Porsche 924 white

[stuboy]

keep up with the hardwork

[inconsistant]

Thanks for the kind words folks.

 

hope you don't get a reaction like the last job..... good luck fella.

 

 

Now I'm really nervous and going to have find my glasses to re-read the small print on the bottle. I don't think I could bear to get it wrong again!

 

----

 

A small but exciting update because Ebay came up trumps with a MIG Welder… after months of looking for a cheap one so I wasn't dependent on the neighbour's friend's MIG every time I wanted to weld, I got one for just over £100 from a lovely bloke who used it once for a job a couple of years ago and no longer needed it. It's a Clarke 135TE which seems to come recommended as a starter/hobby welder, and It’s immaculate. Came with the box, and a mask, rolls of wire, gas bottles and a regulator. Very happy with it. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The 0.6mm wire fitted had gone rusty though and wouldn’t feed as it had rusted onto itself on the spool. I loaded up the big 5kg steel 0.8mm wire roll bought in the autumn, still in packet and completely rust free, which was good, but discovered the tip is 0.6mm so the 0.8mm won’t come out of the nozzle. Off to Machine Mart this morning for a roll of 0.6mm steel wire and a 0.8mm tip!

 

 

I’ll have a go with the helmet it came with which is an over the head one but I’ll get an auto dark helmet for convenience. Although they can be had for around £20 I was thinking of spending a bit more to get a better made more comfy one. 

I'll post some questions in the electric prittstick thread, but for the meantime, here's to there still being genuine bargains from really nice people on ebay!

 

[mercedade]

MORE PLEASE

[Stevebrookman]

Friend of mine replaced his 4 speed Capri 2.8Injection with a Guards red one of these. Problem was it was 25 shades of Guards Red so we decided to respray it in my garage. Car came out well-but everything in the garage, walls, tools etc took on a shade of red.

 

PS the previous owner o& the Capri was done by plod for 148mph. The Capri - OAX 47X was a complete flying machine- I remember my friend racing a Jag through Brynglas tunnels on the M4 at 125mph.

 

Steve

[inconsistant]

MORE PLEASE

 

 

I'm working on it!

 

Here it is...

 

Every time I update this I decide I'll keep it up to date as it's far less bother than trying to remember what I did 6 months ago, and then let it get 6 months behind. I bought a welder. I had a few goes of it and decided I really needed an auto endarkening helmet. I got this one and some thinner better gloves from weld equip, linked from Mig-weld.co.uk:

 

 

https://www.weldequip.com/siflite-helmet.htm

 

£40, there are cheaper auto dark helmets on the interwebs but the reviews for the seem to be variable, and I wanted a decent one, and weld equip seem to be particular about not seeing shite. Anyway, very pleased with it, comfy, well made and easy to use.

 

So going back to last summer I was I the middle of making the front look nice again.

 

With the drivers wing off and having a look over my previous jobs I could see a little hole at the edge of last year’s inner wing repair.

 

 

 

 

 

I expected this, because now I know a bit more about what to do with welding repairs I know that we didn’t do bits of it properly/as well as I would do it now. So I managed to get a round file into it, opened it up a bit to remove the grubby metal around the hole, splashed a load of Jenolite rust converter all over it and inside the hole, and covered it up with gaffer tape to stop water ingress while I learned how to use my new welder.

 

I had removed the headlight washer tubing from behind the bumper and it was covered with overspray from a previous bad blow over.

 

 

 

It looked a mess so I was asking around on the 924OC about sources of new/used ones or suitable replacement tube and someone recommended this paint stripper from Screwfix, I bought some and had a go, and wow. Really good stuff. Brush on, leave for a while, wash off in water. Repeat if necessary. Very impressed with the results.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[inconsistant]

I also bought one of those spray gun handle attachments for aerosol cans. I got two actually, a Rustoleum one and a Krylon one. 

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rust-Oleum-243546-Standard-Spray-Grip/dp/B001KZC7K0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1551451770&sr=8-1&keywords=Rustoleum+spray+can+handle

 

^^^ Rustoleum: shite

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Krylon-Snap-Spray-Other-Multicoloured/dp/B0002YP7SO/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1551451736&sr=8-4&keywords=krylon+spray+can+handle

 

^^^ Krylon: recommended

 

The Rustoleum one is shite because the trigger only works with your index finger and that gets as hurty as it would if you were pressing an aerosol can button. However the Krylon one is excellent, as the trigger movement is very gradual and is big enough to fit 2-3 fingers. It has a great feel and allows good control of the paint release from the can so I reckon it paid for itself in the paint it saved. Both were well under £10 from Amazon.

 

 

 

Being wary of using incompatible paints after the headlight cover disaster, I spent a while looking into what paints and primers went with what. I used Upol acid etch primer for spraying onto bare metal & then their high build primer for the other layers, Paints4u Alpine White, Wurth over paintable Stone Chip for the valance, and Jenolite rust converter and this Killer Filler stuff I was recommended from someone who does Porsche restorations and repairs for a living  for all my filling needs. It works really nicely, and sands very well. I now recommend it too.

 

 

 

 

The back garden and driveway became my all summer long spray booths, and this was my make shift drying area.

 

[inconsistant]

With the wing and valance off and the windscreen washer bottle out of the way it was easy to unbolt the drivers side wing/valance hanger bracket to check what was going on under the red oxide primer, along with the little weld I did last summer, and I noted there was a lot of deep pitting on the front surface of that corner.

 

 

I’m not going to do anything about right now because this job has already become a way bigger thing that I had planned but I reckon at some point in the future I’m going to need to get a replacement corner bit and cut this area out and weld it in the replacement. For the time being I’m trying to focus on stopping any big deterioration, and trying to improve stuff where I can as I learn what to do.

 

 

 

So for now I rust converted it, sanded and primered it along with the rest of the behind bumper area and front half of the badge panel, which I’d sanded almost completely back to the bare metal to try to remove every last trace of the micro-blisters that the old paint was riddled with, then primered with acid etch and several layers of high build primer.

 

 

[inconsistant]

I was digging through my spares bin and discovered I had a spare Porsche badge so I thought I’d try a bit harder to pop the existing one off the badge panel, knowing that if I broke it I could use the spare.

 

 

 

 

It popped off with ease, which was a lovely surprise. They’re both quite different to each other, but share a part number. Not sure which one to put back on as they both look a bit, er, characterful.

 

 

Will need to get a new rubber under gasket though as this one had shrunk and distorted over the years. So now with the badge removed I don’t need to mask it or avoid painting it, so I can just paint the whole badge panel, which makes that whole job much more simple.

 

 

 

 

[The Moog]

Looking good. What's the killer filler stuff? Is it just a fine filler?

[inconsistant]

After letting the paint settle for a few days I spotted a couple of dimples so I dripped some primer into them with a wire and let them harden then sanded back after another couple of days.

 

 

 

 

I’m taking everything very slowly, being sure to allow at least a couple of days between coats to let layers cure properly, and also because it’s really bloody hot in overalls, gloves and a charcoal vapour mask so I’m avoiding the hottest excesses of the scarily hot summer weather.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m aware that it’s much more important to get a good finish on the badge panel than on the vertical bits of paintwork because it will reflect the light more, and will also be the bit people look at more as it’s a focal point for the car. So I tried really hard to get the surface well prepared, I did my best spraying technique and managed to achieve a nice smooth coat on the badge panel, and then it rained.

 

 

And then it dried out and got hot again, so all the overspray on the masking tape and paper that I’d masked the lights with went soggy and then dried and went crispy and fluffy. I didn’t want any of this getting blown into my lovely wet paint job so I had to remove it all, hoover it all up and re-mask it all again. Thanks weather for making it as difficult as possible to get stuff done.

 

 

 

 

Badge panel ended up looking OK, so I removed the masking and the car started to look a just a bit more like a normal white car again. A bit. I was working on the badge panel, bumper, wing and valance in tandem across the summer, but to keep it simple I’ll pretend they were separate jobs…

 

 

 

 

 

[inconsistant]

Attention now turns to the bumper. A bit easier to sand and spray as it’s moveable, but some tricky areas and internal surfaces and curves. Fortunately there are only a small areas of horizontal surface along the top and below the lights that will be visible, the rest is probably going to be well away from most people’s gazes.

 

Before:

 

 

You can see there’s lots of overspray around the indicator/sidelight aperture, and several shades of alpine white feature across the bumper. Gave it a strong sanding going back through several layers of coloured stuff, until I couldn’t stand the boredom any more and popped a coat of grey primer on it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Did the same blobbing thing I did on the badge panel.

 

 

Made up a bumper-spray-bumper-stay device to make moving it around when wet a bit less fraught.

 

 

 

 

Did several layers of primer and Alpine White over a couple of weeks allowing at least 48 hours between coats, and eventually got the last coat on just as it was getting dark, outdoors in the back garden between insect landings and after a couple of beers. Just like they suggest in all the painting tutorials. Amazingly it came out looking really good.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I used the stripper from before on the headlight washer nozzles and the overriders. It worked on the nozzles but not the overriders. I don’t think it likes soft plastics.

 

 

 

 

 

The nozzles are a right bastard to fit. I hate them. They have a wide but shallow thread, they/re a metal nut on a plastic thread so easy to wreck the thread, and the gap is too small to get a spanner in to turn the nut. But I managed it in the end.

 

 

 

 

Ages ago I bought a spare set of good secondhand overriders that didn’t have any overspray on them, and I found them just at the right time to clean them up and fit them. Nice numberplate back on, and the whole thing is ready to be re-fitted.

 

 

 

 

[RobT]

Excellent Porker fettling, as always!

[stuboy]

i do like theses.. great work

[Skizzer]

All this and a Serck font plate to top it off!

 

Great stuff.

[Stanky]

fantastic work, the stand you made for the bumper to allow moving it when wet is a great idea! more please

[Alusilber]

Did you just prise the badge off or did you fiddle with it from underneath?  I've got a new badge gasket for mine but haven't attempted to fit it yet as I was expecting much skinning of knuckles and bad language to be involved.

[danthecapriman]

Brilliant job! Your paint work looks great.

[paulplom]

Yes, I agree. You've achieved a professional finish.

[320touring]

Wow, that's some good progress! Top work:)

[Tickman]

Excellent work there, looking forward to the next bit in 6 months

[Stanky]

I wonder if that old badge would respond to being given a seeing to with some brasso and a toothbrush? Since you have a better spare one might be nothing to lose? 

[mercedade]

Genuinely one of my favourite threads, this. I've probably said as much a few pages back (or at least, I hope I have).

 

What I love is that your keen-amateur-methodically-working-it-out approach shines through. No ridiculous 'I've no idea what I'm doing, this is so keerrazee' playing up - it just feels like you've got a real knack for taking your time, taking it seriously and doing a really professional job at the end.

 

I'm probably poorly wording this, but it's flipping great.

[inconsistant]

Looking good. What's the killer filler stuff? Is it just a fine filler?

 

Yes, it's just filler but it feels a bit different to p38 type stuff as it's nicer to sand, it hardens a bit softer so you don't get so much contrast between the filler being hard and the surrounding paint being softer which leaves bumps where the filler doesn't sand as much as the paint. If you know what I mean...

 

Did you just prise the badge off or did you fiddle with it from underneath?  I've got a new badge gasket for mine but haven't attempted to fit it yet as I was expecting much skinning of knuckles and bad language to be involved.

 

The two prongs on the back of the badge push into two nylon inserts that push into the holes in the bodywork. I got a thin metal blade under both sides of the badge and prised it up and it popped out easily. I don't think you can get behind the badge as It's not accessible. My badge didn't go back on as tightly as before so I might need to get new nylon thingys, or maybe hot gun it into place, but I need to get a new gasket first.

 

I wonder if that old badge would respond to being given a seeing to with some brasso and a toothbrush? Since you have a better spare one might be nothing to lose? 

I like your thinking. If it comes up nice I could sell the other one, Porsche bonnet badges must sell for an absolute fortune, Shirley? Heads to eBay.. Ooh, sold for £35 with a broken pin!

 

Genuinely one of my favourite threads, this. 

 

 

Thank you! I should really try to update it more frequently instead of 6 monthly bursts.

[inconsistant]

And now for the valance. The one on the car is a bit ropey.

 

 

 

The paint is chipped and cracked, and the valance is dented in several places, especially along the lower lip, but it’s fairly sound with only superficial rust. These can really rust along the ends where they bolt onto the lower wing but this one is OK.

 

 

 

I sanded off the paint with a poly abrasive wheel they recommended on the mig-welding forum, that I showed a pic of earlier. Got a pack of them off eBay  I'm a convert as they're much nicer to use and leave a much smoother finish than wire knot wheels.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I wasn’t as worried about getting a perfect finish on the valance as I knew I was going to give it a heavy coat of stone chip front and back so I didn't bother as much getting a smooth surface before I started primering, and didn't bother removing much of the old stone chip texture.

 

 

 

 

After some sanding I gave it a coat of grey primer and then some more sanding and then some more primer. It looked shit, really dented and distorted, especially on the lower curved scoop bit.

 

 

 

This is also the bit most likely to be noticed so I thought it was a good time to break out the Killer Filler. It went on nicely, hardened quickly and was a lot easier to sand than p38/p40 type fillers that I’ve dabbled with in the past.

 

 

 

 

I made a template of the curve of the valance, and sanded a cork sanding block to the same shape to make creating the curve a lot easier. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After a few coats of primer then filler then around again I slowly built up a shape I was happy with so I did a final coat of primer, let it dry for a couple of days and then got busy with the Stone Chip.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Did the back first to get a feel for how it went on, then did the front.

 

 

 

 

Built up a couple of coats on both sides then overpainted with a couple of mist coats of Alpine White first to avoid any reactions, then gradually built up to full coats. As with the bumper I was quite happy with how it came out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[inconsistant]

Drivers wing… I really should have just left this as it was, but I got over excited removing paint and couldn’t stop myself in time. This was the wing I bought last year for £100 which was in good rust free, un-dented condition but it did have some deep scratches along the top which are quite obvious, and a deep scratch at the bottom along the sill behind the wheel arch, half on the white and half on the black bit.

 

 

 

 

 

I started off delicately removing just the paint on the affected areas but with every blow over with primer the areas got bigger until they all met up to form a large area the size of the back half of the wing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

While I was mucking about with the wing I thought I’d drill a hole for the new aerial  Arial earyhole  aresehole  aireyall  R.E.L  radio rod I bought, as this wing didn’t have a hole for it. I think this one is OEM for the 924, and the manual came with some fab line drawings of old cars and how to fit an radio rod to them.

 

 

 

 

Can post up more of this on request. Borrowed the step cutters from work and whacked a hole in it. Bit of a twitchy bum drilling into bodywork, but it went OK.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Masked up the back of the wing and sprayed the whole of the rear half of the wing. Sprayed some stone chip on the black bit, and then covered it with some matt black to match the existing sills. Came up ok, but theres a really obvious line down the middle of the wing where the masking starts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think this whole wing will definitely be resprayed some time soon. I totally over-reached with this, should have just left it or committed to doing the whole panel properly. Oh well.

 

 

 

[beko1987]

That's brilliant! Love the sanding block creation too! Quick, slap some porch tax on and flog em on the forums!

[Jim Bell]

Mega!

[stonedagain]

Nice thread, thanks for sharing!

[inconsistant]

That's brilliant! Love the sanding block creation too! Quick, slap some porch tax on and flog em on the forums!

 

 

I could push the spare bonnet badge into it, see if anyone will by a Porsche branded cork sanding block?

 

 

Coincidentally there was a 'Cork' edition 924 sold in 1979 on the continent. In the UK it was called the Dubloon. It had a unique paint (metallic beige) and a unique interior and only a couple of hundred of them were made. Very rare and no one really cares.

 

 

 

Bet they looked lovely when new.

[inconsistant]

Having over reached with the drivers wing the sensible thing was to take stock and decide… to carry on painting stuff, yeah! I was on a roll and I was going to keep painting until I’d covered all the bits that were red oxide primer with lovely sexy Alpine White. I felt that no matter how shite I manage to make it look it looked it couldn’t be worse than red oxide primer. I badly masked the front edges of the passenger wing and bunged some primer and some white paint on it.

 

 

 

 

I also blew some primer and then some Alpine White along the lower door area which went a bit wrong and ran a lot. So it’s white, but it looks rubbish.

 

 

 

And then a bit of matt black on the sill repair I did before.

 

 

I squirted some paint on the bit that I primered below the rear boot lock too. I made a right mess of this, as I’d covered the lock & rubber surround with a bit of newspaper I’d trapped in the boot and dangled over it. Then stupidly before the paint had dried I pulled the newspaper out to remove it instead of waiting and loads of rubbery boot seal debris dropped into the wet paint. So I wiped it, and made it look worse, and then sprayed a bit more paint on the debris to make it white debris, but got overspray on the boot lock rubber surround.

 

 

What an idiot. I think I was tired or something but also probably because I’d carried on working after a couple of gin & tonics. Never a good plan.