and I’ve already removed everything else for the paint job. So all I had left was the second half of this impossible job: stretching it perfectly and symmetrically across the interior roof without a single crease or fold.

Honestly, for all the paragraphs written in all the books, blogs, and forums about how tough it is to do the headliner at home, and that you DEFINITELY need an assistant, I found it relatively easy to tackle myself over three days. If you are doing this yourself in a classic car, just work slow and be prepared to start over several times. Beyond that, it’s truly not a bad job to do. Headliner done, as well as gluing in all the sound proofing and insulation panels, it was time to move on the actual biggest project for our backdate interior – a little something custom I had cooked up in a fever dream when I first got the car.

Looking at how dainty the rear seats on a classic 911 are, and how far I need to have my seat back to fit, the two rear seats were clearly going to be useless. Years ago, as an awful 25 year old with spiky hair and a love of dubious fashion, I owned a third-gen Mazda RX-7. It was a two-seater with little storage compartments where rear seats would go. In four years of ownership I only needed more than two seats once, and that was an emergency. I was and am confident that I would not miss rear seats in this car. But alas, all the rear seat delete/storage compartments you can buy or build yourself were either ugly or more money than my paintjob, and all of them opened the “wrong” way – from the front like a glove box rather than the logical top. So clearly, I had to design and build my own custom solution. Because this project isn’t already one year and $10,000 over budget…

I’ve always liked the look of interior-matching car luggage held down by belts. It is just instant old-school cool. So my dumb idea was this: make a rear shelf with top-mounted storage bins, and have a pair of custom suitcases be the lids to those compartments. I know what you’re thinking: I’m a genius. Or an idiot.

Over the course of two days, I mocked up my idea in cardboard, then in very thin plywood, and finally in ½ inch wood pieces. I determined along the way that this would be the optimal place to put the subwoofer of my over-enthusiastic stereo I ripped out of my RX-7. Once every edge of the shelf was massaged to fit and allow room for being upholstered, it was sent off to the professionals because, as I’ve already said, fabric wrapping is beyond me.

Also sent off were my very sorry and very cracked dash and miscellaneous cabin pieces all needing to be matched to the dash. Dropping everything off at the upholstery shop, it was discussed and determined that vinyl rather than real leather would be the best option for longevity. I was fully prepared to go full leather (aren’t I always?), and have seen arguments for and against, but at the end of the day I’ll take the recommendation of the expert.

While the interior pieces were out of the car, I laid out the stereo system amplifiers and wires in preparation for hiding everything under the carpet. Once all the wires were run, it was time to lay down the charcoal carpets I chose. This was relatively easy as all the pieces were pre-cut and edged – like a giant fabric puzzle. There was no diagram or instructions included with this RS carpet kit so I had to wing it and refer to online pictures to figure it out. I still have lots of extra pieces left over, but oh well…

With that done all that remained for the interior, and the whole car really, was just reassembly. Adult Legos. The project is going to move rapidly towards completion now as I bolt everything on. The end-game has begun.

If you would like to follow the nitty gritty details of this build, they are 
posted on a Porsche technical forum here.

The post Porsche Backdate Pt 9: Leather and Lace appeared first on FactoryTwoFour.

Well it’s been a while since we’ve met here, hasn’t it? Sorry about that. Turns out most paint shops now couldn’t care less about full re-color jobs. Fender bender fixes and insurance claims are their bailiwick now and painting a whole car from bare metal is just a time-intensive distraction for them. For full color changes you’re left with a choice between the ultra-cheap MAACO/Earl Scheibs of the world or ultra premium shops that charge $25k and up. There is no middle ground, or at least there isn’t one in Los Angeles. There was no way I was going to do a bargain job on this, my dream car, There was also no way I was going to spend more on the paint than I did to purchase the car. So I chose to will a third option into existence.

One reason it has taken months to get to this update is all the conversations I had with potential shops trying to talk them into taking on this project. I’d already ripped the engine out, so I couldn’t exactly drive the car around to get quotes. Instead, I was left to email them cellphone pictures and harass them via phone. I can only imagine that getting pics of stripped cars in email attachments from some guy doing a restoration is a paint shop’s favorite thing. After many near-deals that fell through, both on the high end and small shops in the ghetto I finally found a crew that would do the re-color for a reasonable 5k. There’s no way you could have convinced me $5,000 was reasonable at the beginning of this build, but restoring a Porsche has a way of numbing your wallet fingers so here we are.

Even once I found a shop I liked, they decided to take their sweet ass pimp time refinishing my chassis. What was promised as a couple weeks for the whole car turned into two months for just the rolling chassis. Hopefully it’s an example of the old adage that you can choose two out of good/fast/cheap. Oh, and remember all the work I did stripping the car oh-so-carefully to preserve the zinc  (and thus anti-rust) coating on the body panels? Yeah, the shop just sanded it off anyway to give the paint something to bite into to. Awesome. But regardless, I have the chassis back now and it is absolutely glorious. I love this Porsche-correct Grand Prix White more than I love many of my own fingers. Now if only I had the whole car… See, the shop has asked to take the car in pieces and currently still has the fenders, doors, and hoods to go. The chassis is the most important piece right now, however, as it allows me to work on the last major hurdle for this backdate build – the interior.

I’ve separated this build into 3 major components and tackled them in order – mechanic upgrades, exterior refinish, interior refinish. With the first two achieved, we’re finally in the home stretch. 2 years, an uncountable amount of money, and many a late night In-N-Out burger has brought us here. I’ll just take this moment to remind you that I originally called this build at 12 months and 10k. Those predictions disappeared about as fast as strong pornography left at the Vatican.

So now I’ve got this awesome white body shell that I often just stop whatever I’m wrenching on and stare at, and I am happy in a way unknown to the science of man. I’ve got a special little project planned for the interior that is either going to be legendary, a quagmire of terrible, or both knowing the internet. I’ll show you that next time, for now I’m going to go back to staring at my suddenly white car.

If you would like to follow the nitty gritty details of this build, they are 
posted on a Porsche technical forum here.

The post Porsche Backdate Pt 8: White as a Ghost appeared first on FactoryTwoFour.

Although Channing Tatum makes it look easy, stripping is actually hard work. With the panel fitting done on our Porsche backdate, it was time to strip all the paint off the ’88 Carrera and get back to beautiful steel. I knew this would be an annoying and tedious job. I didn’t know just how taxing it would prove to be.

This car was originally delivered from the factory in a beautiful black; then sometime in the 90’s some wahoo decided to ditch the class and go for a cherry bomb red instead. To be clear, this was not guards red or any other Porsche red. This was just some off-the-shelf red. Also of note, several women commented on how the paint was “glittery,” and until then I had never realized that men love glitter too – we just call it metal flake because it sounds more hardcore. It’s still glitter. Any-who, the red had to go. But because I’m being overly anal about this car, I wanted to find a way to retain the galvanization that was applied to the whole shell in the factory.

In 1977, Porsche began galvanized all 911 bodies completely to prevent rust. This was a major innovation for the time, and one that means a 70% of all 911s ever produced are still on road. I wasn’t eager to loose this longevity-boosting protective plating from my project car, so I had to strip off the paint the hard way. Normally, you would just sand or media blast the entire car down to bare metal, but these abrasive techniques would have also scraped off the thin layer of zinc that stops rust from forming on the bare metal. Thus I was stuck with using messy, time consuming, and noxious paint stripper.

All the available strippers I tried were seriously nasty. They reek of ammonia and eat through work gloves like they are made of chimichangas. To work with this stuff requires a couple layers of gloves, including fabric on the outer layer, and breathing protection. Without the latter, you’ll find yourself with a case of sniffles for hours and without gloves you’ll quickly realize how aggressive this chemical concoction is.  It immediately starts burning when it touches your skin, and should you choose to ignore that obvious alarm bell for several minutes you’ll find that your skin will bubble up just like the paint on the body is, turn hard like a callous, and eventually burst hours later. It then hurts for days – ask me how I know. Seriously, wear protection.

Counter-intuitively, Aircraft Stripper is the kind you want to buy. It is easily the most effective with the least set up time. Scuff up your paint with some kind of sanding pad and apply the stripper. Wait 15-30 minutes and scrape off with a plastic scrapper and you should be down to bare metal. Because I had two layers of paint (plus primer), and because whoever did the red paint job decided to go crazy with the thickness, it took me several passes on every panel to get down to metal. I spent, no joke, about 2 months stripping the paint off during nights and weekends. Sanding or media blasting would have been so much faster and easier – but now I’m done and my zinc layer is still intact and ready to protect my metal from any rock chips or scrapes.

There’s a certain Mad Max quality to the car right now, and I wish it wasn’t disassembled so I could take it out around town a little bit to enjoy it’s naked splendor. I’ll be sure to sneak in a quick blast around the block just to drive it with no paint, no doors, no glass, and no interior. Hopefully video of that soon…

If you would like to follow the nitty gritty details of this build, they are 
posted on a Porsche technical forum here.

The post Porsche Backdate Pt 7: Stripping is hard work appeared first on FactoryTwoFour.

Well here we are, at the moment when we turn the 80’s-tastic fat bottomed 911 of our backdate project into a svelte 70’s star with sleek lines and subtle curves. I am, of course, speaking of the moment(s) wherein I get rid of the huge impact bumpers our project came with and replace them with the new fiberglass face and tail. It’s about time.

We’ve been some time getting here. First tearing the car apart, then refreshing the brakes and suspension, to that dreaded surprise rust repair, and now to this fun stuff. Making our 911 look the part of a dead sexy 1970’s sports car. It’s not necessarily an easy task however. This isn’t exactly a bolt-on procedure. Fiberglass is notoriously finicky to fit well – pieces need to be massaged, formed, bent, coaxed, and politely asked to fit properly. There is also a huge variance between suppliers of these bumpers, and if you want any chance of keeping your wits and hair during the process you need to start with the best possible.

For Porsche backdate projects, the best are TRE Motorsports. This Van Nuys, California based shop cranks out some of the finest custom Porsches in the world. Once you start even flirting with the idea of getting a 911, you’ll hear about TRE and see examples of their work. They will kindly sell you everything from brake upgrades to full 2.7 RS backdate bodykits (what I bought). From racing to posing, there’s something here for your Porsche. A quick look around the forums confirms that their pieces are some of the highest quality you can find, and their service and know-how are second to none.

I picked up the full fiberglass bodykit and lovingly carted it back to my garage and my waiting 911. Job #1 was installing the iconic ducktail. The simple switch from 80’s whaletail to 70’s ducktail (what is it with Porsche and animal names?) was a massive visual change, and one I think for the better. Now while this seems like it should be a simple bolt-on process, it is not. All fiberglass body panels, regardless of car or make, need massaging and tweaking. From differences in production and curing to every car being idiosyncratic with it’s own history. So with that, I was off and sanding the leading edge of my ducktail to make a more perfect panel gap between it and the rear windscreen. This process was as simple as lightly installing it, checking where it was rubbing against the body, then sanding that section back until it fit like a glove. Step two, still at the rear of our project, was the rear bumper.

This was a more challenging step, and for better or worse I invented my own solutions as I went along. Off came the huge 80’s impact bumpers and muffler, on went the svelte bumper. Not content with this upgrade, I chose to fiberglass over the existing exhaust hole in the bumper to create a flush look. My planned exhaust will be running under the bumper, so no cutout is required. Finishing off the rear was a set of racing tie-downs to secure the ducktail to the bumper, and give the 911 massive street cred.

Next up was the hood. I needed to replace my hood because older 911s had longer front fenders (more on that in a moment) and longer hoods to match. Replacing the hood also aided in weight reduction – as did replacing both those Miami Vice bumpers. All in, the weight savings on the body were very significant. The hood went straight on, but will need a little persuasion with heat and some weight to get the curve to match my car’s perfectly. This nicely bolt-on fiberglass piece was the front bumper to finally give my car that beautiful RS look, replete with front tie-downs as well.

Lastly, there was some metal work to be done. Because the 1970’s cars had longer fenders (with their turn signal housing directly attached to the side fender) than my 80’s car, I needed to attach some fender extensions to recreate the period correct bumpers. I gave this the ol’ college try, I really did. And I failed hard.I couldn’t get my head around to weld these extension pieces on without having major modifications to either the fenders or the extensions themselves. Finally after much hammering,welding, and cursing, I ran crying back to TRE for assistance. They graciously offered to weld up these pieces for me so I could be sure the face of my dream car came out right. I drove up to their shop (yes, without a muffler. It was awesome), browsed all the wonderful Porsche pornography that is always being worked on or is parked outside, and left my baby in their care. When they were done, I came to pick up the car and was greeted with the face of the 2.7 RS. My 2.7 RS. At this point, I want to make love to my car. My ratty, stripped of paint, sunroof held in by duct tape car. She was beautiful, if mismatched and in-progress.

Now while structurally she is looking the part, there is still some body patching, finessing, and painting to be done before she is supermodel hot. So that’s what I’m tackling next – stripping, grinding, blending, and prepping. I might even find some time to work on the car too…

If you would like to follow the nitty gritty details of this build, they are 
posted on a Porsche technical forum here.

The post Porsche Backdate Pt 6: Bustin’ Ass on Fiberglass appeared first on FactoryTwoFour.

It’s been a while since I did an update on our faithful project car. It is certainly not for lack of effort on it. Indeed, work is done of the FactoryTwoFour Porsche at least 4 days a week. No, the delay has been in some serious, and seriously unexpected, rust repair. And I’m not talking about garden variety surface rust or a dime-sized hole in a fender. I’m talking about the only thing holding the suspension’s torsion bars in place was the rubber undercoating. All the metal that was supposed to be surrounded by said undercoating was completely gone. I had been driving around like that. Fun.

Turns out this large and integral piece of metal the runs across the car directly below the fuel tank – called the suspension pan – is a actually a maintenance item on 911s! It is normal operating procedure to dismantle the front, cut out 50% of the trunk floor, and weld in a replacement every 100,000 miles. If you say so Ingolstadt. This was a major project, one that involved much more work and time than I had budgeted. I also had to learn metal work, how to weld, how to apply undercoating. Although it took 3 months, it was an absolute blast. See, that is why I am doing this project – not to wind up with a cool car, but to teach myself new skills and learn about how things work and go together. So far, the project is providing plenty of that.

To access what I thought was a much smaller repair, I first emptied the gas tank. This involved a small bucket that would quickly fill to brimming, then I’d slosh gasoline everywhere as I tried to bring out from the underneath the chassis and pour it into a bigger painter’s bucket waiting nearby. It is an Virgin Mary sized miracle that I didn’t go up in a fireball or pass out from fumes. Dead brain cells notwithstanding, the job got done and I removed the fuel tank.

Although this provided line of site to all of the metal pan, everything was layered in undercoating making simple observational diagnosis impossible. Nope, it would take cutting to find the head of this rust beast. The more I probed, the more clear it became how serious and how long this hole must have been manifesting itself for. The driver’s side was connected to nothing but hopes and dreams. The passenger side was bolted to just enough metal to make a silver dollar. The whole front pan would have to go…

No worries however. See, Porsche 911s have been around for so long, sold so many, and changed so little between generations that one can basically construct an entire car from all the parts that are available from various sellers. And this is all brand new parts too. So I fired up the interwebs and ordered a pan for a shockingly little $216, as well as the ancillary pieces needed to do the repair and some weld-thru primer.

Speaking of which, I now had to learn how to weld well enough to fix a structural element on a vehicle I have every intention of breaching triple digit speeds with. Excellent. But that is what this project is all about. This Porsche isn’t a car. It’s not even a hobby. It’s a classroom that has already taught me patience, delayed gratification, and sacrifice. And now it has taught me auto body work and welding.

3 months of test welds on scrap, metal grinding an cutting, rust excavation, and spot welding and I finally had the front pan replaced. Standing above it even now, I look down and see a skill I didn’t possess before. It is an truly awesome feeling. This was the biggest curveball (so far) on this project, and I conquered it.

Rust dealt with, I started to strip the paint off the car in preparation for it’s new coat of Grand Prix White. Here I tried sanding as well as paint stripper, and I’ve decided I’ll be sticking to the messy but low work stripper to bring the whole exterior down to bare metal. Before that though, I’ve got to do the final fitting of the RS bodykit to weed out any panel gaps or angles and find a paint shop. Until then faithful readers…

If you would like to follow the nitty gritty details of this build, they are posted on a Porsche 
technical forum here.

The post Porsche Backdate Pt 5: Junk in the Trunk appeared first on FactoryTwoFour.

The FactoryTwoFour Porsche backdate build is still in an ugly state of affairs as all the drivetrain and suspension work gets buttoned up. Now that our 911 can stop on an X and navigate speed bumps without snapping my spine, it’s time to throw on some new rims and tires to give the car that aggressive stance that it needs.

The first step in that process is wheels.  Our 1988 911 Carrera came from the factory with 16 inch Fuchs wheels when it was first sold in New Jersey. It has worn those hoops ever since. To give our Porsche a more aggressive stance while also giving us a wider tire in the rear, we threw on a pair of 17 inch replica Fuchs from Euromeister, and moved our original rears up front (the stock rears were wider than the fronts). All said, we’ve gained inches of tire contact all around and we should have better luck sticking to the road now. But tire choice will also be key for that as well.

Even for car people, tires are an especially dorky and esoteric subject. Compounds, widths, tread patterns, and speed ratings are all the kind of subjects that will bore a normally-adjusted human faster than televised golf. There are only so many online forum posts that can be read before the mind turns to wet sand, so FactoryTwoFour reached out to the very friendly people at Yokohama Tire and asked them to hold our soft and feeble hands.

While we have chosen to keep our humanity by ignoring the finer details of sidewall construction, the crew at Yokohama laugh in the face of that decision and we’re glad they did. We walked them through our sizes (16 and 17 inch rims), the intended use of our 911 (spirited canyon carving on the weekend), the driving conditions (Los Angeles with rain appearing about 4 times year) and the color (black!) I guess? Miraculously, instead of laughing at us, they patiently teased actually useful information out of us and recommended a decent side profile (/50 front, /40 rear) and tire width (225 front, 255 rear). Because this car will only see occasional use and because we have the spirit of Top Gun leading our decisions, we asked for a just-shy-of-race-spec tire. In black of course. Yokohama recommended their Advan Neova series, and we were not about to argue.

Now we’ve got the aggressive stance from the outsized rear wheels, and we’ve got super sticky rubber all around. We’ve got to fine tune the ride height for that proper punk rock look, but now it’s time to shift gears and start the physical backdate. We’re on the hunt for ’73 Porsche bumpers and body panels as our project enters the aesthetic phase. Stay tuned…

If you would like to follow the nitty gritty details of this build, they are posted on a 
Porsche technical forum here.

The post Porsche Backdate Pt 4: New Shoes appeared first on FactoryTwoFour.

“To sleep, perchance to dream.” And dream I have. For 10 years I’ve fantasized about owning an old Porsche. A decade spent saving, skipping vacations, earning more, and acquiring both the tools and knowledge required. While you were out actually living,I was arranging my life to own one of the of these beasts. A full third of my life that I’ve dedicated to shopping around, looking on forums, collecting details and procedures, and even banning myself from the For Sale ads because I’ve picked up the phone too many times when I wasn’t ready. Well I’m ready now.

When I first fell for Porsches, like any normal human being I couldn’t tell the difference between them. All I knew is that they looked new for a really long time, then they suddenly looked very old (whenever a new bodystyle came out), then eventually look very old and classic. Over my years of lusting and wanting I gradually began to fall more and more in love with the vintage and classic cars, more so than ny computerized new car.

It was then that I came across what would soon become an obsession – the 1972 RS 2.7. Held by manysweatervest-wearing old white men as the quintessential Porsche, the 2.7 adorns bedroom walls the world over as the pinnacle of what a race-ready street Porsche can be. When I first saw one online, it was lust. When I drank in its presence in person, it was love. This stripped out and paired down racer that was the meticulously reduced essence of this sports car brand had to be in my life.

Unfortunately, the reality is the few hundred examples of the RS that were made were commanding $500,00 when I first learned about the car, and routinely trade hands for 1.2-1.5 million dollars today. I had patience for acquiring this toy, but not that kind of patience. Luckily for me, I stumbled across an increasingly popular practice called “backdating”.

Basically, and luckily for me, Porsche 911s changed (comparatively) very little from their introduction in 1964 up to 1989. For all intents and purposes, the bodyshell stayed the same while the engine and driving characteristics got better and better – while the bumpers got bigger and bigger. Some engineering psychopath discovered that with very little effort and just a dash of metal fabrication one could turn any 911 from these two and a half decades into a RS 2.7 clone. Falling down the rabbit hole, I discovered (for very boring reasons only an anorak cares about) that just 3 years were the best platform for backdating – 1987-1989. If I wanted to do this right, it would have to be in this range of years. With this knowledge and a fantasy shopping list in hand, I started saving and dreaming.

10 years of fantasizing finally came to an end last month. The savings were there, the career was there, and the garage full of tools was there. Bummer for me then that during this decade the value of old Porsches basically doubled from a range of $12k-$18k  to today’s market of $20k-$30k. With my life in place and the market value showing no signs of slowing down, the time was now to pull the trigger before the price climbed any higher.

Now because I already planned on swapping out much of the bodywork and interior, my major concern when shopping around was a strong drivetrain. In fact I was actively looking for an ugly and haggard car, because why pay a premium for something I’m going to rip off anyway? When I started browsing the Porsche forums, it didn’t take long to zero-in on 2 cars as serious possibilities. The first was a tidy black-on-black example that was described as a 20-footer – as in it looked pretty good as long as you were at least 20 feet away. This car was about 2 hours away from my home in Los Angeles and was going for the top of my personal price range, $27k. The second 911 in Florida was much more abused with a cracked period body kit and an utterly destroyed interior. It was also far cheaper at $22.5K advertised. After talking to both sellers, my wallet won out and I opted for the ugly tree Florida car. A bit of haggling and negotiations later, we agreed on $21k plus some thrown-in goodies and parts I’d be buying anyway. I contacted a vouched-for Florida Porsche shop and had the seller take the car in for a pre-purchase inspection. Vertex Auto confirmed to me the seller’s story – basically that it is pretty ugly, but it runs well – so sight-unseen I sent purchased the car of my dreams and had it shipped across the country.

From the moment in time I decided I was now ready to pay for and rebuild a Porsche to the actual purchase bank transfer, only 9 days had elapsed. I told you I was antsy to get a 911 in my life.

As my 1988 Porsche 911 Carrera made its transcontinental journey, I did some further digital window shopping and spec’d out my budget for this project. I expect to spend an additional $10k (we’ll see how this works out) out of pocket on parts and paint. Admittedly, this is a widely ambitious figure (about half of typical), but I plan to do 80% of the work myself. If it doesn’t require a welder, a dyno, or a paint gun I want to do it myself. Here’s hoping…

But hope was in short supply when the car finally arrived – I knew my 911 wouldn’t be pretty, but I didn’t think it would be fugly. Nor would it start when it came off the truck. So much for running well. Thus began my first week of Porsche ownership when my dreamcar turned into a nightmare…

You can read the next part of this series here

The post Porsche Backdate Pt 1: We bought a Porsche to rebuild! appeared first on FactoryTwoFour.